The internet will freak out over literally anything, not matter how unimportant. So you can imagine what it would have been like if the world wide web had been around in 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. Twitter probably would have been exhausting, thanks to conspiracy theorists and Flat-Earthers. What would NASA’s own webpage have looked like, though? The space agency put together a mock website to imagine how the style of the time would have influenced its look.
As part of the 50th anniversary of people complaining, “They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t do :insert banal thing that seems like it should be easy in comparison:,” NASA created a fictional webpage (that we first saw at Mashable) that would have existed at the time as the Apollo 11 moon landing. It’s better than an old Geocities page and user friendly, but it’s pretty basic otherwise.
Still better than the new Twitter layout.
NASA explained their thought process behind the imaginary site’s look, which included news stories besides arguably the biggest in the history of mankind:
“It would have focused on the Moon landing, of course, but with a style that reflected the changing artistic (and other) standards of the day. It’s worth noting that even back then NASA was too rambunctious to focus on only one thing: just as Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were headed to the Moon, Mariner VI was sending back the first TV images of Mars.”
They also note that in 1969 what become known as the internet “ was one connection between two universities, which crashed the first time someone tried to use it.” Think that crash was followed by one professor calling up another and saying, “They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t make this connection work!”? So do we.
It’s probably for best the internet wasn’t around when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.
Images: NASA, Gary Daines