La terre et l'espace: download the article

The full text of this article is available at the following URL:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j30110k220728g73/

This week I am working on gravity - reading lots of stuff on the Newton/Hooke debate (hard to avoid the conclusion that Newton was a bit of a bastard) and thinking about how to define place in space.

Extreme heritage and off-world landscapes

Next week the papers from the Heritage of Off-World Landscapes session at the ICOMOS Australia conference will be up on the website:

http://www.aicomos.com/2007-conference/speakers-2007/

It was a fascinating session, covering a broad range of issues to do with space heritage. The delightful John Hurd, President of the ICOMOS Advisory Committee, agreed to be discussant. (I'm still pondering his comments). And we were also graced with the presence of a space scientist, Tim, who worked on the ill-fated Beagle mission to Mars.

After my excursion into LEO and MEO for this paper, I'm thinking of venturing into GEO for my next research, especially as Stilgherrian (http://stilgherrian.com/) has provided me with a fabulous term to use: geosynchronous taxidermy.

La Terre et l’Espace: Rockets, Prisons, Protests and Heritage in Australia and French Guiana

As promised a long time ago, here is the abstract for my Kourou article which has just come out in the journal of the World Archaeological Congress, Archaeologies [3(2):153-168]

Abstract

Space technology is often represented as global, modern and placeless. But one of the earliest forms of space site, the rocket range, tends to be located in places of a very specific kind: remote and seemingly empty colonies. Because of their distance from the metropole, these places also lend themselves to hosting prisons, detention camps, military installations, nuclear weapons, and nuclear waste. All of these establishments, including rocket ranges, have inspired reactions of protest. These themes are explored at the rocket launch sites of Woomera (Australia) and Kourou (French Guiana). In 2005, Créole groups in French Guiana were demonstrating against the construction of a new launch pad near Kourou that disturbed archaeological material. My arrival, to deliver a talk proposing that protests in Woomera sixty years earlier were an essential part of the heritage of the space age, revealed the entanglement of imprisonment and protest with space exploration.

Resumé

La technologie aérospatiale est souvent représentée comme étant globale et moderne, et comme n’ayant pas de point d’attache géographique particulier. Néanmoins, le site de lancement, l’une des formes originelles du site aérospatial, tend à être localisé dans des endroits spécifiques: des colonies éloignées, et apparemment vides de populations. Du fait qu’ils sont sités loin de la métropole, ces endroits ont aussi tendance à accueillir des prisons, des camps de détention, des installations militaires, des armes et des déchets nucléaires. Tous ces endroits, y compris les sites de lancement, ont inspiré des réactions de protestation à leur encontre. Ces thèmes ont été explorés aux sites de lancement de Woomera (Australie) et de Kourou (Guyane Française). En 2005, des groupes créoles de la Guyane Française ont manifesté contre l’établissement d’un nouveau site de lancement près de Kourou, dont la construction a perturbé les vestiges archéologiques de l’endroit. Mon arrivée, (pour présenter une communication proposant que les manifestations ayant eu lieu à Woomera soixante ans plus tôt constituent un élément essentiel du patrimoine de l’ère aérospatiale), a mis en avant le lien étroit qui existe entre emprisonnement, protestation et exploration spatiale.

The first seven years in orbit

The ICOMOS Australia conference is on in Cairns next week. John Campbell and I are convening a session on space heritage, and we're very excited, because Beth O'Leary from New Mexico State University is visiting Australia for the first time. Beth has been researching Tranquility Base and will deliver one of the keynote talks.

As per bloody usual, I'm writing my paper at the last minute (why, oh why, do I always do this?). I'm looking at the material record in orbit from 1957, the launch of Sputnik 1 into Low Earth Orbit, until 1963, when Syncom 1 is launched into geosynchronous orbit. Only seven years to get from LEO to GEO, and then another seven years until people land on the Moon. Pretty astonishing.

Looking at the figures has raised some interesting points. I expected to see a more or less equal distribution of USA/USSR satellites still up there. But the satellites remaining in orbit from the first seven years are almost entirely US, the main exception being Canada's Alouette 1. What happened to the Russian satellites?

One reason they are underrepresented is because during this period the USSR was focussing on the Moon, so quite a few have ended up in lunar orbit or cislunar space. (This makes me realise I don't know much about how lunar orbits work, in the absence of aerodynamic drag. Must find out). (And isn't cislunar a fabulous word?). Numerous other missions were crewed, and thus returned to Earth.

