History Main / UsedFuture

Usually found on the hard end of MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness.

Shows on the other end of the SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty treat the future as a place where blue-collar workers make a living doing unglamorous jobs and where spaceships look dirty, dingy, and used, like heavy equipment that one might find at a lonely truck stop in the middle of the night right now. The ships are old junk heaps run on a shoestring by hard-bitten characters on the edge, seemingly held together with two pieces of string, chewing gum, and the will of God — the SF equivalent of the struggling FilmNoir private eye, in other words. This is the Used Future, and it's home to {{Space Trucker}}s, renegades, regular working stiffs, and anyone on the "cynical" end of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism. Think of it as DieselPunk '''InSpace'''

* The only ships that appear pristine in the ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' world are, cynically, those belonging to the bad guys. The ''Bebop'', as well as the characters' personal ships, are all rendered with realistic levels of rust, grime and plenty of wingdings from daily usage. Not to mention Jet's Hammerhead is just a futuristic tow-truck and Spike's much-prided ''Swordfish'' is some sort of out-of-date ([[InvincibleClassicCar classic?]]) personalized space race car so neither of them are meant to be shot at. The ''Bebop'' itself is converted fishing trawler with an excusably large outer deck.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hardwar}}'' features the moon Titan converted into a mining outpost by one particular, though anonymous, mining company. Problems of unspecified nature arose and the company responsible for the operations immediately left, taking interplanetary means of travel with them and stranding thousands of colonists on the moon. They still live there, two centuries later, using whatever tech and vehicles have been left behind and patching them up with local resources - but everything is a banged-up mess, nothing looks clean, and life is extremely cheap.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hardwar}}'' features the moon Titan converted into a mining outpost by various [[MegaCorp megacorps]]. Problems arose and the corporations immediately left, taking interplanetary means of travel with them and stranding thousands of colonists on the planet. They still live there, decades later, using whatever tech and vehicles have been left behind and patching them up with local resources - but everything is a banged-up mess, nothing looks clean, and life is extremely cheap.

** The Y-Wing fighter-bomber notably bridges the design aesthetics of the prequel and original trilogies. When the ship first appears in ''Film/ANewHope'', all the Y-Wings that participate in the [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/6/67/Ywings_trenchrun.png/revision/latest?cb=20130311052449 Death Star trench run]] are stripped down to their bare fuselages, exposing the cabling and wires. But ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' reveals the originally, the Y-Wings [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/7e/GojiPayloadSpecialist-SWZ.png/revision/latest?cb=20200928231233 looked sleek and fully-armored]], with an entirely different ship profile. It's just that the Y-Wing's design flaws resulted in a constant need for maintenance, and by the time of the Rebellion decades after the ship's introduction, Rebel technicians got fed up with removing the armor to get at the cooling system and stopped bothering to put it back on.

** Most spaceships and other futuristic devices are covered with dings and scratches. Luke's landspeeder is missing the casing of one of its engines, while the ''Millennium Falcon'' looks like it's almost [[WhatAPieceOfJunk ready to fall apart]]. This extends to the sound design as well; apparently Creator/GeorgeLucas's instructions were that he wanted to hear every loose bolt in the engines.
** This trope is also used to contrast [[TheEmpire the Galctic Empire]] and [[TheAlliance the Rebel Alliance]]. Imperial equipment is immaculate and their design utilitarian, favoring sharp geometric shapes, from their capital ships' interiors to their [[WeHaveReserves disposable]] [[MookMobile TIE Fighters]]. The Rebels meanwhile start the Galactic Civil War with whatever (frequently obsolete and cast-off) wargear they can scrounge together, and some of their ships look like they're held together with space duct tape and [[BackgroundMagicField the Force]]. Even when they're reinforced with professionally-made ships, like the X-Wing fighters or the Mon Calamari star cruisers, their older stuff still sees use out of necessity, emphasizing that they're still a RagtagBunchOfMisfits no matter how large the Rebellion grows.

** The prequel trilogy turns the aesthetic around, since it takes place over the last generation of the Republic, amid the seats of planetary or galactic power, resulting in far cleaner and tidier sets and ShinyLookingSpaceships. But when the action shifts to locations like the backwater of Tatooine or the seedy underbelly of Coruscant, things get noticeably grungier.

