Key works in lunar cultural heritage: the essential reading list for Apollo 11's 50th anniversary

If you are interested in the issues around managing the cultural heritage values of archaeological sites located on the Moon, these are the key works that you need to read. A bibliography of the broader field of space archaeology and heritage can be found here.

Capelotti, P.J. 2010 The human archaeology of space: lunar, planetary and interstellar relics of exploration. Jefferson NC: McFarland and Company Inc

Capelotti, P.J. 2009 The culture of Apollo: a catalogue of manned exploration of the moon. In Ann Darrin and Beth O'Leary (eds) The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage pp 421-441 Boca Raton: CRC Press

Darrin, Ann and Beth O'Leary (eds) 2009 The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage. Boca Raton: CRC Press

Donaldson, Milford Wayne 2015 The preservation of California's military Cold War and space exploration era resources. In B.L. O'Leary and P.J. Capelotti (eds), Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space, pp. 91-110. Heidelberg: Springer.

Fewer, Greg 2002 Towards an LSMR and MSMR (Lunar and Martian Sites and Monuments Records): Recording the planetary spacecraft landing sites as archaeological monuments of the future. In Miles Russell (ed) Digging Holes in Popular Culture. Archaeology and Science Fiction, pp 112-172 Oxford: Oxbow Books

Gibson, R. 2001 Lunar archaeology: the application of federal historic preservation law to the site where humans first set foot upon the Moon. Unpublished Masters thesis, Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces

Gold, R. 2009 Spacecraft and objects left on planetary surfaces. In Ann Darrin and Beth O'Leary (eds) The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage, pp 399-419 Boca Raton: CRC Press

Gorman, A.C. and Beth Laura O'Leary 2013 The archaeology of space exploration. In Paul Graves-Brown, Rodney Harrison and Angela Piccini (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, pp 409-424. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Gorman, A.C 2019 Dr Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future. Sydney: New South Books

Gorman, A.C. 2016 Culture on the Moon: bodies in time and space. Archaeologies, 12(1) pp. 110-128.

Gorman, A. 2014 The Anthropocene in the Solar System. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 1(1) pp. 89-93.

Gorman, A.C. 2013 Look, but don’t touch: US law and the protection of lunar heritage. The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/look-but-dont-touch-us-law-and-the-protection-of-lunar-heritage-20758

Hertzfeld, Henry R. and Scott N. Pace 2013 International Cooperation on Human Lunar Heritage. Science, 29 November, 342(6162): 1049-1050

Lunar Legacy Project, New Mexico State University. http://spacegrant.nmsu.edu/lunarlegacies

NASA 2011 NASA’s Recommendations to Space-Faring Entities: How to Protect and Preserve the Historic and Scientific Value of US Government Artefacts. Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, Strategic Analysis and Integration Division, NASA https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/library/reports/lunar-artifacts.html

O'Leary, B.L. and P.J. Capelotti (eds) 2015 Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space. Heidelberg: Springer.

O’Leary, B.L., Bliss, S., Debry, R., Gibson, R., Punke, M., Sam, D., Slocum, R., Vela, J., Versluis, J. and Westwood, L. 2010 The artifacts and structures at Tranquility Base nomination to New Mexico state register of cultural properties. Accepted by unanimous vote by the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee on 10 April 2010

O'Leary, Beth Laura 2015 'To boldly go where no man [sic] has gone before': approaches in space archaeology and heritage. In B.L. O'Leary and P.J. Capelotti (eds) Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space, pp 1-12 Heidelberg: Springer.

O'Leary, B.L. 2009 One giant leap: preserving cultural resources on the moon. In Ann Darrin and Beth O'Leary (eds) The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage pp 757-780.Boca Raton: CRC Press

O'Leary, B.L. 2009 Evolution of space archaeology and heritage. In Ann Darrin and Beth O'Leary (eds) The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage pp 29-47 Boca Raton: CRC Press

O'Leary, B.L. 2009 Historic preservation at the edge: archaeology on the moon, in space and on other celestial bodies. Historic Environment 22(1): 13-18

Reynolds, Joseph 2015 Legal Implications of protecting historic sites in space. In B.L. O'Leary and P.J. Capelotti (eds), Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space, pp. 111-129. Heidelberg: Springer.

Rogers, T.F. 2004 Safeguarding Tranquillity Base: why the Earth's Moon base should become a World Heritage Site. Space Policy 20(1): 5-6

Spennemann, Dirk HR and Guy Murphy 2011 [2020] Returning to the Moon Heritage issues raised by the Google Lunar X Prize. Institute for Land, Water and Society Report nº 137. Albury, NSW: Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University.

Spennemann, Dirk H.R. 2006 Out of this world: issues of managing tourism and humanity's heritage on the Moon. International Journal of Heritage Studies 12(4):356-371

Spennemann, D.H.R. 2007 Extreme cultural tourism from Antarctica to the Moon. Annals of Tourism Research 34(4):898-918

Spennemann, D.H. R. 2004 The ethics of treading on Neil Armstrong's footsteps. Space Policy 20(4): 279-290

Walsh, J. 2012 Protection of humanity's cultural and historic heritage in space. Space Policy 28(4):234-243 

Westwood, Lisa D 2015 Historic preservation on the fringe: a human lunar exploration heritage cultural landscape. In B.L. O'Leary and P.J. Capelotti (eds), Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space, pp. 131-155. Heidelberg: Springer.

