Chris Calle (American, B. 1961) "Astronaut Floating in Orbit" Signed lower left. Mixed Media on Illustration Board. This painting was originally published on the Fleetwood First Day Cover for the U.S. 45¢ Future Mail Transportation Airmail Se-tenant Block of 4 20th UPU Congress Series stamps issued November 27, 1989. Someday, if science fiction becomes fact and people live on other worlds, space shuttles may carry mail to huge scientific and industrial communities set up throughout the solar system -- and beyond. Assuming it proves possible and profitable to build such communities, exciting new technology would come into use, making space stations the means of expanding new scientific and industrial revolutions. Conventional space stations in near-earth orbit already benefit from low gravity conditions, access to the vacuum of space and other extraterrestrial resources. Future space colonists would have these advantages, as well as ready access to unlimited amounts of solar energy, which could cheaply power space factories manufacturing products for the people of earth. And these interstellar factories would minimize the earth's problems of pollution and radioactive waste. If such things come to pass, mail indeed may one day be whisked via space shuttle to faraway addresses where postal workers would no longer have to cope with the rain, snow, sleet and hail of earth. Their deliveries in outer space would be complicated by weightlessness and the lack of a breathable atmosphere. Dressed in spacesuits, equipped with bulky but so very important oxygen packs, space-age postal deliverers would endeavor to complete their extraterrestrial rounds while facing conditions never imagined by earthbound mailmen. Provenance: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation. Image Size: 17 x 14.5 in. Overall Size: 23.5 x 20 in. Unframed. (B12167)