** Every ship is covered with dings and scratches and epitomized by the ''Millennium Falcon'', which looks like it is almost [[WhatAPieceOfJunk ready to fall apart]]. This extends to the sound design as well; apparently Creator/GeorgeLucas's instructions were that he wanted to hear every loose bolt in the engines. That said, the ships used by the Empire often look a bit more swish. It helps that the Rebel ships are held together with space duct tape and [[BackgroundMagicField the Force]], while the Galactic Empire has the full might of... a galactic empire behind its military. The Rebels are still able to gain access to really formidable ships that can rival the Empire's Star Destroyers, thanks to the support of many worlds who are also against the Empire, such as the Mon Calamari Cruisers, but most of their smaller vessels and fighters are obsolete or cast-off craft that no other galactic navy wanted.
** Special mention must be made of the Y-Wing fighter-bomber. When they debuted during [[WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars the Clone Wars,]] Y-Wings [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/7e/GojiPayloadSpecialist-SWZ.png/revision/latest?cb=20200928231233 looked sleek and fully-armored]]. But by the time of the Rebellion decades later, the Y-Wing's design flaws and constant need for maintenance have led Rebel technicians to discard most of the ship's armor so they can get at the cooling system, so in ''Film/ANewHope'', all the Y-Wings that participate in the [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/6/67/Ywings_trenchrun.png/revision/latest?cb=20130311052449 Death Star trench run]] are stripped down to their bare fuselages, exposing the cabling and wires.
** The original movie uses this trope to demonstrate what a dirt-poor backwater Tatooine is. Starting in orbit aboard the clean Alderaanian corvette and the utilitarian Star Destroyer that invokes [[PuttingOnTheReich Germanic efficiency]], the story moves to the surface, where Jawas roam the desert in a ramshackle sandcrawler to sell stolen hardware to farmers who literally live in a hole in the ground. While the embarked Stormtroopers are clad in pristine white armor, those on the ground are shown to be as dirty and sand-blasted as the peasants they oppress.
** While Imperial ships are newer, and their capital ships have more powerful weapons than those available to the Rebels, the Imperial design is extremely utilitarian, particularly in their fighters and strike craft. By contrast, most Rebel fighters are equipped with some form of bomb or torpedo, shield-generators, and hyperdrives to make them durable, versatile, and self-sufficient. The Empire's TIE models have none of these, as [[WeHaveReserves pilots are expendable]] as far as the Empire is concerned and it is cheaper to just quickly restock the losses than design something with more survivability.
** In the prequels, most of the early tech look aesthetic and function well, but when the Empire takes over all of it is redesigned to follow the Empire's standards.
** A notable exception to the Rebels' rule of cast-off fighters is the X-wing; the fighter's company Incom originally designed it for the Empire as a state-of-the-art fighter, but the ''entire design team'' defected to the Rebel Alliance, and brought the X-wing along with them. As a result, the X-wing is used almost exclusively by the Rebels. While it isn't the most modern fighter on the block, it's still more than enough to go up against the Empire's [=TIEs=].
** The prequels, as noted above, mostly subverts this, which is entirely justified. Whereas the original trilogy is about a ragtag group of rebels fighting a utilitarian empire, the prequels mostly take place in the high seats of galactic or local power, resulting in far cleaner and tidier sets. Scenes taking place in less exclusive locations, like the back alley where Zam Wesell dies, are correspondingly dirtier.

* The Terrans from ''VideoGame/{{Starcraft}}'', sometimes portrayed as a futuristic version of the DeepSouth. The art book for ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'' describes them as the "junkyard dogs" of the setting.