Westwood, L. and B. O'Leary 2012 The archaeology of Tranquility Base. Space Times Magazine 4(51)

Westwood, L., Beth Laura O'Leary and Milford Wayne Donaldson  2017 The Final Mission: Preserving NASA's Apollo Sites. Gainesville: University Press of Florida

Westwood, L., G. Gibson, B. O’Leary, and J. Versluis 2010 Nomination of the Objects associated with Tranquility Base to the California State Historical Resources Commission. Accepted by unanimous vote to the California State Register of Historical Resources on 30 January 2010

Space Age Suds: women, washing machines and the astronautics of everyday life

'Space Age Suds' is a charming and slightly alarming little vignette which is about the seeping of the Space Age into domestic life, machines and technology and how they structure social relationships, and gender roles in the Space Age. It's meant to be humorous, of course, but there is so much going on here!

The author isn't just anyone - it's beloved South Australian writer and journalist Max Fatchen. I found the article on Trove and now can't relocate it, but it seems likely it was published in the Advertiser, Adelaide's daily broadsheet. The date is a bit uncertain but it's clearly Apollo era.

I like that the Space Age reverses gender roles and that by the analogy of the washing machine with the space capsule, the wife is accorded the power of technology. After some searching I was able to find her first name but not her original surname, so we will have to call her Jean Fatchen here.

Because the image is a little fuzzy, here is the text.

Space Age Suds: the script

So the Russians are developing a low-orbital bomb. Well, it's just one more complicated space-age development, like our washing machine.

Our washing machine has a shape like a capsule and it is computer programmed and uncanny.

I was never much of a one with technology, and as a member of the avant garde laundry set, I'm all washed up.

There's no longer the simple meshing of gears as with our old washing machine. The cheerful days when I got my tie caught in the wrangler are past.

Our washing machine is automated in a cold, impersonal way, and my wife now calls herself a laundry technician.

She subscribes to advanced scientific journals, keeps up with the Apollo space project and runs off at the mouth on everything from transistors to laser beams.

I have been given the title of junior wash and garment line adherer, which means I hang out the clothes. I suppose I should be grateful.

Yet I dread washing mornings. I belong to a generation of boiling coppers and copper sticks, the hot sudsy smell of saturated sheets, and of bars of yellowed soap.

Now there's an air of bristling technology in the laundry, with split-second timing and ruthless efficiency.

"Load", my wife rasps. I stuff the clothes into the washing machine.

She consults her watch. "Four minutes to wash off," she says.

She looks at the console. "Close hatch," she orders. I shut the washing machine. She begins the countdown, "Five.....four.....three..."

"Look, dear," I interrupt, "I've forgotten a couple of my shirts...."

"Clear the complex", she says icily. "Two.....one.....". She throws a switch.

I humbly take up my position.

"Motor running", I report.

Strange, uncanny sounds come from the interior of the machine.

'Hot water entering,' I chant, consulting my check sheet.

"All systems are go," says my wife.

I sit back and light a cigarette with clammy hands.

Time goes by. The washing machine murmurs, thumps, sighs and gurgles. Its programme goes its relentless way.

"Check machine and report," rasps my wife from the kitchen.

"Machine on course, entering spin-dry period," I say.

"Check systems," she says.

"Check, check, check," I cry. "Hoses running. Pump stops ... four...three...two ....one...NOW."

"Clothes touch down, five minutes," says my wife. "Stand by."

"Machine spinning," I cry.

"Fire retro-rockets," she says absentmindedly.

At last the machine is silent.

My wife climbs to her feet.

"Open hatch!" she orders. "Alert clothes waggon".

She begins unloading the washing machine.

She lets out a shriek. "These clothes still look dirty".

"You didn't," she says, "put in the washing powder, did you?".

"Well," I bluster, insubordinate and defiant to the last, "this machine is supposed to think of everything. If it hasn't enough brains to use washing powder....."

"That's all," she snaps. "We'll have to do another orbit. Get the powder".

No, I haven't been on the moon but there are times when it sounds attractive!

Exegesis

So much to say about this little piece! I'm only going to scratch the surface here.

There's the idea that the Space Age changes how we do small domestic things on Earth: more like machines than messy humans. Both the wife and the washing machine are now operating as Space Age robots (it's a little bit Stepford Wives-ish tbh). It shows how the public interpreted the machine-human interfaces of space technology, down to checklists just like those that the Apollo astronauts used. It's also very cybernetic, getting status updates and adjusting the conditions.

The washing machine drum is a little gravity machine in itself, spinning like a space station or a centrifuge such those astronauts train in. Front loading washing machines with a glass porthole resemble spaceships too. 

