Rockets Galore

I love my students. They bring me all sorts of space things - plastic astronauts, pop-up books, science fiction magazines, records. A few days ago darling Martin gave me "Rockets Galore" by Compton Mackenzie, with the dustjacket intact. I read "Whiskey Galore" years ago, but did not know about this sequel, in which the British Government attempts to build a rocket range on some remote Scottish islands. It's fabulous. There's a German rocket scientist, Dr Hamburger, crofters turned off their land and forced to migrate (shades of the Kourou expropriations), protests, and, of course, a romance.

It was originally published in 1957, the year Sputnik 1 was launched, and 10 years after the establishment of Woomera, and was also made into a feature film. Haven't finished reading it yet but will be curious to see if they do mention Woomera ....

New directions in Australian space policy

My ever charming friend Brett Biddington has recently released a paper about Australia's space future (Biddington, Brett 2008 Skin in the Game: Australia's National Interests in Space to 2025. Kokoda Papers Number 7, Kokoda Foundation, Canberra). He says:

Since the mid-90s, the Commonwealth has pursued a highly decentralised approach to space amongst its departments and agencies. This is not considered a tenable option for the future (Biddington 2008:58).

He proposes two new organisations: a Central Policy Coordination Body, and a Satellite Design and Operations Authority. The latter might be a statutory authority, a company, or a national research facility. The former is not necessarily an agency as such, but would play the role of being Australia's voice in the space world - our lack of such a unified voice is detrimental to our credibility in this sphere at present.

The Kokatha and the Cold War

Another conference, another abstract .... Andrew Starkey and I are proposing this one for the Australian Archaeological Association Annual Conference in December.

The Kokatha and the Cold War: Indigenous and technological heritage at Woomera, South Australia.

Andrew Starkey (Kokatha) and Alice Gorman (Flinders University)

In 1947, the Woomera rocket range was established in the supposedly “empty” desert north of Port Augusta in South Australia. Over the next 60 years, Woomera was Australia’s primary Cold War site, developing missiles and launch vehicles, and participating in US and European military and space programmes. It is still an active launch site. More recently the Woomera Prohibited Area has been opened to mineral exploration, leading to an increase in cultural heritage surveys.

The desert around the Woomera village is the traditional country of the Kokatha. The Woomera Heritage Centre, recently redesigned, separates the history of space technology from both Indigenous and pastoral occupation. In this paper, we examine the intersection of military and space technology with Kokatha heritage in the Prohibited Area. We argue that in order to understand its significance, Woomera must be contextualised as part of early Cold War space enterprises, where launch sites were located in colonised lands heavily impacted by the introduction of disease, dispossession from country, and development. Woomera can be regarded as a cultural landscape created by the establishment of a technological enclave within Indigenous country, with the underlying theme, from 1947 to the present, of nuclear arms development.

Rocket cakes rock

My culinary boffin friend Kaylene sent me this wonderful rocket cake website:


http://www.vatsaas.org/rtv/misc/cakes/rocketsoncakes.aspx

All kinds of inspiring rocket cakes here. This picture is a taste: cutting the cake at the first anniversary of the Redstone Arsenal.

The social world of Australian space

Last night it was the conference dinner at the Australian Space Development Conference in Adelaide. I didn't register for the conference, and have not seen a single paper - but I did the important events! The dinner was sponsored by Arianespace and each of us got a fabulous tacky Ariane souvenir, which I completely love of course: a highlighter pen disguised as an Ariane 5. They screened an Arianespace promotional DVD which was full of images of Kourou - the Jupiter control room, the Ariane 5 maquette, the BIL and the BAF etc, and it made me feel quite nostalgic about my week there in 2005.

Caught up with lots of Aussie space luminaries like Roger Franzen, Ian Tuohy, Gordon Pike, Bill Barrett, Naomi Mathers, Kirby Ikin and of course my ever charming friend Brett Biddington. Also met Lindsay Cambell, PR manager for Air Force's operations at Woomera, and we concocted some schemes. (Only I fear that I can't recall exactly what they were this morning - they sounded wonderful last night though!).

Michael Davis, Adelaide-based space lawyer who was responsible for the International Space University Summer Session in Adelaide a few years ago, suggested that I put in a submission to the Senate enquiry on Australian space. I had considered this, but was not sure what it would achieve. Someone else also asked me if I had done one, so given that people clearly see my input as valuable, I'm going to do it!

The delectable Anthony Wicht, engineer and space lawyer, allowed himself to be persuaded to be a co-author with Nigel Springbett-Bruer and I on the paper about - see below - the application of the World Heritage Convention to space.

I ended the evening discussing what a complete bastard Newton was with Michael Green, who must be only person I have ever met who has the read the entire Principia.