*** The {{Prequel}} novels demonstrate that it takes a critical eye analysing the infrastructure of Trantor to notice the signs of decay, but even without psychohistory, Seldon can observe the Empire’s corruption and deterioration. During "Literature/ThePsychohistorians", Gaal Dornick, [[NaiveNewcomer a mathematician from a small planet in the galaxy]], sees Trantor as a powerful and majestic capital for the Galactic Empire, but Seldon shows him how psychohistory predicts its imminent collapse. The illusion that the Empire is still strong comes from ignorance of the decay. As we [[DashedPlotLine leap ahead to each conflict]], various factions use the remnants of the Empire's technology to live as best they can. ''Literature/Foundation1951'' shows wealthy technicians maintaining machines by rote and ritual, while the Empire's territory shrinks in size over the centuries. ''Literature/FoundationAndEmpire'' shows the Empire [[TheRemenant reduced to only a few hundred worlds]], and then, to a few dozen, while their [[MileLongShip enormous ships]] are re-commissioned because their newer ships aren’t as good. ''Literature/SecondFoundation'' shows the Empire has collapsed entirely, leaving the capital of Trantor an AgriWorld that sells the ready-made steel from the vast abandoned cities to clear more land for crops.

* Zigzagged in ''Series/BlakesSeven'' mainly due to the NoBudget sets depicting a rundown dystopia with all the shoddy architecture and bureaucratic indifference you'd expect with a low budget series written by British writers writing what they know. While we have the pristine white of Supreme Commander Servalan's office on her space station, and the baroque alien design of the Liberator, we also have rundown freighters like ''London'' (the spaceship that carries the protagonist to a penal colony) and ''Scorpio'' (the vessel that succeeds the ''Liberator'' in the final season).

* ''Film/PacificRim'' has shades of it. Computers are holographic but they need huge tapes/disks for information, Jaegers are often rusty and dented and society is on the verge of collapsing with ration for work programs.
** Cherno Alpha embodies this trope the best, being the oldest working jaeger (and boy does it show among the newer, shinier ones).
** The fact that the Jaeger's opponents, the Kaiju, did not have anything like scars or wounds from Kaiju on Kaiju action was intended to serve as a hint to their [[TheReveal true nature.]]

Contrast ShinyLookingSpaceships, CrystalSpiresAndTogas, and EverythingIsAnIPodInTheFuture.

* The Grineer in ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'' don't seem keen on polishing anything they produce, with their arsenal consisting of [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter "crude" weapons]] that look like made by slapping metal parts together, and fleets featuring giant galleons with dingy interiors and fighters that sound like they run on ''diesel engines''. [[MegaCorp The Corpus]] puts much more effort into polishing their toys, but you can see their dirty underbelly in [[IronicName Fortuna]], a poorly lit underground colony where slaves... oh, sorry, ''[[HardWorkFallacy lazy]] {{indentured serv|itude}}ants'', work their fingers off on haphazardly designed machines to meet impossible quotas, replacing their body parts with cybernetics that look like made from any scrap they could find (which, judging by the fact you can help the colony by donating [[MechanicalLifeforms servofish]] caught in Orb Vallis lakes, they probably are). They can also get you equipped with modular guns that look like they were made from repurposed tools.

* Asimov's ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'' series. After the fall of the Galactic Empire, various factions use the remnants of the technology to live as best they can. This ranges from wealthy technicians maintaining machines they can no longer understand to agrarian societies who mine the vast abandoned cities for ready-made steel.

* The ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' games showed a bit of this in the old, abandoned segments of Black Mesa but really cranked this trope up in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' which simply screams {{cyberpunk}} and {{dystopia}}. Every lab belonging to the Resistance is full of visibly old mainframes and CRT monitors, despite the fact that the second game is supposed to take place somewhere in the 2020s. Justified in that there's a VichyEarth situation going on so there's no way to get your hands on shiny, brand-new technology without stealing it from the [[TheEmpire Combine]]. One particular example is the Gravity Gun: it's the wet dream of every physicist, yet it looks rusted and ready to fall apart at a moment's notice.

Shows on the other end of the SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty treat the future as a place where blue-collar workers make a living doing unglamorous jobs and where spaceships look dirty, dingy, and used, like heavy equipment that one might find at a lonely truck stop in the middle of the night right now. The ships are old junk heaps run on a shoestring by hard-bitten characters on the edge, seemingly held together with two pieces of string, chewing gum, and the will of God — the SF equivalent of the struggling FilmNoir private eye, in other words. This is the Used Future, and it's home to {{Space Trucker}}s, renegades, regular working stiffs, and anyone on the "cynical" end of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism. Think of it as DieselPunk [[AC:InSpace!]]