The countdown has permeated into the domestic level: precision timing is the key to Space Age efficiency. As a domestic astronaut in her small domain, Jean has assumed power: she commands and Max obeys. She is a robot herself, icy and distant, intolerant of human foibles like forgetting a few shirts - and also the washing powder. (Thanks a bunch, Max. I would have been far more annoyed were I Jean).

The irony is that the power of astronaut Jean is illusory. While Max is pretending to help, he's actually demonstrating a typical trope of the inept male. He boasts about hanging out the clothes, but in this scenario, he forgets the washing powder and sits about smoking a casual ciggie (as people did in those days) while Jean multitasks, back in the kitchen. He finishes with that golden oldie, the nagging wife. It's a perfect illustration of the separate gender spheres of the 1960s, when women were excluded from being astronauts in the US.

'Fire retro rockets,' Jean says, absentmindedly. Doesn't this seem at odds with the ruthless robot housewife, all hard, streamlined efficiency? It took me a few reads before I realised what the subtle Max was implying with this sentence. She is absent-minded and talking about retro-rockets - which the washing machine does not have - because she is dreaming. Standing in her apron at the kitchen sink washing the breakfast dishes, while Max lounges around in the laundry, she is an astronaut. She is in command of a space mission, brave and true. The washing machine is as close as she can come to realising this dream. It makes me feel a little sad.

Once upon a time in France (well probably about 2005), I saw a washing machine advertisement in which a rather attractive nude man crouched in front of the washing machine's porthole, presumably waiting for the spin cycle to finish. The caption read 'One small step for man, one giant leap for women' or something to that effect in French: the idea was that is was a bloody big leap to get a bloke to do any housework, so nude dude's efforts at laundry were going to emancipate women and allow them to leave the house, even go to space! In effect, the effort involved in getting a man to do the laundry was equivalent to landing on the moon!

Gallery of Space Age Suds

As it turns out, there are quite a few connections between washing machines and the Space Age. Here's a small sample.

A space-age shop front in Sheffield, UK. Used with permission, from
https://shopfrontsofsheffield.com/2013/09/30/apollo-appliances-ltd-12-meadowhead/

Look at those rocket portholes lined up outside this charming shop!

https://www.doorsteps.com/search/carson-city_nv?property_id=1004635807

A rental property in Carson City, NV, USA, was advertised with a Space Age Laundry!

From Freaking News,
http://www.freakingnews.com/Tom-Hanks-in-Washing-Machine-Spaceship-Pictures-110109.asp

This is a reference to the Apollo 13 mission.

Source: unknown

This advertisement from 1900 explicitly references the gravity of spinning.


















I'm sure I could find many more examples if I kept searching. Le me know if you find any!

And I'd like to finish by saluting astronaut Jean Fatchen. Here she is with Max in 2004.

Jean, with Max. Picture: Grant NowellSource:adelaidenow

Flying dreams and the human relationship to gravity

From time to time, I have flying dreams. Standing on my feet, just a tiny movement will launch me into the air, and I go soaring above the ground with my arms outstretched, as effortlessly as a bird, delighting in the freedom.

When I think about these dreams, they have certain elements in common. It's always sunny with a blue, blue sky - maybe a couple of white fluffy clouds. There is green, even grass below me. The ground is flat or gently undulating at most. There's always a house. Not a familiar house, more like a greeting-card house or a children's book illustration. There are no houses nearby, just the house on a wide green lawn. I fly above the house at a certain height. I can see trees and often there's a Hills Hoist clothesline in the garden. No fences, though. It's much lower than aeroplane height, and the view is always of the immediate environment of the house.

It's a domestic dream, and perhaps a child's dream, when your whole world revolves around the house and the extent of space is a concept you've yet to fully grasp.

When I wake up from a flying dream, I often still feel the lack of gravity. The sensation that I can just will myself into the air and fly stays with me until I put my feet on the ground and realise how heavy I am, and how adhesive gravity is. I feel intense sadness at this moment. Being heavy seems such a burden. After a few steps, the residues of the dream evaporate and I'm fully awake.

Thinking about these dreams has led me to a curious thought. What if they are part of a pre-adaptation to space?

Now it's true that the human body is not well adapted to microgravity, and we know a fair bit about this because of astronauts' experience in Earth-orbiting space stations. Blood pools in the upper body, muscles atrophy, bones lose their calcium and weaken. We probably don't really know enough yet about the long term health affects of living in space either - a year is a long, long time in space, and only a few people have spent that long up there.

Despite this, humans seem to have an urge to defy gravity, whether it's aeroplanes or rockets. This starts very early. Remember how you loved being thrown up in the air and caught when you were a little kid, and how it made you laugh? The thrilling sensation of a centrifuge, when an adult or older child held your hands and swung you around in a circle? And just how much fun swings in the local park were? Even little tiny babies love these things.