More on the mystery space junk in Queensland

Back in March, I was asked by ABC radio to identify a piece of space junk found near Charleville in Queensland. I determined that it was a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel, from the upper stage of a rocket, and may have come from one of three launch vehicles predicted to re-enter in November 2007:

1. The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV, India; launched from Sriharikota)

2. Molniya-M (Russia, launched from Plesetsk)

3. Delta II (USA, launched from Cape Canaveral)

(For full details, see http://zoharesque.blogspot.com/2008/03/space-archaeologist-identifies-mystery.html)

Last night at the Australian Space Development Conference I was talking to Dr Michael Green of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (who I must say was initially a little skeptical about the value of space heritage management, but I think I talked him round ...) and this object came up. Apparently the US have said it's not theirs, and Dr Green was going to write to the UN to investigate its source. So my previous research on this question has proved useful.

This of course is part of the Outer Space Treaty, under which states retain ownership of their space hardware no matter where it is.

I hope he was even more convinced of the value of space archaeology after that!

The World Heritage Convention and sites in outer space

The Australian Space Science Conference is coming up later in the year, and I've submitted the following poster abstract with one of my graduate students:

Space heritage: the application of the World Heritage Convention to sites in Outer Space

Mr Nigel Springbett-Bruer and Dr Alice Gorman

Flinders University

Abstract

Since 1957, space enterprises have led to the creation of places and objects that have heritage value in Earth orbit, on the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies, and in interplanetary space. Some, like the 1969 Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon, and Vanguard 1, the oldest surviving satellite in Earth orbit, might be argued to have heritage value on a global level. However, there are at present no legal or other instruments that provide heritage protection to sites such as these.

Currently, the World Heritage Convention (WHC) can only be applied to immovable places and objects in terrestrial contexts, and the application of national heritage legislation to outer space is problematic as it can be interpreted as tantamount to making a territorial claim in contravention of the Outer Space Treaty. This poster reports on a study investigating the status of the World Heritage Convention and the Outer Space Treaty as customary international law, as determined by the number of signatory states and the extent to which they are observed by the international community. We argue that the WHC and relevant provisions of the Outer Space Treaty have achieved such a status, and hence provide an avenue for the WHC to be applied to heritage in outer space and on other celestial bodies. While there are many other conceptual difficulties in applying the WHC to space, this is a starting point for the creation of an internationally agreed framework for the recognition and management of globally significant heritage sites in outer space.

**********

Part of the argument is that the intersection of the Outer Space Treaty and the World Heritage Convention lies in the idea of space as a global commons. As is always the case with these things the bones are there and we have much thinking and research yet to do to flesh it out properly - but I'm excited, with Nigel's help, to be taking this tiny step into the quagmire of space law.

A rocket cake to be proud of!

This gorgeous rocket cake was made by my friend Kaylene for her son Reid's fifth birthday. I am sure it tasted as wonderful as it looks.

Dr Space Junk identifies Blue Streak wreckage in the Simpson Desert

There's nothing more satisfying for a space archaeologist than to look at some piece of space hardware and be able to identify it immediately .... In this case it was particularly easy.

From ABC online:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/04/2265252.htm?section=justin

Rocket wreckage found in outback

Surveyors in the Simpson Desert have discovered what is believed to be part of a Blue Streak rocket launched at Woomera in 1966.

Simon Fanning and his geological survey team were flying over the Simpson Desert when they saw what they believed was part of satellite in the scrub.

"It turns out this wreck is not in fact a satellite but a rocket - at least a chunk of one anyway" he said.

"I'd seen ET as a kid, Star Wars and all that stuff, but to actually find something was really different."

Dr Alice Gorman of Flinders University in Adelaide believes the rocket could be one of 10 blue streak rockets launched at Woomera in South Australia in the 1960s by the European Launcher Development Organisation.

"The Blue Streak's very distinctive and the location in the Simpson Desert and the details on the rocket indicate it's most likely from one of the two 1966 launches" she said.

Mr Fanning is reluctant to disclose the precise location of the find, but the ABC has found a EBay site offering the GPS coordinates for sale.

There is private collector interest in Blue Streaks, but Dr Gorman says this discovery belongs in a museum.

"There was only a handful of them launched here in Australia" she said.

"I think it would be appropriate to put this one in a museum."

8th Australian Space Science Conference

Call for Papers

8th Australian Space Science Conference

29th September to 2nd October 2008

CANBERRA, ACT Australia

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit an abstract for the 8th Australian Space Science Conference in Canberra Australia (ASSC). This will be the second ASSC jointly sponsored and organised by the National Committee for Space Science (NCSS) and the National Space Society of Australia (NSSA). The ASSC is intended to be the primary annual meeting for Australian research relating to space science. It welcomes space scientists, engineers, educators, industry and government.

