Space-Space: How Artists Have Attempted to Change Human Understandings of ‘The

Final Frontier’

Abstract:

The universe is both ever expanding and finite, bearing hundreds of billions of galaxies

each bearing hundreds of billions of solar systems. It is impenetrably large and by its very nature,

othered. In our attempts to understand the magnitude of our surroundings, two main methods

have arisen amongst artists—they endeavour to fathom the cosmos, and they attempt to break the

barrier which separates us from it. Over the course of this essay, I will address how artists have

attempted to tackle these two goals primarily through the lens of Edward Soja’s article,

Thirdspace. While outer space exists in human consciousness primarily as a conceived space, as

in Soja`s model of Secondspace, artists have attempted to recast our understanding of outer space

through both representational and interactive art, artificially creating a dialogue with outer space,

and constructing an understanding of the universe which is both navigable and lived, as Soja

imagined a Firstspace and a Thirdspace to be respectively. In this paper I argue that while

attempts to reimagine outer space have been overall successful with the employment of

representational art to cast outer space as a Firstspace, artists’ efforts to engage with outer space

as an apolitical, utopic Thirdspace (as Soja envisioned) have been relatively unsuccessful. This

implies that there is an unrealistic expectation that outer space can be used as a canvas

unencumbered by the political and social contexts of the tangible world.

Imagine outer space, a gargantuan inky black abyss dotted with twinkling stars, silent and

freezing cold. A rover is just visible navigating the terrain of Mars. Pluto orbits the sun in an

oblong cycle, neither planet nor asteroid. A rocket ship explodes through earth`s atmosphere.

The Starship Enterprise shoots past at warp speed, narrowly avoiding danger in its search for

intelligent life on other worlds. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney argue playfully in their

fitted space suits. Big headed aliens demand a simple farmer to take them to the Whitehouse.

Clearly, the common perception of outer space has been influenced significantly by the wide-

ranging discourse surrounding the notion, be those depictions artistic or commercial, scientific or

theoretical. Outer space is unique, for though we have an internalized image recalled upon its

mention, though we all look up at the night sky and see the space beyond the walls of our

atmosphere, we are separated. Indeed, at least among our generation, we are unlikely ever to

have the chance to physically explore beyond the transparent enclosed walls of our planet. Outer

space is real, livable, but it is unreachable. It is known and yet simultaneously unfathomable. The

universe is both ever expanding and finite, bearing hundreds of billions of galaxies each bearing

hundreds of billions of solar systems. The universe is impenetrably large and by its very nature,

othered. In our attempts to understand our gargantuan universe, two main methods have arisen

amongst artists—they endeavour to fathom the cosmos, and they attempt to break the barrier

which separates us from it. Over the course of this essay, I will address how artists have

attempted to tackle these two goals through the language of Edward Soja article Thirdspace and

supported through the language of Lefebvre’s The Plan of the Present Work. While outer space

exists in human consciousness primarily as a conceived space, as in Soja`s model of

Secondspace, artists have attempted to recast our understanding of outer space through both

representational and interactive art, artificially creating a dialogue with outer space, and

constructing an understanding of the universe which is both navigable and lived, as Soja

imagined a Firstspace and a Thirdspace to be respectively. I will argue that, while attempts to

reimagine outer space have been overall successful with the employment of representational art

to cast outer space as a Firstspace, efforts to create an apolitical, utopic Thirdspace beyond

earth`s walls have been relatively unsuccessful.

Contemporary understandings of outer space coincide closely with Soja`s notion of

second space. This is an unusual turn of events: most locals begin in the realm of the Firstspace

(a term which I will return to later), however outer space defies this notion. For Soja, a second

space is “Subjective and “imagined,” more concerned with images and representations of

spatiality, with the thought processes that are presumed to shape both material human

geographies and the development of a geographical imagination.” 1 In other words, a

Secondspace is a space which has been constructed within the imagination. It is created rather

than experiential space. Soja goes on to write that a Secondspace is not “entirely fixed on

materially perceivable spaces and geographies” but rather it “concentrates on and explores more

cognitive, conceptual, and symbolic worlds. It thus tends to be more idealist than materialist, at

least in its explanatory emphasis.”2 The Secondspace is cerebral, an understanding of what a

space had ought to be rather than what the space exists as in actuality. Soja’s Secondspace is

conceived in the mind, an image, a fiction. It is this understanding which has become embedded

in the popular imagination.