* ''Literature/TheCityOfEmber'' portrayed a city driven by a huge dilapidated generator that was well beyond its expected life and the impending failure of the generator drives the events of the plot.

* The ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' universe from Creator/AlastairReynolds. The first ship described is about 3-4 kilometers long and has ''5 people'' running it. Vast swathes of it are described as "flooded with coolant...others were infested with rogue janitor-rats...patrolled by defense drogues which had gone berserk...filled with toxic gas, or vacuum, or too much high-rad." Amazingly, ''it gets worse''. A few stories take place during the earlier "Belle Epoque" age when everything was shiny, back when the Rust Belt around Yellowstone was known as the Glitter Band. Then a nanotech virus called [[BodyHorror The Melding Plague]] arrived and ruined everything.

Interestingly, portraying this in CG effects is actually more difficult, but sometimes the audience won't accept things [[DirtForcefield not looking dirty enough]]. Which can be ironic because many spaceship exteriors are actually perpetually shiny in real life (due to the scarcity of dirt, grime and oxidizing agents in space) — unless they have to endure high-velocity atmospheric reentry.

Contrast ShinyLookingSpaceships, CrystalSpiresAndTogas, and EverythingIsAnIpodInTheFuture.

* The Harry Canyon segment of the film ''WesternAnimation/HeavyMetal''.
* Downplayed compared to the [[Literature/TheVoyageOfAlice book]], but still present in ''Animation/TheMysteryOfTheThirdPlanet'', despite being set in a bright Communist future. In the first scene with the starship the cargo lift is misbehaving, throwing containers back at loading robots. TheEeyore captain keeps saying "The ''Pegasus'' will never take off" (the film doesn't mention the starship is an obsolete courier saved from the scrapyard by leasing it to the zoo). When Alice and her father are first attacked by pirate robots, the captain can't help them, because he is [[PlotDrivenBreakdown busy fixing the hovercraft]]. And every time the heroes capture enemy robots, the captain plans disassembling them for spare parts.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** Every ship is covered with dings and scratches and epitomized by the ''Millennium Falcon'', which looks like it is almost [[WhatAPieceOfJunk ready to fall apart]]. This extends to the sound design as well; apparently Creator/GeorgeLucas's instructions were that he wanted to hear every loose bolt in the engines. That said, the ships used by the Empire often look a bit more swish. It helps that the Rebel ships are held together with space duct tape and [[BackgroundMagicField the Force]], while the Galactic Empire has the full might of... a galactic empire behind its military. The Rebels are still able to gain access to really formidable ships that can rival the Empire's Star Destroyers, thanks to the support of many worlds who are also against the Empire, such as the Mon Calamari Cruisers, but most of their smaller vessels and fighters are obsolete or cast-off craft that no other galactic navy wanted.
** The original movie uses this trope to demonstrate what a dirt-poor backwater Tatooine is. Starting in orbit aboard the clean Alderaanian corvette and the utilitarian star destroyer that invokes [[PuttingOnTheReich Germanic efficiency]], the story moves to the surface, where Jawas roam the desert in a ramshackle sandcrawler to sell stolen hardware to farmers who literally live in a hole in the ground. While the embarked Stormtroopers are clad in pristine white armor, those on the ground are shown to be as dirty and sand-blasted as the peasants they oppress.
** While Imperial ships are newer, and their capital ships have more powerful weapons than those available to the Rebels, the Imperial design is extremely utilitarian, particularly in their fighters and strike craft. By contrast, most Rebel fighters are equipped with some form of bomb or torpedo, shield-generators, and hyperdrives to make them durable, versatile, and self-sufficient. The Empire's TIE models have none of these, as [[WeHaveReserves pilots are expendable]] as far as the Empire is concerned and it is cheaper to just quickly restock the losses than design something with more survivability.
** In the prequels, most of the early tech look aesthetic and function well, but when the Empire takes over all of it is redesigned to follow the Empire's standards.
** A notable exception to the Rebels' rule of cast-off fighters is the X-wing; the fighter's company Incom originally designed it for the Empire as a state-of-the-art fighter, but the ''entire design team'' defected to the Rebel Alliance, and brought the X-wing along with them. As a result, the X-wing is used almost exclusively by the Rebels. While it isn't the most modern fighter on the block, it's still more than enough to go up against the Empire's [=TIEs=].
* The ''Nostromo'' in ''Film/{{Alien}}'' takes the worn, lived-in aesthetic from ''Star Wars'' and adds on a thick layer of industrial grime. This even extends to the occupation of the protagonists--they're ''[[SpaceTrucker truck drivers]]'', hardly a glamorous job.