Another explanation may be that USSR satellites were injected into lower orbits than USA ones and have decayed at a greater rate. I won't have time to pursue this before the conference unfortunately.

I am going to imagine a scenario where all we have is the orbital material to work out how humans got into space. What will this first seven years tell us, and how might it differ from the documentary record?

I'm also going to take a closer look at the fascinating West Ford project ....

Saving Woomera

Check out the June issue of Australasian Science for my article about managing the heritage values of the Woomera rocket range.

Museum tackles 'moon hoax' believers

April 9, 2007 - from The Age, Melbourne

A museum honoring the first man to walk on the moon is not afraid to confront conspiracy theorists who argue his 1969 lunar landing was a hoax.

"If it takes a controversy to get them here, that's fine with us," said Andrea Waugh, an education specialist at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, named after Apollo 11 astronaut and hometown hero Neil Armstrong.

The museum in western Ohio set up a display on Saturday featuring some of the talking points that conspiracy theorists make in books and numerous Web sites to try to back up their claims that NASA staged all of its moon landings from 1969 to 1972 in a movie studio.

Claims that the lunar landings were fake can be easily debunked with facts and science, Waugh told visitors.

For example, a favorite conspiracy argument is that it is impossible for a US flag photographed next to Armstrong and fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin to be fluttering in a lunar environment that lacks wind or an atmosphere.

The flag had a horizontal bar attached to it at the top to keep the flag from hanging limply down the pole, Waugh said.

And distorted shadows that appear next to astronauts in some of NASA's photographs - another sticking point with nonbelievers - are the result of sunlight reflecting off the lunar landscape, she said.

The museum's explanations were enough to convince Janet Rosengarten, who drove from nearby Sidney to see the exhibit.

"I've never had any question about it," she told local newspaper The Lima News. "I saw Armstrong land on the moon when I was 7 and I have no doubt it happened. But it's still fun to see the things people say who doubt it all."

The museum includes one of Armstrong's Apollo-era space suits and other artifacts from his career and childhood.

Danger Will Robinson: can space junk make aeroplane travel unsafe?

Pilots on a commercial flight from Chile saw flaming objects falling past their plane as it headed into New Zealand earlier this week. Australian media got a bit excited about this and postulated that the objects were part of a Russian spacecraft. Others suggested that they were meteoroids.

ABC Radio in NSW called me for comment (which was nice - they wanted me as a space debris expert, not an archaeologist!). Their spin was: should people be concerned? Is it becoming unsafe to be an aeroplane passenger?

I argued not - that the likelihood of actually being hit by space junk re-entering the atmosphere was negligible. Not, however, zero: people and property have been struck before. But mostly debris burns up on re-entry, and the space tracking boffins know when something big is on the way.

In the back of my head were a few alarm bells. I'd hate to cause a panic among frequent flyers by ill-chosen words! And once again I was tired as, having thrown all my energy into meeting a deadline just half an hour before the interview (and then being enticed into the bar by a few students - it was my choice to have a drink though!). My brain was practically in orbit itself.

I did use the opportunity to make a valuable point though. Instead of worrying that space junk would hit their plane, people should be worried about space junk compromising satellite services - television, telephone, GPS and navigation, weather forecasting, and - ATMs. That's right, ATMs rely on satellite data to function. I'm only aware of this because I hang out with space people, and it should be more widely known. Can you imagine what would happen if we lost access to satellites?

As an aside, I just want to say how much I loathe the word "airplane". There is no beauty in it.

Australia's space policy to 2025

Last week I attended a workshop convened by the Kokoda Foundation, a think-tank devoted to security issues, about where Australia was headed in space. As you know we're a bit behind the door when it comes to a coherent vision for our use of space, let alone anything crazy like, oh I don't know, a decent policy ..... some interesting things emerged from the discussions, summarised below:

1. Launch capability is definitely not the way to go. We can't really compete in that market.

2. Spectrum allocation is absolutely critical.

3. Australia is underrepresented on peak bodies at an international level. For example, even though we are a founding member of COPUOS, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, no Australian rep has attended for so long that they are thinking of chucking us off.