The human race is not truly separated from the cosmos by an insurmountable physical

barrier, however the distinction between terrestrial and extraterrestrial space is firm, for most

1 Edward W. Soja, "Thirdspace: expanding the scope of the geographical imagination," 18. last modified August 21,

2014. 2 Soja, "Thirdspace: expanding the scope." 18.

people have never been able and will never be able to navigate through space beyond our

atmosphere. Though earth is immersed in this mysterious ‘outer space’, individual humans

cannot interact with, alter, or inhabit it. Save the few astronauts who have had the privilege to

explore beyond our atmosphere, the only understandings of outer space available to the public is

through conceptual imagination and description. Looking at the sky is only as immersive as a

screen—as in a sublime painting, the viewer is separated from interaction and comprehension

(and danger) by the frame of two horizons. To see outer space through our atmosphere relies on

the eye alone, and exists within a Cartesian plot. It is not an interactive experience. Furthermore,

human understanding of space is inherently idealized—indeed before visual representations of

outer space were recorded by scientists like Galileo, and later substantiated by photographs and

other records captured by organizations like NASA, outer space was conceived to be the

pinnacle of perfection, made up of perfect flawless spheres, and referred to as the heavens. 3

Distance smoothed out imperfections, and perceived flatness created the illusion of smallness

and simplicity. However, this limited, clearly flawed, understanding of the universe beyond our

world’s walls has been consistently challenged by artists, striving through means of

representation and interactivity to change the way we as the human race understand outer space.

Soja’s first space is most commonly a precursor to his notion of Secondspace, for it is a

space which is grounded firmly in reality. A Firstspace is perceived4 rather than conceived. It is

the ability to geographically navigate a terrain, to situate oneself in the context of a location. In

his words, a Firstspace “refers to the directly-experienced world of empirically measurable and

mappable phenomena.” 5 These notions of direct experience, measurability, and mappability

3Ron Miller, "The Archaeology of Space Art," Leonardo 29, no. 2 (1996):139, accessed December 9, 2014,

doi:10.2307/1576350. 4 Henri Lefebvre, "Plan of the Present Work," last modified August 2014, digital file. 5 Soja, "Thirdspace: expanding the scope." 17.

exclude outer space from ever embodying this distinction. Indeed, very few human have or will

ever directly experience the exterior of earth’s walls. The time, cost and distance of the space

beyond our atmosphere from the spaces where we interact makes it a location which is defined

by its inaccessibility, its outer-ness. Despite some degree of measurability executed exclusively

by astrophysicists, the cosmos is so vast that the human mind is incapable of visualizing it.

Finally, the universe in by no means mappable, for in order to map a space, one must be able to

navigate it. We humans are so unfathomably small compared to the massive bodies which we

attempt to map, that no individual could navigate through them; and the universe so

unfathomably large that no species could hope to map, piece by piece, its entirety. In his essay

Outer Space and Inner Space, an exploration of human situation in the universe, Rudolph

Arnheim writes “Beyond our senses, the world is endless; but endlessness, by its very nature, can

only be conceived globally. It cannot serve as the matrix for particular things the world

contains.”6 He examines the endlessness of our universe, emphasizing that it cannot be

measured, and thus leads disorder and disorientation. Outer space is inaccessible, the permanent

other blocked by distance and the mediation of our atmosphere. It is immeasurable, shockingly

vast. And, it is unmappable, on too grand a scale to be navigated through. Artists have long

provided experiences to the masses that were otherwise inaccessible: the Romantic painters

depicted sublime dangers, exotic portraits from far off lands. Artists have long subverted the

limitations of distance through representation. It is again through representation that artists of our

day have attempted to subvert the blockade to human interaction, understanding, and navigation

of the universe.

6 Rudolf Arnheim, "Outer Space and Inner Space," Leonardo 24, no. 1 (1991): 73, accessed December 9, 2014,

doi:10.2307/1575472.

