Fly Me to the Moon Ball

Photo: COURTESTY OF NASA

As things on earth keep going to shit, moving to the moon looks like an increasingly attractive option. Lucky for us, the Boston Society of Architects and SHIFTboston are sponsoring the MOON CAPITAL Competition, an international design challenge that calls on architects, artists, urban designers, engineers, and good old fashioned lay-folk to submit conceptual ideas for lunar habitats, culture, and lifestyle.

If your creative moon juices just aren't flowing, you can still mingle with the professionals at the MOON CAPITAL Forum presentation on October 21 and experience the interactive show, play new lunar video games, and peruse the various installations. The forum starts at 7 p.m., and will be followed by a Moon Ball, which promises to be pretty much the coolest thing ever (think prom but shinier). Drinks, (possibly dehydrated moon) food, and music will last until 11 p.m., at which point everyone goes home and googles "cost of space tourism," and finds out that it's still really expensive.

The forum will feature several keynote speakers, including former NASA astronaut Jeff Hoffman and space architect Marc Cohen, whose approach to moon architecture is inspired by Buckminster Fuller (inventor of the term "Spaceship Earth" and keeper of a scrupulously detailed diary that is now called the Dymaxion Chronofile) because of his "approach to the Platonic solids--not so much geodesics as his re-ordering of the Platonic solids, which is a whole other spiel." Cohen also drew on elements of "Renaissance and post-Renaissance garden design" to develop his approach to creating space habitats. Basically, this dude is awesome. He even compares his favorite science fiction novelist, Ursula LeGuin, to Dostoevsky and Steinbeck. Hersey to English majors, rapture to sci-fi nerds.

Visit the SHIFTboston website for more info on this "avant-garde lunar style gala," which takes place at the Boston Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door.