Flashback Monday: Reston: The Next Generation

Please to be enjoying this magazine article from 1988, which announces the exciting news that NASA had selected our favorite earth-toned community as its headquarters for the International Space Station -- then just an attractive artists rendering, but now a functional collection of Tinkertoy-like modules floating in low earth orbit for the enjoyment of various space tourists. And apparently the headquarters is still here! We can sleep well knowing that the next time there's a crisis with one of the space toilets, one of our neighbors will be on the ball, trying to fix it.

Update: Actually, they won't. Because we couldn't get the Googles to search outer space, we missed the fact that the Space Station headquarters decamped for Texas in 1993 -- a tough decision made easier, we're sure, by the presence of an inferior, but still earth-toned, planned community in the Houston suburbs.

Either way, there's no truth to the rumor that the streak of light in the top photo was a rocket shooting Reston's original color swatches into low earth orbit, where they would be preserved for future generations.