Swimming is fun because we can also defy gravity in water, moving in any direction we want with a twist and flap. In the water, our feet are not stuck to the clay of the Earth. There's nothing beneath them and our personal space expands to a sphere rather than a dome. It's just a shame that water exerts a drag that's absent in the air. Also, there are things that can bite you in water.

My desire to fly doesn't mean I'm drawn to sky-diving, or hang gliding, because that's not what this is about. It's about flight being in one's body, not a result of technology.

Having said that, I also have a slightly concerning desire to throw myself off heights just to experience the exhilaration of falling through the air. Maybe this is like Douglas Adams' 'learning to throw yourself at the ground and and miss'. I'm not afraid of heights, just afraid that if there isn't a barrier, the compulsion might become too great to resist. My lack of fear frightens me because I know logically that hitting the hard ground at acceleration is not going to have a good outcome.

I've learnt that this is called the High Place Phenomenon. One person described it thus: 'It was the opposite of vertigo. It was the urge to fly'.

I wonder how old this urge is, and if the much-vaunted 'urge to explore', when applied to space, is really just the echo of a flying dream.

Collage by Pilar Zeta.
http://www.emptykingdom.com/featured/pilar-zeta/

Historic images of the Earth from space - how the view from the Tesla Roadster compares.

On February 6th 2018, Elon Musk launched his own personal midnight cherry Tesla Roadster into space on a test Falcon Heavy rocket. The car went sailing away from Earth with a mannequin in a spacesuit, a copy of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series on a disc, a Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy Don't Panic sign, and a plaque engraved with 6000 names of SpaceX employees. There may have been some other things, but finding a reliable source is harder than you'd think.

Now that the dust is starting to settle, I want to think about something else - some of the iconic, world-changing images of the Earth from outside, and the addition of this new one seen from the front seat of a car.

Here they are:

Apollo 8, 1968

Image credit: NASA

Apollo 17, 1972

Image credit: NASA

International Space Station, 2011

The Cupola on the ISS, 2014

Image credit: NASA

Tesla Roadster, 2018

Image credit: SpaceX

This is something that I'll have to think a lot more about, but here are a few initial impressions. 

Early conceptualisations of what the Earth looked like from outside tended to be greyscale: it was assumed that the blue sky would only appear so from the surface of the Earth (due to Rayleigh scattering). The blueness of the Earth was a surprise that came with the first human spaceflight missions. It was translated into the blue marble, and the pale blue dot, in a colour scheme including white, black, and muted tones. 

Another factor is the presence or absence of the photographer. In the Apollo 8 and 17 images, there's no hint of them. Their absence accentuates a separation of the natural and cultural, setting the human observers apart from the world they're capturing on film. In the case of the whole ISS, the image is taken by a service vessel approaching or departing. We still don't see the photographer.

So many images of the ISS show the space station in relation to the partially curved Earth. Space is closer to us, with people living just a few hundred kilometres above our heads. Then we get the astronaut's eye view, as if we are telepresencing from inside their bodies. These shots are often taken from the Cupola, and often there are people in them. It's a more intimate relationship to the Earth, but it's always looking down. We have a more integrated view of the interconnectedness of Earth and space.

So what about the Tesla Roadster? The addition of the red colour against the blue and white is striking. The effect is almost cartoon-like. 

The other big contrast is how dominant the human presence is - and it's not even human! The Earth is only a backdrop: we're meant to focus on the car in the foreground. I don't know where the camera filming was (this is a still from the video), but we have both a hidden observer and a portrait of the Starman. (We can't see the rocket body which is apparently still attached).

While the other images are related to sensibilities of the Earth's fragility, environmental awareness, the erasure of national borders and the insignificance of Earthly conflicts and struggles (aspects of the Overview Effect), I don't think this is what is going on here.

The faceless driver is not even looking at the Earth. They're focused on leaving. 

I think this is a radical paradigm shift. I don't fully understand what it means yet, but I'm pretty sure others are going to start analysing this as we get further away from the event. 

Apollo 8: the shadow diaries

Mapping the shadows

Shadows on the Moon have many scientific implications, from temperature to the electrostatic properties of lunar dust. I'm more interested in the cultural and social aspects of lunar shadows, however, while noting that the lines are often blurred between these distinctions.

I've considered shadows as part of the fabric of the Apollo landing sites. In another post I looked at Apollo mission photographs in which the photographer is present only as a shadow. Here, I'm thinking about shadows cast by 'natural' features; light, perspective, and movement. 

This is a series of images taken by the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. (All these images are from the NASA archives). Apollo 8 was the first US human spaceflight mission to orbit the Moon. People usually remember this mission for the famous snap of Earthrise, claimed to be one of the most influential images of all time.

Over 20 hours, the Apollo 8 spacecraft with its three crew orbited the Moon 10 times. The aim was to map the lunar surface, supplementing data from the Lunar Orbiter in 1964. 

This wasn't all, though. The crew were scoping out possible future landing sites, and shadows were a factor. A little way into their sixth orbit, one of the astronauts says:

The sun angles that we see now from the first IP, second IP, and P 1 are just right, I think, for landing conditions. The shadows aren't too deep for you to get confused, but the land is - has texture to it, and there are enough shadows to make everything stand out.