4. People don't talk to each other enough: right hands and left hands don't know what the other is doing (civil and military being some of the hands).

My contribution was to suggest that we need to keep some hardware in orbit; future access to orbit may depend on being able to prove a historical right to be in space after the UN treaties erode. And they will erode, and it is not inconceivable that the space powers would turn around and say, well, it's clear you've never used this orbit in the past, so why should we let you into it now? (A situation not dissimilar to some Native Title debates).

Time for the latex gloves

I got the biggest shock yesterday. Finally tracked down the first issue of new magazine Monocle, published by the pseudo-desserty Tyler Brule of Wallpaper fame, to see if they had run an article about my orbital debris research.

They had.

In the article I make some rather bold claims about US military aspirations in space. Journalist Jackie Dent quotes me accurately, and what she writes is part of our discussions earlier in January when she first raised the idea of the article. I just wasn't prepared for the effect of reading it, presented so starkly in black and white. I thought, I am so dead. They're never going to let me back into the US again.

On the other hand, would US military/space analysts read a magazine with advertisements for Ferrogamo and Prada in it?

The Chinese rocket and space junk - radio interview

Last week I did an interview on The Current, on CBC Radio, Toronto. The subject of the show was China's recent destruction of a satellite by missile, and the effect on the growth of orbital debris. Other guests included Don Kessler (formerly of NASA's Orbital Debris Office), Geoff Forden (MIT) and David Wright (Union of Concerned Scientists). Some of the show is available online at the following link:

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2007/200702/20070207.html

The interview took place at about a quarter past midnight, Australian time. I was very sleepy and may not have made as much sense as I'd like ....

The heritage of off-world landscapes - call for papers

John Campell of James Cook University and I are organising a session at the ICOMOS conference in Cairns in July. Here is the session abstract:

The Heritage Of Off-World Landscapes

Convenors: Alice Gorman (alice.gorman@flinders.edu.au) and John Campbell (john.campbell@jcu.edu.au)

Human understandings of the Earth have always been mediated by conceptions of what lies beyond the atmosphere. In the 20th century, however, interplanetary space acquired a new layer of meaning as satellites and spacecraft explored the Solar System. Landscapes once viewed only through the lens of the night sky became places that humans could visit, through images and data, and in the flesh. This session explores the heritage values in these new landscapes: the cloud of satellites and orbital debris circling the Earth; the lunar landscapes created by Russian, US and ESA landing and crash sites on the Moon; the Soviet, US and ESA hardware that now litters the Martian desert or is continuing to explore it; the probes which have been sent further out, like the ESA craft Huygens which has formed a site on the cloudy surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. As a new “space race” emerges in the 21st century between India, China and other spacefaring nations, it is imperative to consider how we understand the significance of off-world landscapes at both the global and the local level, and to work toward developing and implementing international protocols and agreements on the protection and, where feasible, management of places of significant space heritage.

If you are interested in presenting a paper at this session, please contact me!

For more information look at the conference website:

http://www.aicomos.com/2007-conference/

National Geographic again

And no, that's not me in the space suit.

Check out January's National Geographic (US)

Because I'm in it! A short article with some pictures of space junk, by Mike Klesius.

Aboriginal souvenirs at Woomera

During my recent trip, I did hardly any research - most of my time was spent out on the range. However I did manage a few hours in the library looking through the old Gibber Gabber newsletters. I discovered that in the 1960s, the enterprising Jean Macauley set up a business from her home, selling Aboriginal art and souvenirs like miniature weapon sets. There was no indication that they were sourced locally, and the advertisements regularly mentioned consignments of art from Arnhem Land. I have visions of French, German and Italian space scientists, out there for the ELDO programme, browsing in the shop for artefacts to take home, perhaps never aware that Kokatha people were still living in the area.

Pissed on the Range

Just back from four days at Woomera and my liver is suffering from an excess of entertainment ..... but what can I say? Can you imagine anything more magnificent than sipping champagne at the bottom of the massive 6b ELDO launcher on the edge of a vast salt lake? Many thanks to Garry and Sheryn Clarke, and Ellen and Jeff Ingold, for their generous hospitality.

More about this soon if I don't get distracted by other work.