Representational art has served as an effective tool in undermining limitations to the

construction of an outer Firstspace through addressing these three blockades of direct

accessibility, measurability, and mappability. Indeed, as Arnheim writes, “what really made the

difference [in reimagining our situation in the universe] was the first photograph, taken probably

by a satellite and showing us the Earth in its colorful otherworldliness.”7 Representational

images of earth and of other extraterrestrial bodies have made a marked difference in our

understanding of what lies beyond our atmosphere. The art world has habitually been moving

away from ocular-centric representational art, however within the field of Space Art, it has

remained prevalent, particularly under the title “Astronomical Art”. As Michael Carroll, an

illustrator who works with NASA puts it in his essay Space Art: The Impact of Space-Age

Technology on Representational Art, their goal is to “take the discoveries of astronomers, astro-

physicists [sic], planetologists, etc. and attempt to put this knowledge into a comprehensible

form for all segments of society”8 This approach inherently begins to construct a first space

beyond the terrestrial sphere. The first common way in which representational art has habitually

approached and undermined the limitations to understanding the universe as a first space is

through depictions of the universe on a comprehensible scale. In both photographic and

illustrated representations, artists either frame their images as if the viewer were of the same size

as the subject, or they depict the landscape as if a human could stand upon it. In doing so, they

attempt to make the subject of their work understandable and navigable to their viewer, though

not necessarily directly accessible. Carroll proposes and answers the question,

“What if a human being could stand on the surface of a moon such as Europa [one of Jupiter’s moons] and

gaze across its icy landscape into the dark void of space? The proposition of the viewer actually ‘standing’

7 Arnheim, "Outer Space and Inner," 73. 8 Michael W. Carroll, "Space Art: The Impact of Space-Age Technology on Representational Art," Leonardo 15, no. 3

(1982): 210, accessed December 9, 2014, doi:10.2307/1574681.

on the landscape is much easier to relate to than a photograph taken from such a distance, and astronomical

artists can demonstrate that concept visually” 9

Carroll uses one of his own paintings to illustrate this claim, called The Icy Corridors of Europa

(Figure 1). The image depicts Europa from the perspective of a person standing on its surface.

Representative artworks allow humankind to be inserted into the cosmos in a comprehensible

way, a way which suggests that, though they cannot directly access a space, they might be able

to. It creates a navigable plane on which we might function, and maps out a land which we could

conceivably influence, effectively constructing a Firstspace from an otherwise intangible

location.

The second means by which representational art achieves its goal of undermining the

boundaries preventing outer space from being perceived as a first space arise from more

immersive representational artworks. Takashi Makino’s Space Noise (Figure 2) is a recent

experimental film made to be viewed live and in 3D. The performance lasts about half an hour,

depicting an immersive representative outer space environment. The film itself is disturbed in

multiple ways to mimic a changing constellation of stars, and a smoke screen fills the room,

making the projected light into a surrounding experience. It is as if a person has entered deep

space and galaxies and stars fly past them as they glide through the inky abyss. Through

representing outer space in this immersive way, Space Noise subverts limitations and turns outer

space into a perceived space. The viewer is thrust into a world of direct experience, including

sight, sound, and to some extent touch, existing within the artwork rather than adjacent to it.

While the viewer cannot necessarily map their location within the fast moving stars, they

experience and navigate the cosmos. Their form is projected as if it is large enough to interact

9 Michael W. Carroll, "Space Art: The Impact of Space-Age Technology on Representational Art," Leonardo 15, no. 3

(1982): 211, accessed December 9, 2014, doi:10.2307/1574681.

amongst the stars, making the sheer size of the universe seem more comprehensible. Immersive

representational space art like this piece can overcome restrictions, and help the viewer to

perceive outer space in an understandable way, undermining the mental limits which come with

the idea of infinity and making navigable the inaccessible by altering scalar perceptions. These

two approaches to casting outer space as a first space have been relatively successful, whether

enacted deliberately or unintentionally by depicting outer space in such a way that it is

comprehensible, accessible, measurable, and mappable.