Not too much shadow, but not too little either. So now let's look at the shadows as seen by Apollo 8.

A shadow sequence

I've chosen these images from different points in the magazine 17C roll to show how shadows change as the spacecraft flew over the surface from lunar day to lunar night. 

Figure 1: AS08-17-2813

The surface of the Moon is a bright mirror against the black of space (Figure 1).

Figure 2: AS08-17-2761

With a different camera angle, the brightness fills the entire screen. We can see even brighter white markings (Figure 2). If you didn't know this was the moon, it could almost be the surface of a stone tool under a Scanning Electron Microscope, the changes in colour representing incipient fractures too small for the naked eye to detect.

As the Apollo 8 spacecraft injected itself into lunar orbit and prepared to take the first photographs, the astronauts commented on the lack of shadows.

Figure 3: AS08-17-2704

The details start to be resolved. It's no longer a flat surface with markings or fissures; it's a raised surface where faint shadows give it depth and texture (Figure 3).

Here, we're moving away from the subsolar point where the sun is overhead. The angle of light does not produce shadows, much as on Earth.

Figure 4: AS08-17-2686

Now we see more detail, and gradations of shadows, as the Apollo craft heads towards the terminator. The craters look like footprints in deep sand interspersed with those of smaller animals and worms, such as you might see on the surface of a beach still wet from the retreating water of the tide. In fact, astronaut Jim Lovell compared the texture of the surface to greyish beach sand.

In each major depression there are two or three shades of shadow, with the deepest black on the left hand edge.

Figure 5: AS08-17-2674

The shadows are deeper and darker as Apollo 8 approaches the evening side of the Moon. They convey a sense of late afternoon with an oblique sun. At the base of the craters, the shadows are deep black and even a little sinister (Figure 5). There are surfaces on the Moon that are permanently shadowed, never exposed to sunlight.

Figure 6: AS08-17-2664

The proportion of light and dark is now starting to reverse. The shadows are taking over the craters, leaving a miniature new moon sliver of brightness on the right side (Figure 6). These are deep holes, perhaps the lair of a lunar worm waiting to propel itself towards the spacecraft with a snap and swallow it whole.

Figure 7: AS08-17-2660

It is night on the Moon and all lies in shadow. Only the rim of the craters catch residual sunlight - or is it Earthlight?

During the voyage, Bill Anders said 'There's not as much detail, of course, as in the sunlight, but you can see the - the large craters quite distinctly, and you can see the albedo contacts quite distinctly. And also, the - there's a good three-dimensional view of the rims of the large craters'.

In the debrief following their return Anders commented that 'night landing or landing on the moon in an earthshine condition would be acceptable from a visibility standpoint'.



Anders raised another interesting point in the official debrief:

I thought that the shadows were not nearly as black as there [sic] appeared to be in the simulations that I've seen on earth, particularly the Boeing simulation. We could even see the features that were on the shadowside of some rills and rims. So, although it's dark, it's not a complete black and white situation. 

Naturally I'm taken with the concept of the shadow simulation. These would have used images from the Lunar Orbiter, which was orbiting at a higher altitude. 

Shadow [moon] lander

So what's my point? These are so different to the shadows cast by the accoutrements of robotic and human landing missions on the Moon. All the ones I've shown here have a circular geometry, and they're mostly about 'bumps and holes', as one of the astronauts said (from the transcripts it's sometimes hard to tell who said what). There's a peculiar feature of these bumps and holes which is shared with microscope views: sometimes it's hard to tell which one it is. Depressions and hollows can look like hills and protruberances, and you have to 'get your eye in' to see them properly. It's a sort of optical illusion, I guess, but one in which the shadows are critical.

Most of the cultural shadows on the Moon are cast by objects resting on the surface rather than depressions into the surface (although there are some of those too). They're frequently angular or linear. More recently, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has used these shadows to identify features of the Apollo sites.

Shadows are a critical feature of the visual experience of the Moon, at least for the astronaut. I'm not sure whether we can see lunar shadows from the Earth with the naked eye, though. Light and dark areas are caused by the reflectance properties of different geologies (selenologies?), known as albedo features. I don't think we can see the movement of shadows as the light of the sun or the phases of the moon change. With a telescope, though, it's different. The elongation of shadows near the terminator can be seen and photographed. 

There's something about scale and distance here, and about technology and vision. I guess what I really want to say is that shadows aren't incidental to our experience of the Moon. They're signs that we can read, and translate into science, and into poetry too.

Numinous


A patch of the Moon
flanked by shadows: trembling sense
we shouldn’t be here.













Image and poem by @tychogirl

A gallery of shadow astronauts Part 1

For the last few years, I have been playing with the idea of shadows as part of a site's fabric. It's not just about the hard materials. It's about the soft, the fleeting, the ephemeral, and the symbolic: about the interplay of darkness and light, presence and absence, loneliness and companionship.