This year's ASSC will run in conjunction with the NCSS's workshop on implementing Australia's first Decadal Plan for Space Science, currently released in draft form. This one-day workshop will discuss the Plan and Government's responses, better link the scientific community and associated stakeholders in Government and industry, and start implementing the Plan's recommendations.

The scope of the conference covers fundamental and applied research that applies to space technologies, and includes the following:

Space science, including space and atmospheric physics, remote sensing from/of space, planetary sciences, astrobiology and life sciences, and space-based astronomy and astrophysics.

Space engineering, including communications, navigation, space operations, propulsion and spacecraft design, test and implementation.

Space industry

Government, international relations and law

Education and outreach.

For the abstract guidelines and online submission (as well as guidelines for written papers) go to URL www.assc.nssa.com.au

Key Dates

• Closing date for ASSC abstracts 6 July 2008

• Registration opens 20 July 2008

• Acceptance of ASSC Abstract 4 August 2008

• Closing date for full written ASSC papers 31 October 2008

Please make the conference known to your colleagues. We hope that you will attend. You may email asscconference@nssa.com.au for more information.

Anntonette Joseph, Co-Chair, National Space Society of Australia

Iver Cairns, Co-Chair, National Committee for Space Science,

University of Sydney.

More space junk poetry

This from the inimitable Denis Gojak:

'I think that I shall never see,
a scorched piece of Skylab smacked into a paddock as beautiful as a tree...'

I concur.

Redefining the geography of earth and space

I have to write something about this soon, based on my AAA paper "The gravity of archaeology".

Richard Cathcart is not only an excellent space junk poet but has some interesting insights on this topic (in his 1979 publication The Developing Artificial Geography of the Solar System, Public Administration Series P-206, Illinois). He makes the point that the lithosphere is currently as impenetrable to humans as space used to be, and that the upper limit of the biosphere is where the International Space Station now orbits.

He also notes that the Earth is "eroding", in a sense, as material is injected into orbit. But it is also aggrading as far huger quantities of cosmically derived material fall to earth every day. This interchange of material between what we call earth and space is a good illustration of the artificiality of these boundaries, as Nigel Clark (2005) also argues in Ex-orbitant Globality (Theory, Culture and Society 22(5):165-185).

Leadership in Australian space policy at last

We've had our new government for six months or so, and an early indication that things were on the move was the historic (and very moving) sorry day in February.

Now space may be taken seriously at last. The Senate Economics Committee will conduct an inquiry into Australia's space science and industry sector, delivering an interim report in June. The terms of reference include:

an assessment of the risks to Australia’s national interest of Australia’s dependence on foreign owned and operated satellites.

Could this mean a return to the glorious days of WRESAT 1, Australis Oscar V and FedSat? (although senior space colleagues have accused me of unnecessary nostalgia in this regard). I certainly hope so.

The lesser known satellite and space junk poets

Michael Dransfield wrote a pretty good poem about a satellite, and Richard Cathcart (a slightly less famous poet) wrote an even better one about space junk:

The day will come 

when we can trace

man's passage through velvet space, 

by dirty dishes, empty jars, banana peels and old cigars.

Just last week, a charming archaeologist penned the following, I think in the context of a discussion about digital heritage:

Satellite, satellite, way up high

beaming 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1

from the sky

It's a small but growing genre and I hope to see more of it in the future.

I wonder if Archy wrote a satellite poem?

Space archaeologist identifies mystery Queensland space junk

In the news today, Queensland farmer Mr James Stirton spoke of a piece of space junk he found on his property, west of Charleville, and appealed to the space community to identity it. He found the object near a track in November; it was a sphere 54 cm in diameter, weighing 20 kg, and had carbon fibre rope wrapped around it (I'm taking this from the news story online).

ABC Radio in Longreach called me for comment, and this is my working hypothesis for the moment:

The object is a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vehicle or COPV, basically a titanium lining (titanium resists the heat of re-entry much better than aluminium, a common material in spacecraft) wrapped in fibres of carbon reinforced with epoxy resin or other materials. COPV technology has been around since 1964, and titanium pressure spheres are one of the most common types of space junk to be recognised after re-entry.

I'm assuming, since Mr Stirton found the sphere near an existing track, that its re-entry is more likely to be recent than not. It can be no later than 2007 and no earlier than 1964 (so we're talking just eight years after the launch of Sputnik 1). Certainly debris from missions such as Gemini has been found in Australia, so an early origin is not out of the question.

However, if Mr Stirton is like most people on the land, and I speak from experience having grown up on a property myself, he'd notice something like that on the side of a track pretty quickly! So let's just look at the re-entry data for November 2007, keeping in mind that of course it may be earlier.