Woomera trip

Next week I'm going to Woomera, hoorah! Nights at the ELDO, days in the desert ..... actually I'm not doing fieldwork this time, just research. During my last visit, which was for a heritage consultancy, I had about half an hour in the new heritage centre. I was delighted with it, but also dismayed as I couldn't find anything about Indigenous people at Woomera. I later learned that anything non-rockety had been squirrelled away in the old Nurrungar room, and no-one mentioned that it was there!

My understanding, from talking to Geoff Speirs in the early day of the new design, was that these aspects of Woomera's history would be incorporated. The fact that they are not illustrates the very point I have been arguing in relation to understanding Woomera's significance as a space site (for example, in Gorman 2005, Journal of Social Archaeology).

I can feel a new paper coming on .....

Download The Archaeology of Orbital Space

This article, in the proceedings of the Fifth Australian Space Science Conference in 2005, isn't terribly accessible - but for those of you who are interested, it is now available on my Flinders University website. This is the URL:

http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/archaeology/staff/gorman.php

There is an icon next to the article to click.

Update 22 January 2015: broken link - the new link is here.

Don't disrespect Vanguard 1

Last night I watched Space Race, the series created by Deborah Cadbury. This episode was all about Sputnik 1 and Explorer 1, and their creators, von Braun and Korolev. Naturally, as a fan of Vanguard, I was disappointed at how the Naval Research Laboratory's satellite was treated in the documentary. There was no mention of the International Geophysical Year, or coherent explanation of the rationale behind preferring a non-military launch vehicle. The documentary maintained that James van Allen was called in at the last minute to build instrumentation for Explorer's experiments. The reality is that van Allen designed his experiment for Vanguard, but cunningly made it compatible with both satellites; when it became clear that Vanguard was under a cloud he transferred to Explorer. When Vanguard 1 was launched, it flew without its experiment packages.

Nonetheless, Vanguard 1 is still up there, and Explorer 1 re-entered in less than a month. Green and Lomask, historians of Vanguard, point out that its technologies are the basis of the USA space industry today.

Go Vanguard!

Who Weekly Space Edition

All kinds of reports lately about celebrities in space. Paris Hilton (can't they just leave her there? someone quipped), William Shatner (not keen on vomiting, quite right too), and now Madonna. Will this make space travel more topical for a new generation? I feel I'd better start collecting news clippings, as this may be the tip of the iceberg, a new phenomenon in popular culture.

Of course if they are going to have girly celebs out there, the space knobs had better get the space toilet thing sorted out. I read somewhere recently that a Russian spacecraft had to have its toilets adapted for women. Do these people never learn?

In line with my argument that discarded human organic remains in orbit may one day acquire a scientific value, if cosmic rays don't cause complete denaturing of complex biomolecules (note the fluent use of technical terms meant to inspire credibility), it may be that celebrity waste may become a true collector's item for space scavengers of the future.

Space biscuits and recognition for space archaeology

Sometimes the constant struggle to gain recognition for the cultural significance of space heritage can get a girl down. I was feeling rather depressed about life in general when I received an accolade that has made it all worthwhile. The utterly charming Nicey from A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down, the web's premier site for tea, biscuits, cake and sit downs, has declared that I am their favourite space archaeologist. It has made me happy for the last two days.

Nicey is very interested in space biscuits, as I may have mentioned already in this blog. Below is his take on the news that the Japanese are developing a special biscuit for long-haul space travel.

Nice News: Space biscuits will taste of worms or something

Wednesday 30 Aug 2006
Reporter: Nicey and Dr Alice Gorman

NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown's favourite space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman has been in touch about Japanese plans for space biscuits. Masamichi Yamashita, a researcher with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has come up with recipe that uses all the things that your typical astronaut might have to hand on a five year long mission to Mars. Soybeans, rice and silkworm pupas are combined, all of which may be farmed in space. Apparently the pupas will need a quick stir frying to mask their fishy taste, before grinding them into a sort of powder which we are assured will taste almost like crab.

Yamashita presented his recipe during the 36th scientific assembly of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). The recipe comprises three to six grams of silkworm pupa powder, 200 grams of rice powder, 50 grams of soy powder and 300 cubic centimetres of soymilk, with soy sauce and salt.

I can't see McVitites beating a path to his door anytime soon. Mind you they could have a good future in that niche market for foods that you eat very late on a Friday night for a bet after you have been drinking heavily, traditionally occupied by Bombay Duck.