Despite the relative success of Artists in transforming outer space into a Firstspace, and

its pre-existing condition as a Secondspace, artists’ attempts to reframe outer space as a

Thirdspace have been decidedly less successfully. Soja’s notion of a Thirdspace is both a

combination of Firstspace and Secondspace, and the space between and outside of the two

concepts. It is a space beyond the realm of transnational politics, outside of consumerism, and

above earthly problems in general. It is a kind of heterotopia10, a real space that bears utopic

qualities. In theory, it acts as a space of political upheaval and panhuman cooperation. The

Thirdspace breaks down the Firstspace-Secondspace dualism, allowing for “somewhere in

between, conceiving of “pure” materialism/objectivity and idealism/subjectivity as opposite

poles of a continuum of approaches,”11 and creating a critical third, or other-ed space. It aligns

closely with Lefebvre’s “Lived Space”12, a space of cultural production, or rather a space bearing

the imprint of human creation. It is the product of its history, its physicality and its imagined

existence. Perhaps the most important, and the most unattainable aspect of the Thirdspace for

10Michel Foucault, "Des Espace Autres" [Of Other Spaces: Utopias and

Heterotopias], Architecture/Mouvement/Continuite, pdf. 11Soja, "Thirdspace: expanding the scope." 34. 12 Lefebvre, "Plan of the Present." 34.

Space Artists is its infusion with radical cultural politics bearing “strategic significance”13 for

anti-oppressive movements. Soja utilizes bell hooks’ understanding of Lived Space in his

description, as “a Thirdspace consciousness provid[ing] a new political grounding for collective

struggles against all forms of oppression, whatever their sources and at whatever geographical

scale they are expressed.”14 Artists have attempted to capture this space, to turn outer space into

a location which bears this persona of upheaval and utopic thought, however while their attempts

have been plentiful, their success has been narrow.

The main approach which artists have undertaken in the creation of an outer Thirdspace

is through the establishment of communication between earth and space. By breaking the

boundary of the atmosphere and inhabiting the cosmos, artists considered it possible to turn a

space unencumbered by human matters into a space of political upheaval and change. In 1990,

Jean-Marc Philippe, a renowned artist involved in Space Art, called for a Space Art Ethics

committee. It aimed to preserve outer space as an unaffiliated space. He worried that hastiness

and lack of international discussion could “spoil the rare opportunity provided by space art”15 He

emphasized a number of issues in his essay, including but not limited to the following:

“It would be unsuitable and disturbing if Space Art were to be used to vaunt the efficacy of a few

multinational financial groups or organizations having private interests of causes. It would also be

perplexing if a simplistic project were propelled into space under the pretext of being opportune. It goes

without saying that, like the anonymous cathedrals, no name of an institution or an artist would be attached

to Space Art. Precisely because these ideas are the direct consequences of the establishment of a new

cultural perception brought about by the exploration of space”16

Clearly, Philippe makes a plea to maintain a pure, radical and unfettered space beyond earth’s

walls, an idealized Thirdspace. In practice, most of the Space Art proposals that have made any

13 Soja, "Thirdspace: expanding the scope." 36. 14 Soja, "Thirdspace: expanding the scope." 37. 15 Jean-Marc Phillippe, "Space Art: A Call for a Space Art Ethics Committee,"Leonardo 23, no. 1 (1990): 130,

accessed December 9, 2014, doi:10.2307/1578477. 16 Phillippe, "Space Art: A Call," 130.

significant headway have been associated with individual artists, and have not coincided with

these suggested rules (which would rely on committee censuses, worldwide contribution of

wealth as a proportion of GNP, and transnational cooperation). 17 Individual artists however have

still attempted to create spaces of radical political worth through the invention of artworks which

create communication between earth and space, functioning off of the notion that outer space is

pure and other. Pierre Comte, known in the 1980s for his successfully executed artworks which

could be seen from space, has spearheaded multiple attempts to put installations outside of

earth’s atmosphere that could still be seen from the planet’s surface. By creating a space outside

of the atmosphere that bore the mark of human creativity, he attempted to turn outer space into a

lived space, to “signify Earth’s dialogue with space”18. His plans for an ARSAT Mirror Satellite,

called Helios, exemplify this goal (Figure 3). The piece was planned to be a massive inflatable

installation, totalling 20,000 square meters in size when fully inflated. It would artificially create

a bright star in the sky which could be seen (by the naked eye) from earth. Comte was is one of

many artists interested in establishing this space earth dialogue, but multiple factors have

prevented these initiatives from taking place.19 Transforming outer space into a location of

human cultural production, outside of the burdened histories which necessarily effect terrestrial

art, has been a long and uphill battle. Artists have often in the past few decades made attempts to

inhabit space as if it were a Thirdspace, utilizing its otherness as a tool for political statement and

post-national interaction.