* In ''Film/TheAmericanAstronaut'', the space is pretty much dominated by roughnecks and manual laborers.

* While the ''Discovery'' itself is [[ShinyLookingSpaceships bright and clean]] in ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', in the sequel ''[[Film/TwoThousandTenTheYearWeMakeContact 2010]]'' it's decidedly less so, with dust having collected on it thanks to hanging in orbit around Io for 9 years without any humans to maintain it. The ''Alexi Leonov'' doesn't look particularly shiny, either. It's interesting to note that the Leonov is brand new -- it was built specifically to recover ''Discovery'' after contact was lost. Then again, it's also designed to survive aerobraking.
** Creator/AndreiTarkovsky did not like the clean look of ''2001'' and made ''Film/{{Solaris}}'' in 1972 partially as a response. The space station in that movie is made intentionally to look broken down and features loose wires that often shoot sparks, trashed rooms, and bare bulbs.

* In a weird example of people expecting spaceships to look like this, the visual effects people who made ''Film/{{Apollo 13}}'' said they had to make the Saturn V rocket look dirtier than it actually was at liftoff, just because people [[TheCoconutEffect wanted it that way]].
* ''Film/KinDzaDza'', 1986 Soviet CultClassic sci-fi dystopian comedy.
* ''Film/PacificRim'' has shades of it. Computers are holographic but they need huge tapes/disks for information, Jaegers are often rusty and dented and society is on the verge of collapsing with ration for work programs.
** Cherno Alpha embodies this trope the best, being the oldest working jaeger (and boy does it show among the newer, shinier ones).
** The fact that the Jaeger's opponents, the Kaiju, did not have anything like scars or wounds from Kaiju on Kaiju action was intended to serve as a hint to their [[TheReveal true nature.]]
* All the alien technology in ''Film/{{District 9}}'' looks quite used and gritty. The spaceship is itself a wreck that barely managed to reach Earth rather than falling apart into oblivion. The whole point of the movie is to portrait an [[FantasticRacism Apartheid-like regime]].
* In ''Film/FileUnderMiscellaneous'', the setting is an extremely dirty urban area.
* The film based on ''Literature/LilacSphere'' has a GenerationShip (with all its crew long dead from HatePlague) that's been in space around 40 000 years. Its hull looks like a sponge and lights don't work, but the air is still breathable. However, the ''Pegasus'' is more of a CoolStarship in the film, unlike in its animated spiritual predecessor (see the entry for Animation above).

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* In Webcomic/{{Runners}} the usedness varies from "well-lived in" to [[IronicName Free]] [[WretchedHive Kespa]].
* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' plays this [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-04-27 now]] and [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-01-09 then]]

On the other hand, some ship use a layered-ablative-standoff-armor setup like the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield Whipple Shield]] which takes advantage of the tendency of small objects moving at comically-high speeds to shatter on impact, and lets the first armor layer shatter the junk (which makes a very tidy hole through the outer layer), and the second layer absorbs the (much less dangerous) spray of components without having any holes in it. This would have a scarred and pitted look after a while, and if the ship's owner didn't have money to replace sections of the shield as necessary, it could be this trope to a T.

On the other hand, ships using a layered-ablative-standoff-armor setup like the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield Whipple Shield]] which takes advantage of the tendency of small objects moving at comically-high speeds to shatter on impact, and lets the first armor layer shatter the junk (which makes a very tidy hole through the outer layer), and the second layer absorbs the (much less dangerous) spray of components without having any holes in it. This would have a scarred and pitted look after a while, and if the ship's owner didn't have money to replace sections of the shield as necessary, it could be this trope to a T.

