How telecommunications technology affects our conceptions of space

I often think about how our conceptions of space have changed as we look deeper into the far reaches of the universe, and as satellite navigation technologies influence the way we move on the surface of the Earth.

Oliver Sacks once wrote an article about how a man blind since early childhood fared when he recovered his sight. Vision created such a profoundly different way to apprehend the world than touch and hearing alone. As Sacks explained it, when we look at a cat, we see all its constituent parts at once: the head, ears, tail, legs, torso, fur, whiskers. We see that the right kinds of bits are there in the right kind of relationship to each other and in the right proportion. It is a simultaneous way of knowing. If you had to identify what kind of animal it was by touch alone, though, how would you do it? His patient would touch each part separately, and would only know if it was a cat if, after feeling enough of them, this was the most logical conclusion. So this is a chronological way of knowing.I found this a very compelling description.

I think something similar has happened to people who now rely on navigation devices in their car, like taxi drivers. Whereas once you might have had some kind of map projection in your head, where in your mind's eye you could visualise your destination and then think of a way to get there, now it seems that you listen to the instruction and then follow it, bit by bit, just like the Sacks' patient. "In 500 metres, turn right". It's more like touching than seeing. So it produces a different conception of space: in fact a more closed-in one, where you are only aware of your immediate environment.

Perhaps this works for the much-speculated-about ability of Aboriginal people to paint or represent country from an aerial view, when they haven't seen it from the air.  It's hard for us to comprehend this because even before GPS, our way of interpreting spatial relations was based on maps with Cartesian coordinates.

So you can imagine I was very interested to see this Scandinavian project looking at the way the telegraph changed people's conceptions of space in the late 1800s. This is how they describe it:

Distant news and local opinion: How the Telegraph Affected Spatial and Temporal Horizons in Northern Scandinavia, 1850-1880

Image courtesy of CMYBacon

The electric telegraph lines constructed across Europe starting in the late 1840's profoundly changed conditions for long-distance communication in the region. This project analyses the effects of the electric telegraph on northern Scandinavia.

Focus is on the relationship between time and space in 7 newspapers from Norway, Sweden and Finland. By investigating 1) the motives behind extending telegraph lines to these regions, 2) the ideals associated with the technology itself, 3) the representation of time and space in the news and 4) the spatial and temporal references of the concept “public opinion”, the study gives a new perspective on the development of communications in this area. Using the spread of technology as a lens through which we may observe societal change, this work will produce a transnational history relating the idiosyncrasies of northern Scandinavia to the common developments affecting Europe during the second half of the 19th century.

I think this is really interesting stuff. I don't know if I would have chosen newspapers as the primary source to address the spatial/temporal - but the point about newspapers is that they will, presumably reflect public sensibilities, and the news reported will change radically as events further away become reported more quickly. So what people read will shape the boundaries of their conceptual world. Herodotos for the 19th C, and perhaps with as many marvels.

The modern ruin: trace fossils of high technology

As I've mentioned before, science fiction writers seem to be particularly good at grasping the heritage issues of the present and future.  Frequently in these stories, the decay of high technology is used as a metaphor for a postmodernish dissolution of identity. (One of my favourites in this regard is J.G. Ballard's Terminal Beach. I still have trouble seeing him as anything other than a science fiction writer).

The following comes from the short story Open Veins by British writer Simon Ings. It is an uncannily accurate description of a number of former military or space sites that I've been fortunate enough to visit.

The site bore little mark of its military past.  The hardened bunkers, the offices and barracks, had been ripped out years ago.  The radar arrays and satellite dishes had all been dismantled, leaving large, low concrete platforms, their smooth grey surfaces punctuated by rusted spars, irregular brick walls, depressions and score-marks: the tracks and spoor and burrow-mounds of artificial life. The single concrete runway was crazed and weed-lined and there were shreds of cable rotting in the verges. (Ings 1997, reprinted in Dozois (ed) 1998 p 546)

Cables or worms? Orroral Valley NASA Tracking Station, ACT. Author's image.

(What's that, I hear you ask? Does he mention cable ties? Well no, but I'm sure he was thinking about them).