17 Phillippe, "Space Art: A Call," 131. 18 Pierre Comte, "Leonardo in Orbit: Satellite Art," Leonardo 20, no. 1 (1987):33, accessed December 9, 2014,

doi:10.2307/1578205. 19 Takuro Osaka, "Art in the Space Age: Exploring the Relationship between Outer Space and Earth

Space," Leonardo 37, no. 4 (2004): 274, accessed December 9, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577601.

However, I believe that the goal of casting outer space as a Thirdspace is as unfeasible at

it is impossible. I argue that it is unfeasible to cast outer space as a Thirdspace for two main

reasons: Space art is extremely expensive, and it is necessarily national. In contemporary society

wherein both space exploration and the arts are losing funding, a privatized capitalist motivation

is the only practicable opportunity for art to be put in space. Stan VanDerBeek, an early space art

pioneer, spoke of his frustrations with these financial barriers. In his 1982 lecture in Linz,

Austria, VanDerBeek said, “this business of being artist-in-residence at some corporation…is

only part of the story; what we really want to be is artists-in-residence of the world, but we don’t

know where to apply.”20 This statement suggests the lack of opportunity to take part in an

unaffiliated artwork. Corporations are the only structures financially powerful enough to fund

Space Art, and thus, Space Art cannot exist in an impartial politically unencumbered field, and

consequently cannot truly exist in a Thirdspace. The same limitation applies in regards to

affiliation with particular nations. While there is a common notion that outer space is by its

nature not affiliated with terrestrial nation-state divisions, indeed it is very closely tied with

human power relations. Only wealthy, powerful nations have had the opportunity to explore

outer space, and indeed space exploration has been closely tied to the politics of war for decades.

In his essay Homage to a Blue Planet: Aeronautical and Astronomical Artworks, Paul Hartal

writes “Going to space is an irrational impulse which has been aided also by the political

competition between the United States and the Soviet Union: a matter of pride and national

image”21 Be it German space engineering and weaponry, the cold war space-race between the

United States and Russia, or the current push in China to assert dominance through space

20 Jurgen Claus, "Stan VanDerBeek: An Early Space Art Pioneer," Leonardo36, no. 3 (2003): 229, accessed

December 9, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577366. 21 Paul Hartal, "Homage to a Blue Planet: Aeronautical and Astronomical Artworks," Leonardo 25, no. 2 (1992): 211,

accessed December 9, 2014, doi:10.2307/1575714.

exploration, national politics are clearly not limited within our atmosphere. Outer space already

bears the marks of money and power relations, and thus can never act as a heterotopic location of

political upheaval and idealist thirdness.

I argue that casting space art as a Thirdspace is impossible for two separate reasons:

Space art is entrenched in colonialist motives, and the size of the site which it attempts to

characterize is too large for any single label to be effective. The very notion of exploring space

bears colonialist roots. Much of space exploration has been focused around the idea of

communicating with non-human life forms. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

has been a central focus for space artists. The creation of art, a reflection of human nature in

physical form, has been closely tied to efforts in extraterrestrial communication. One piece called

Space Flight Dolphin (Figure 4) was launched in 1993. The piece is a satellite, made to represent

the figure of a dolphin and similar in size. Its purpose was to send out signals, reminiscent of

dolphin noises, into outer space22. The signals would indicate our location in the universe as it

compares to other super clusters of stars and galaxies, so as to attempt communication with

intelligent life forms beyond our atmosphere. The goal of space exploration, in science and in

science fiction, and reflected in this piece, is to encounter others and leave our mark on the

universe, as a cave painting on the wall of space time. Space exploration also bears rhetoric that

is shockingly similar to discussion around Columbus and Magellan. Phillippe refers to outer

space exploration as a “Conquest”23, popular media (Star Trek for example) categorize space

exploration as the ‘Final Frontier’. It is an infinitely expanding world of discovery and

22 Richard Clar, "'Space Flight Dolphin': An Art-and-Technology Payload for the Space Shuttle," Leonardo 26, no. 4

(193): 293, accessed December 9, 2014, doi:10.2307/1575915. 23 Phillippe, "Space Art: A Call," 129.

ownership. In his piece, Projecting Landscapes of the Human Mind, which examines the use of

the Frontier metaphor with regards to Mars, Rainer Eisfeld writes,

Abstracting and reducing from reality, the frontier myth has created a historical cliché. Clichés…may serve

to interpret new experiences as mere recurrences of familiar happenings, reflecting a refusal to learn.