On the other hand ships using a layered-ablative-standoff-armor setup like the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield Whipple Shield]] which takes advantage of the tendency of small objects moving at comically-high speeds to shatter on impact, and lets the first armor layer shatter the junk (which makes a very tidy hole through the outer layer), and the second layer absorbs the (much less dangerous) spray of components without having any holes in it. This would have a scarred and pitted look after a while, and if the ship's owner didn't have money to replace sections of the shield as necessary, it could be this trope to a T.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'', with giant robots.

[[folder:Films — Animated]]

* Every ship in ''Franchise/StarWars'' is covered with dings and scratches and epitomized by the ''Millennium Falcon'', which looks like it is almost [[WhatAPieceOfJunk ready to fall apart]]. This extends to the sound design as well; apparently Creator/GeorgeLucas' instructions were that he wanted to hear every loose bolt in the engines. That said, the ships used by the Empire often look a bit more swish. It helps that the Rebel ships are held together with space duct tape and [[BackgroundMagicField the Force]], while the Galactic Empire has the full might of...a galactic empire behind its military. The Rebels are still able to gain access to real formidable ships that can rival the Empire's Star Destroyers, thanks to the support of many worlds who are also against the Empire, such as the Mon Calamari Cruisers, but most of their smaller vessels and fighters are obsolete or cast-off craft that no other galactic navy wanted.

** While Imperial ships are newer, and their capital ships have more powerful weapons than those available to the Rebels, the Imperial design is extremely utilitarian, particularly in their fighters and strike craft. By contrast, most Rebel fighters are equipped with some form of bomb or torpedo, shield-generators, and hyperdrives to make them durable, versatile, and self-sufficient. The Empire's TIE models have none of these, as [[WeHaveReserves pilots are expendable]] as far as the Empire is concerned and it was cheaper to just quickly restock the losses than design something with more survivability.
** In the prequels, most of the early tech look aesthetic and functioned well, but when the Empire took over all of it was now redesigned to follow the Empire's standards.

-->'''Dark Helmet''': Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' is very fond of juxtaposing the dreams of the 50's and 60's (especially the projects of Jonas Venture Sr.) with the ruins that they became in the present.

* While technically not the future, the Space Shuttles were still very high tech and futuristic looking vehicles during their lifetimes. Despite this however the Space Shuttles apparently [[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39872790/ns/technology_and_science-space/ got quite dirty and banged up.]] And a credit to NASA's engineers as well. Most equipment built ''now'' wouldn't survive half of what those babies can.
** [[FunnyAneurysmMoment Two of them didn't.]] Reportedly some expert warned NASA that the chances of a shuttle being destroyed in flight were 1 in 50 [[note]] This "some expert" was none other than [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman Richard Feynman]], while NASA engineers estimated the potential failure rate of the Space Shuttle at 1 in 200, and ExecutiveMeddling from [[ObstructiveBureaucrat NASA administrators]] led to a publicized failure rate estimate of 1 in 100,000.[[/note]]. There were 135 flights, and 2 shuttles destroyed with all crew lost.
** In light of that second failure, earlier Shuttle flights were looked at again and reassessed for risk. It was estimated that early flights should have failed about 1 in 10 times, and the likelihood of staving off failure until Challenger was just 6%!
* The International Space Station (and other modern space stations) tend towards a bleached version of this rather than the I-pod like designs one'd expect, with exposed wires all over the place, and it's for the large part, cramped and many fixes are standard "Duct tape and Hope", as getting spare parts involves putting them into orbit.
* Compare what people in the 1950's [[IWantMyJetpack thought today would look like to what actually exists]]... It's a lot dirtier and less planned than they thought, not to mention the lack of flying cars and the like.

* Anyone who has been to CERN in Switzerland can attest that it feels like this trope - instead of being a shiny place for high-tech physics research, it is better described as 'urban decay and sprawl', 'general disorganized clutter', and 'mostly abandoned offices'. It's been around since the 50s, after all.
** That said, some of the newer buildings are shinier.
** Any actually ''working'' laboratory (not the unused showpieces) looks like this. It might be spotless clean (where it's required by the needs of the experiment), but it ''will'' look like "general disorganized clutter", because the main reason for a lab's existence is for people to ''tinker'' with stuff, not organize it neatly.

Don't worry, she'll hold together!.... [--you hear me, baby, hold together.--]