Apollo 11. Shadow: Neil Armstrong. NASA

Apollo 12. Shadow unknown. NASA

Apollo 12. Shadow: Pete Conrad. NASA

Apollo 14. Body + shadow: Alan Shepard. Shadow: Edgar Mitchell. NASA

Apollo 14. Astronaut shadow unknown. NASA

Apollo 15. Shadows: Dave Scott and Jim Irwin. NASA

In these images, I'm interested in the astronaut who is not in the picture, whose presence is revealed by their shadow. It's also about the insubstantial shadow in relation to the hard and solid objects. In the image immediately above, it looks like the shadow of Jim Irwin is attempting to capture the solid stick-insect shape of the tripod with a shadow net. 

There's a pattern of elongated legs. The bodies are distorted, and also cyborg: in the shadow, flesh and camera meld into one amorphous shape.

The photos are silent, although we do have a beepy staticky soundtrack to them in our heads, implanted by the Apollo 11 television footage. Somehow the shadows accentuate the silence.

I particularly like Pete Conrad's shadow cast in the crater as he stands on the edge looking down. The angle of his body makes the shadow appear as if in profile, creeping silently along a shadow ridge to what end we cannot know. It has a dream-like quality.

We could say that of all the shadows, perhaps. Were they not caught in the photograph like a fly in amber, they would have vanished without trace in seconds, as evanescent as the dream on waking.

The bright and hollow sky: a review of Passengers

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

I went to see the new science fiction film Passengers this week. This is the synopsis from the official web site:

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt star in an exciting action-thriller about two passengers who are on a 120-year journey to another planet when their hibernation pods wake them 90 years too early. Jim and Aurora are forced to unravel the mystery behind the malfunction as the ship teeters on the brink of collapse, with the lives of thousands of passengers in jeopardy.

The film has been controversial because

• Jim watches, cyberstalks and then wakes Aurora from hibernation, even though he knows it's wrong and
• the trailers conceal this 'plot twist', leading you to think that the two main characters were in it together by mutual choice or accident.

I was aware of the critiques of the film, but just wanted to see starships.

The starship Avalon. Avalon is the island where King Arthur sleeps, waiting to return. Credit: Sony Pictures

The ethics of choice

But, I'm sad to say, the film can't escape its rotten core.  The plot is divided into roughly three parts. In the first, the aim is to build sympathy for the character of Jim Preston, awake 90 years too early and destined to die alone on the colony ship. Then he starts becoming obsessed with the sleeping Aurora - and oh, I've just got that one, as Aurora is also the name of the Disney Sleeping Beauty, woken by a kiss from the prince - and despite knowing that waking her is condemning her to the death of his choosing, he decides to do it. 

Of course Aurora is beautiful, blonde, and eminently fuckable. This is what he chooses. I'm not the only person to reflect on a different choice - the computer Holly's selection of the obnoxious Rimmer as Lister's companion on board the mining ship Red Dwarf, after all the crew have perished. Holly does not bring back Lister's crush Kristine Kochanski (who didn't know he fancied her), but the person most likely to keep him sane. Lister has a similar unhealthy obsession with Kochanski, but at least he knew her in real life.

Aurora. Credit: Sony Pictures

The second part is when Aurora finds out what he's done and repudiates him. In typical stalker fashion, he's as incapable of recognising her agency and leaving her alone as he was when he formed his one-sided attachment to her. The situation seems irreparable. Now both of them will be alone on the huge ship, avoiding each other until, one presumes, death.

The accidentally woken Gus agrees with Aurora's assessment of murder, but in an action a billion women will recognise, minimises the seriousness of Jim's deed and brushes aside her claim because there are bigger problems. Now I'm not saying the imminent death of 5000 people isn't a bigger problem; it's rather the dismissive attitude that rankles. It's the beginning of the persuasion process to bring Aurora to heel.

To move things along, the ship starts to malfunction. This is a crisis manufactured (plot-wise) to allow Jim the opportunity to redeem himself and make himself worthy of her love by acting in a heroic manner. He has to offer to sacrifice himself to save the remaining 4997 souls aboard the ship. Now it's her turn to contemplate 90 years of solitude. She begs him not to do it, because, we are to understand, that little murder thing is just a minor obstacle in the way of true love. Is this supposed to be her equivalent moral dilemma?

Needless to say they save the ship and survive, living happily every after.

As many people have pointed out, there are numerous ways you could have still had a really gripping plot with all the suspense of the final race to save the ship, without Jim stealing Aurora's life. The heroics of the final scenes ring hollow when you realise their purpose is to provide a reason for her to stop hating him and allow him to "get the girl" in the end.

For my money, one of the most interesting aspects of the film is the character of Arthur the android bartender. Arthur clearly has the ability to develop and react to people and situations, learning over time. His dialogue is finely done, revealing the limitations of a personality run by algorithms. There is a black hole in some areas which correspond precisely to the points where a human has to make a moral decision, such as to lie or to do something that affects another person adversely. He can't advise Jim as he is unable to reconcile the unreconcilable opposites on the horns of the dilemma.