He could easily be describing the former Orroral Valley NASA tracking station here, a site characterised by the concrete footprints of long-gone satellite dishes and interferometry arrays, which appear smooth and featureless until you start to examine them closely. Then you see the grooves left by blades on earth-moving machinery; holes where pipes, cables and wires vanish under the floor, weathered ledges and grooves where walls once were. Ings likens these to the phenomenon known as the trace fossil: the preserved remains, not of some ancient creature, but of the impressions its activities leave in the deposit that becomes transformed into stone. They're signs, not the thing itself.  It's an appealing metaphor, to imagine the cables as polychaete worms burrowing into ground, the bolts left on the antenna footings as anchors for some floating jellyfish in its sessile phase, the hardened bunkers as coral polyps.

This flourishing fauna has come to a sudden end, ripped out and dismantled.  It's not just abandoned but actively flattened down to ground level. This level of destruction is frequently the fate of modern industrial sites, a major contrast to ancient ones which are more likely to be just abandoned. Or at least, this is argued to be one of the things that makes the archaeology of the contemporary past different. On the other hand, it's the same middle-range theory, the same taphonomy, that all archaeologists grapple with. While Ings says that his fictive site bears little mark of its military past, the signs should be there for those who know how to read them.

References
Ings, Simon 1998  Open Veins. In Gardner Dozois (ed) The Mammoth Book of New SF 11.  London: Robinson pp 544-558

Surviving space junk re-entry: a beginner's guide

Given how frequently space junk re-enters the atmosphere, it's surprising that there is not more information about what to do in this event. So I am putting together here a small guide just in case you happen to be in this situation.

1. Don't panic: it is highly unlikely to actually fall on YOU.

You'll have heard all the commentators saying this, but it really is true: the odds of it being YOU that is the site of impact really are extraordinarily low. In the entire history of human space exploration, there is only one recorded instance of someone being hit by space junk. According to the Centre for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS) this was Lottie Williams of Oklahoma, who was hit by a piece of a Delta II rocket as she was taking a walk one day in 1996. She was unharmed. When Skylab re-entered over Western Australia in 1979, there were no claims for property damage made and no-one was hurt. There's just so much ocean, desert and ice - and this is usually where stuff lands.  There has never been a recorded re-entry over a city or town.  

The problem is, of course, that it is very difficult to predict re-entry points as there are so many variables to take into account. So it's not easy to be prepared.

But let's just say you are likely to be in the debris footprint area. Here's what you can do.

2.  Secure your pets or animals

It's just like fireworks: animals don't like it very much. The fragments may be traveling at tens of thousands of kilometres per hour as they come screaming into the upper atmosphere (which then slows them down until they fall vertically). The pieces are compressing the air into pressure waves and the energy builds up until it creates an exploding sound or sonic boom. The sonic booms can be frightening for humans too. Take the same precautions for household pets that you might on New Year's Eve. Keep them inside if possible, and remain calm around them. Don't use a chain or slip collar to restrain them. Some recommend playing them classical music (or something else soothing) as a distraction. There are many websites where you can find out more about this.

3.  Do not touch fragments of re-entered spacecraft.

In its journey through the atmosphere, the spacecraft ,or the pieces of it, are subject to extreme heating caused the friction of the atmosphere, through which it may be travelling at hypervelocity. Depending on the materials, some may still be burning when they land. Even when cool, there may be jagged and sharp edges that easily cut you.

Moreover, there are many toxic or radioactive elements that may be part of the fuel, the structures, or the experiments flown on board the spacecraft. If you handle them without knowing what you are doing, they may poison you. These include the fuel hydrazine and the metal beryllium. Let the authorities deal with it.

You're probably pretty safe with a titanium or steel pressure spheres, the most common spacecraft part to survive re-entry. However, despite titanium's traditional reputation as an inert metal, there is some recent evidence that the corrosion products of titanium may be harmful.  Don't take unnecessary risks.

4.  Be ready for fire

If burning fragments are falling all around you, it's not impossible that one may land on your house or the building you're in and set it alight. And when you go outside, there may be more. Do what you would normally expect to do in such an emergency: call 000 (or the fire department in your country); make sure you know where everyone is; evacuate the building (it will be safer outside) and do not go back inside. If you have a fire plan, put it into effect. This may if course involve removing animals or releasing them.