According to the Centre for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies, in November last year there were three predicted re-entries, all upper rocket stages:

1. The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV, India; launched from Sriharikota)

2. Molniya-M (Russia, launched from Plesetsk)

3. Delta II (USA, launched from Cape Canaveral)

In this age of commercial space, the COPV could have been manufactured anywhere, so examination of the actual object may not in itself be able to identify the source.

But there we go, problem solved! (Dr Space Junk is always happy to help). Mr Stirton reported that he got short shrift from NASA, and this does rather suggest that it may be from a USA military launch - perhaps this narrows it down, perhaps not.

Could I be any happier than I am right now, thinking and writing about orbital debris on a Friday night? No. I could not.

50th anniversary of Vanguard 1

Damn and blast, I missed the 50th anniversary of the launch of my very favourite satellite ever. (It was March 17th, last week). Perhaps it's not too late to do something to commemorate it? My esteemed colleague Dr Lynley Wallis has been honing her cake decorating skills and surely we'd do better this time than our attempts with the sputnik cakes.

Despite this heinous memory lapse, I did have many spacey thoughts on March 17th. The delightful Daryl Guse (Earth Sea Heritage Surveys) was visiting from the Northern Territory, and came for dinner that night. We discussed our plans to do a study of Indigenous interactions with the ELDO tracking station near Nhulunbuy. He knows the Traditional Owners, and I know the space hardware, so it would be an excellent collaboration.

This is the life of a space archaeologist

Ash Loydon has reviewed this film at the Cinedelica website. It sounds just too good and I think I will have to track down a copy immediately.

Inseminoid (1981)

A group of "space archaeologists" are threatened after one of their number is impregnated by a big grasshopper......Understandably this causes her to go a bit mental and start hunting them down one by one.....which is nice, if not a little extreme.

Norman J. Warren does a bloodier, bad taste Brit version of Alien on a budget of £12.50 (and gets banned in Iceland for his trouble). Ineptly made, hideously contrived but incredibly entertaining....Inseminoid (aka Horror Planet) shows what space exploration would be like if it were run by Strathclyde Passenger Transport; Whereas the Yanks have shiny rockets, jetpacks and lasers, the British archaeology team shown here have buckets and spades, Kwik Fit overalls and a chainsaw(?) amongst their equipment.....oh, and big 80s hair.

Shadow of the Moon

Last night I saw a preview screening of In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary about the Apollo programme focussing on the experience of the astronauts. It was not a critical documentary, which was fine - its main interest lay in hearing the astronauts speak about how they felt at the time and afterwards. The rhetoric of nationalism (and masculinity to a certain extent) was present throughout most of it but only mildly.

A review described it as "uplifting" and I did wonder from whose perspective it would be so. Nevertheless, I did find parts of it uplifting, particularly the footage of the separation of the Saturn V stages, which sounds really boring, but was actually quite moving! And the docking manoeuvre for the return journey. There was also a fabulous sequence in slow motion of the Apollo 11 Saturn V liftoff, the camera still as the rocket body slowly moved past it with suitably majestic music, and then, as the base of the rocket came into the view, the music fading into the terrible roar of burning fuel. It made me feel much more - I don't know how to describe it - affectionate? about the Saturn V than previously.

Which makes me think about emotional attachment to space artefacts. I love Vanguard 1 and Asterix 1, but don't really have any favourite rockets. Why?

Well, that's not quite true - I am quite fond of Veronique and the Pierres Precieuses series. I guess what I'm wondering is why certain space hardware appeals to different people.

Prelude to space archaeology - WAC-6

So here it is, my WAC-6 abstract:

The archaeology of space exploration has been defined as a separate field, based on a chronological period – 1936 until the present - and a set of places, sites and artefacts associated with the contemporary era of military and globalising technologies. In this paper I want to explore the theoretical terrain of space archaeology. It could be regarded as historical archaeology, dealing with capitalist-driven colonial expansion and cross-cultural encounters; the archaeology of the contemporary past, where memory meets technology; industrial archaeology; or as an area of cultural heritage management. Other possible frameworks include cosmopolitanism and the consideration of large-scale evolutionary trajectories of the human species. Each of these approaches suggests research questions and future directions for analysing the material culture of the space age, which will assume greater importance as more nations coopt the heritage of space to support their claims to celestial resources.

Thanks to Steve for his excellent suggestion for the title! I'm still going to write a prolegomenon though, as a proper article rather than a conference paper.

A classical education occasionally has its benefits. Last week at the airport a chance encounter led to a discussion about the Mytilene debate and its implications for modern democracy.

Prolegomena to space archaeology

Yes. The general consensus is that prolegomenon is too wanky a word to use in a paper title. So perhaps I'll go with Steve's suggestion of "Prelude to space archaeology". Shame - I was getting rather attached to the idea.