Identifying Mars as merely another ‘frontier,’ projecting a moral purpose on the adoption of that so-called

planetary frontier to human settlers’ needs, tops a tradition of invoking a cultural stereotype that must be

classed as highly problematic.24

Indeed, human life has explored Mars, and walked the moon, and the first thing we did was plant

our flag upon the surface. Eisfeld highlights a recurring issue in the progression of human

learning and interaction—the tendency to categorize new experiences in the language of the old.

However, whether this is problematic or not, it is done. In the 1950s and 1960s, this same

colonizing rhetoric was projected onto the idea of extraterrestrial beings coming to earth. We

assigned our own tendencies to colonize onto the unknown other from outer space. As James

Miller wrote in his essay Seeing the Future of Civilization, the panhuman mind imagined the

notion that “essentially godlike humanoids were carrying out a new ‘civilizing mission,’ one

where disinterested conquerors delivered technology and compassion from afar as a means of

helping humans ‘avoid a terrible cataclysm, a cataclysm that men have given birth to and

prepared without their knowledge.’” 25 Clearly, as Eisfeld predicted, the human race once again

altered the idea of the other to fit into previosly known narratives, and the narrative we chose is

one that is steeped in colonialism, our own justification for colonization. Despite the fact that we

as the human race have yet to explore the greater part of the universe, outer space already bears

these notions of ownership and civilizing initiatives in its public perception and conception. It

24 Rainer Eisfeld, "Projecting Landscapes of the Human Mind onto Another World: Changing Faces of an Imaginary

Mars," in Imagining Outer Space, ed. Alexander C. T. Geppert (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 103, pdf. 25 James Miller, "Seeing the Future of Civilization in the Skies of Quarouble: UFO Encounters and the Problem of

Empire in Postwar France," in Imagining Outer Space, ed. Alexander C. T. Geppert (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 252, pdf.

would be impossible to strip these notions from public conscience, effectively making it

impossible to create Thirdspace. Finally, although it is tempting to treat ‘outer space’ as only

within the confines of our solar system, the vast infinity of outer space cannot possibly conform

uniformly to the notion of a Thirdspace. Outer space on the whole is too broad to be categorized

so easily; it is constantly expanding and changing, accelerating in velocity in every direction

with no sign of slowing. It would be naïve to insert such an unfathomable expanse into so

artificial a taxonomical category. To do so would turn the concept of outer space into a kind of

‘site’, and space art into a kind of ‘site specific’ art. However, I argue that it is absurd to

construct so binary and broad a site as “not-earth”. If the colonial perception of the universe

beyond our atmosphere does not make its categorization as a Thirdspace impossible, the sheer

size of the space which artists have attempted to conform to this label does.

The notion of outer space has gone through significant shifts over the past few decades.

Since the beginning of space exploration, the notion of interior and exterior have had to go

through fundamental shifts to accommodate the infinity beyond our atmosphere. While outer

space existed as a conceived Secondspace before representations of the universe outside of earth

were captured, artists have taken it upon themselves to shift perceptions of the cosmos. Through

representational depictions of space, immersive and Cartesian alike, artists have successfully

altered the way we look at the universe, so we might be able to understand, map, and navigate

the infinite unknown in a comprehensible way. In doing so, they have created a Firstspace of

outer space. However, artists’ attempts to reimagine outer space as a Thirdspace have been less

successful. To create a Thirdspace, the starting local must be capable of taking on radical

persona, as a place of social reconstruction and political upheaval. However, due to expenses and

national initiatives, to send unaffiliated art into space would be implausible. Furthermore, the

universe outside of earth is too deeply entrenched in colonialist notions of exploration, and too

huge and diverse to take on the label of a utopic othered space. Therefore, I conclude that, while

artists’ attempts to alter understandings of outer space to include the notion of the perceived

Firstspace have been relatively successful, attempts to recast outer space as a lived Thirdspace

are not only unfeasible, but impossible.

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Figure 1

Michael Carroll, The Icy Corridors of Europa, Acrylics on canvas, 1979

Figure 2

Pierre Comte, ARSAT Helios, 1983

Figure 3

Takashi Makino, Space Noise (still frame), 2013

Figure 4

Illustration by Edgar Duncin, Space Flight Dolphin, Aluminum & Nitinol, 1991