To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon, Jason Kottke has set up a virtual 1960s television set which will broadcast coverage “live” tonight at 16:00 EDT for the moon landing and 22:10 EDT for the moon walk.

The coverage will be reported by the late Walter Cronkite, who sadly passed away last Friday.

The Apollo 11’s lunar module, the LM-5 (better known as the Eagle), landed on the moon, with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong as its passengers, on July 20th 1967.

Ever wondered what your SNES looks like under an x-ray? Yeah, me neither. This guy did, though, and has managed to scan the insides of a whole range of consoles from the Atari 2600 (mostly empty) to the Wii (with accessories, no less) and the Playstation 3 (pictured above).

Reintji’s X-Ray Funnies (via Destructoid)

Stephen Worth has an interesting article over at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive on how we’ve imagined the future throughout the past century. It includes scans of an article from a 1950 issue of Coronet magazine, illustrated by Chesley Bonestell, about a family trip to Venus in the year 2500, along with some clips from the Disneyland TV show’s “Mars and Beyond“. Mars and Beyond was one of three space-themed specials:

It’s impossible to overstate how important the Disney space shows were to the American space program. President Dwight Eisenhower requested a copy of “Man in Space” to screen for his top military officers to convince them that space travel was indeed possible. Six months after “Mars and Beyond” aired, congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act which established NASA. The launch of Russia’s Sputnik satellite in October 1957 might have been the immediate impetus for the swift passage of the funding for the program, but the groundwork for the concept behind NASA was laid by Wernher von Braun and Walt Disney.

Clearly, scientists like Wernher von Braun and politicians like Eisenhower and Kennedy were responsible for America’s space program. But it took more than science and funding to put man on the moon. It took will. The awe inspiring imaginary vistas of Chesley Bonestell and the fantastic animation of Ward Kimball and Walt Disney became our collective dreams. The day after “Man in Space” aired, every man, woman and child in America had the same fantasy in their head- the burning desire to go to the moon. The visions created by these artists and filmmakers became reality because they crystallized and energized our collective will.

Animation has the power to mobilize society to do great things.

Mars and Beyond can be found on the Walt Disney Treasures – Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond DVD along with “Man in Space” and “Man and the Moon” as well as, of course, on YouTube:

1. Man & the Sky
2. Mars in Pop Culture
3. History of Life on Earth/Solar System
4. Mars from Earth
5. Life on Mars
6. Travel to Mars

If that’s not enough, here’s some Ward Kimball concept art.

The folks at ArcAttack use Tesla coils to “produce an electrical arc similar to a continuous lightning bolt which put out a crisply distorted square wave sound reminiscent of the early days of synthesizers.”

Here’s one, with another guy wearing a “Faraday Suit” to conduct electricity away from the coil, performing the Imperial March theme from Star Wars! Check out more videos on their site.

I always love looking at optimistic views of the future from the past… and here’s a good one. The Usborne Book of the Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond, which was originally published in 1979. Chapters include “Robots: Science and medicine”, “Future Cities: Homes and living” and “Star Travel: Transport and travel”. (via Boing Boing)

It reminds me of the old EPCOT attractions from Walt Disney World like Horizons and Spaceship Earth that were also built around that time.

If you like this it’s also worth checking out the Paleofuture blog for all kinds of fantastic retro visions of the future.

Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies (via Kottke)