Arthur the Android Bartender. Arthur, hovering between life and death on the island of Avalon. Do I detect a theme here? Credit: Sony Pictures

Why do shopping malls and concourses all look the same?

There's many things to appreciate about the way technology and society have been imagined in this future world. Commentary on capitalism and class, automation and autonomy is minimal but illuminating. Like the best fantasy, the underlying logic and philosophy is just hinted at. We know that corporations rule; it is an uber-capitalist society, perhaps the end result of the present growth of the commercialisation of space. 

On board the ship, cabins and services appear to be strictly stratified by what level people have paid for. First class get fancy suites and crepes for breakfast; the hoi polloi get small cabins and generic coffee. Everyone comes together in the concourse and the dining rooms, though. There also appears to be no differentiation in the hibernation pods. Jim and Aurora come out of identical pods despite the fact that she's a first class passenger and he's a mechanic.

The concourse. Credit: Sony Pictures

The concourse looks every bit of the same non-place as an airport (Changi springs to mind). As in a casino, there are no windows to let you know what time of day it is; or in this case, to remind you that you're light years from a solid planetary surface. But you can see out of the spaceship, as there appear to be numerous viewing decks.

Does the overview effect exist when you can't see the Earth?

There are some just breathtaking views of outer space far, far from Earth. The infinity pool, where one end is enclosed in a transparent bubble so the swimmer appears to be swimming out into open space, is stunning. It's a simple but effective visual play on the concept of the infinitude of space.

What is also interesting is the human reactions to being in naked space. Jim and Aurora venture outside the spaceship suited up and safely tethered, looking into a limitless abyss filled with stars. The stars are unfamiliar - they are not the night sky of Earth, which is 36 light years or so behind them.

This is an experience we don't yet have on Earth. There is, in fact, no human experience of space which is not dominated by the Earth and moon. Sure, you can look away from the Earth, but astronauts are always situated in relation to it or within view of it, or in its gravity well. There are many accounts of the reaction known as the 'Overview Effect': a feeling of united humanity and the insignificance of petty terrestrial wars and politics when the whole fragile Earth is seen in perspective from outer space. Now I'm a bit skeptical of claims that this would be a universal human reaction (if only all humans had the opportunity to do it). But perhaps we need to understand the Overview Affect against something we can only imagine at this point, the feeling when the Earth is out of view - not even the pale blue dot, just absent.

Wouldn't you feel adrift, unmoored, with no way home? Wouldn't this inspire an existential terror that would threaten to overwhelm your very being?

I am a passenger
I stay under a glass
I look through my window so bright
I see the stars come out tonight
I see the bright and hollow sky

Iggy Pop, The Passenger

Do objects and people cast shadows inside the International Space Station?

Do astronauts cast shadows in space?

Astronaut Mike Hopkins casts a spoon shadow. Image courtesy of NASA.

I've been thinking about shadows a lot, and also space stations. This has involved reading about habitability studies, an area I started to investigate when I was writing about Skylab a few years ago. The point of this line of enquiry is whether shadows are considered when the interiors of space stations are designed. Perhaps they contribute to creating a feeling of homeliness. Perhaps a lack of shadows is something characterising a laboratory environment, or a solitary confinement cell, or a padded cell, and hence to be avoided. Astronauts are, after all, under constant surveillance. You can hide things in shadows. Things can hide themselves in shadows.

It's worth observing that a shadowless environment can occur when you have no light, or when you have too much light.

Part of the answer to this is how, when, where and with what the ISS is illuminated. It appears that the lighting at present is a combination of fluorescent and LED.  

A perusal of images of the interior shows that there are certainly shaded areas, and more highly illuminated areas. The restricted interior space, and the curvature will also have an impact on the appearance of shadows. Have a look at this one:

Image courtesy of NASA

Of course, when we see images of the inside, they are generally illuminated. But the space station is also darkened at 'night'.  Recently astronaut Alexander Gerst took a series of rather spooky pictures with the lights turned off. Clock this and tell me it doesn't send chills down your spine:

Image courtesy of NASA

Do you see that the helmets are hooded? Is this from fear of what you might see if you looked through the visor?

Perhaps illumination inside the ISS is designed to avoid the ever-present uncanny, always just out of sight, in another module, or outside the window....

Tsiolkovsky imagines the Earth seen from orbit in 1920

In 1920, the great Russian space visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published Outside the Earth, in which Galileo, Newton, Franklin, Helmholtz, Ivanov and Laplace build a rocket. Along with a crew of 16 men, their colleagues elect Newton, Laplace, Franklin and Ivanov as first cosmonauts, while they stay behind in the Himalayan castle the scientists had built as a retreat from the world. 

It's a charming conceit, which Tsiolkovsky uses as a didactic device to explore all kinds of practical aspects of human spaceflight. What makes it especially interesting, from my perspective, is that he also creates a phenomenology of space through translating science into the experience of a human body. This is a theme which permeates his work, and he's rather brilliant at it.

In the passage below, he describes the Earth as it appears from orbit. I'll remark upon a few points of interest when you've finished reading it.

The Earth, taken from TIROS-1 in 1960.
Image courtesy of NASA

Men at the other portholes saw the Earth at a distance of a thousand kilometres. They didn't realise at first that they were looking at the terrestrial globe. But then they began to recognise the familiar contours of lakes and islands and continents amidst patches of clouds. It was like a huge, distorted map of a hemisphere. In actual hemisphere maps, the edges are clear and their scale is double that of the central portion. Here the reverse was true: the edges were reduced radially and very vague.

"...The edges are uneven and in some places they're jagged because of the mountain peaks. Something like a mist lies further in from the edges and there are many elongated grey spots - clouds darkened by the thick layer of the atmosphere. The spots stretch around the Earth's circumference. The further they are from the edges the lighter and broader they seem, and toward the centre they're rounded or irregular in shape, not stretched out".

"....Gentlemen," Newton said, "our rocket is circling the Earth once every 100 minutes. The solar day lasts 67 minutes, and the night, 33 minutes. In 40 or 50 minutes we shall enter the Earth's shadow. the Sun will set almost instantaneously. We'll hardly see the moonlit Earth, but its edges will shine brightly with all the colours of the dawn. This light will be our substitute for moonlight.

I'm warning you in advance what to expect to prepare people whose nerves are not strong..."

Meanwhile the Earth continued to wane and at the terminator the oblique shadows of mountains and elevations grew longer and longer. The impression was as if the stars were falling to the jagged sunlit edges of the Earth in tens, hundreds and thousands, so large was the portion of the sky occupied by the Earth and so great was the number of stars that could be seen in the void....they could see cities, large villages, rivers more than 100 metres wide. Sometimes the land below assumed one colour, as if covered with snow, and it was difficult to see anything....

The sky was so tightly packed with stars that there was hardly an empty space left: a black sky powdered with silver stardust, with the exception of the so-called coal-sacks, which were as black and empty as viewed from the Earth.

Binary, ternary, multiple and vari-coloured stars could be seen everywhere. The moment of eclipse, or night, was approaching.

It takes a little while for the rocket crew to realise that they are even looking at the Earth. Tsiolkovsky notes the difference from the world as portrayed in maps, which are always projections which have to be distorted in various ways to accommodate the globe to two dimensions. To these cosmonauts, it is the world which seems distorted rather than the more familiar map projections.

For us, in nearly 2020, the image of the blue Earth is so entrenched in our collective consciousness that it comes as surprise to see this feature absent from Tsiolkovsky's vision. However, right up until the 1960s, many depictions of the Earth from the outside were in grey tones. Even when Major Tony Nelson and Jeannie went into space, the Earth was greyscale. This was partially because many of the images from early human spaceflights and satellites, like TIROS 1, were taken with black-and-white film.

Tsiolkovsky argued that the atmosphere made the sky appear blue when on Earth, and outside the atmosphere, this effect was removed. Nonetheless, the Earth is in fact blue when seen from space, because of the oceans. This was something that he didn't predict, for all his feats of imagination.

From Tsiolkovsky's Album of Space Travel, 1933.
Image courtesy of the Russian Academy of Science

At a distance of 1000 km, especially in the 1920s, it is unlikely that our fictional cosmonauts would have seen many signs of human occupation. Large cities, perhaps, but probably not large villages. In 1962, Yuri Gagarin orbited at around 200 km. In a speech given after his return, he said that "Clearly distinctive are large mountain ranges, large rivers, large forest areas, shorelines and islands".  No Great Walls of China!

Newton issues a warning that the sight of the Earth passing into the shadow of night might be a bit much for some. I'm reminded of Asimov's classic story Nightfall (1941), in which the sight of the stars in the first black night for two thousand years causes madness. And indeed viewing this unfamiliar hyperobject does have its effects:

The men were stunned by the sight, some felt exhausted and moved away from the portholes. Other, alarmed by their cries, hesitated to look out. Many flew away to their cabins, drew the shutters, and lit dim electric lights. Others, however, darted excitedly from porthole to porthole with cries of surprise and delight.

I think this is what I like most about Tsiolkovsky's vision, that he takes into account the emotions, and allows for different reactions to this extraordinary experience. And there's no 'Overview Effect'. I have a healthy skepticism about the presumed universal experience of the Overview Effect - the feeling, described by so many astronauts when they go into orbit, of deep connection to a fragile world where humanity is united. There is no doubt something significant here, but the trope is so strong that you rarely hear dissenting views, such as those of African-American astronaut Mae Jemison. Astronauts are such a narrow and elite class; as diversity in their ranks grows, there will no doubt be more diverse reactions to the overview.

Finally, I note that our intrepid scientists and their crew do not appear on the rather wonderful Wikipedia list of fictional astronauts, for which they meet all the criteria. I might have to do something about this!

References

Tsiolkovsky, K. 1920 [nd] Outside the Earth. In V. Dutt (ed) The Call of the Cosmos, pp 161-332. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House