5. Notify the relevant authorities

There's a few people who need to know. Your local, regional or state government may have to play a role in coordinating relief, or recovery of debris, so let them know. It's also a matter of international relations. The country it lands in will have to notify and communicate with the launching state about recovering fragments (these are used to analyse what happened) and perhaps to talk about compensation. If your country has a space agency, they also need to know.

Debris is often found months or years later; and when it's not a high profile re-entry like Skylab, UARS or Phobos Grunt, it may not be obvious which re-entry it came from or who owned it. It's up to the government to find out. (Dr Space Junk has provided this service on occasion).

6. Assist in the scientific analysis

Your experience can be very useful. The colour of fragments falling through the sky tells us something about their temperature and sometimes what they are made of; the number and timing of falls helps map the debris footprint; the size and nature of the fragments may indicate what part of the spacecraft they came from and how it broke apart. While you most certainly shouldn't touch recently fallen material, or move it, you can take photographs and GPS coordinates, and estimate the dimensions of the pieces. What you see and experience can have some value when put together with information gathered from other sources.

7.  Be aware of the legal situation

There are two international conventions that you should be aware of.  One is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which imposes liability for damage caused by space junk on the launching state, and the other is the Space Liability Treaty 1972, which requires that the launching state pay compensation for any damage caused.  I don't know, however, if that includes emotional damage - there is some latitude for interpretation. Keeping in mind safety considerations, if you or your property have been harmed by falling space debris, document it as you would for insurance purposes.

The other critical part of the Outer Space Treaty is that the re-entered material is still the property of the launching state, so you cannot sell it on eBay. In the ideal situation, the launching state will try to recover material for analysis. Be co-operative and don't try to pass fakes off as real space junk - they'll know the difference!

OK. This is very rough and ready, but it's a start. One of the sources for these recommendations is the experience of Western Australians when Skylab re-entered in 1979. It was inspired by my series of #Reentrytips on Twitter.

Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen at ACMI. Review by guest blogger Dan North

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s exhibition Star Voyager: Exploring Space On Screen is a celebration of the historical and future relationship of space exploration and the moving image. Compiling a vast collection of film and archives from the late 1800s until present day, the otherworldly exhibition tells the tale of art informing science and in turn, science informing art.

Descending the stairs into darkness, one arrives amid the moving pictures and parlour tricks of the early 20^th century. It is a world of fantasy and magic where voyagers to Georges Méliès' moon bring their top hats and umbrellas to be shot from a canon into space. Mars is host to an array of space operas, involving benevolent giants, and is home to the elaborate constructivist metropolis of the mysterious and beautiful Queen Aelita. 

Alongside these fantastic voyages and tricks of the eye are the writings of rocket pioneers Tsiolkovsky and Goddard, documenting the early beginnings of real space travel.

With the first occurrence of a countdown to zero before launch, the startlingly accurate 1929 film Frau im Mond by Fritz Lang is considered the first serious portrayal of space exploration. Lang employed rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth as technical advisor to provide an authentic as possible illustration of multi-stage rocket travel. A scene depicting the crew staring back at earth evokes a similar reaction the Apollo 8 astronauts would have had almost 40 years later as they saw their first earthrise. Despite scientific inaccuracies (such as the moon having a perfectly breathable atmosphere) the film was considered so accurate that the Nazi government confiscated Lang’s research and model rockets. A young Wernher von Braun was to be so inspired by Frau im Mond that he painted the film’s logo on early V-2s.

Moving on through other films and artifacts, a Russian film from the 1950s depicts what life on a soviet space station would be like. It’s a strange mash-up of antiquated phone exchange and a submarine - however space is not without it’s creature comforts -  everyone has an apartment with a view of the earth. Even your pet-comrade cat sits oddly purring at the window as the stars drift past. The film is presented as a sober documentary - this was to be the future for the USSR. This fictional Russian space station with its rotating wheel design was to be influential on Stanley Kubrick when thinking of his space hotel seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The exhibition design by Minifie van Schaik Architects makes strong reference to the visual vocabulary of real spacecraft. In orbit around walls of gold mylar you’ll find satellite-like pods displaying rare footage of cosmonauts and astronauts, John F Kennedy’s ‘We choose to the go the moon!’ speech at Rice University, unedited footage of Neil Armstrong climbing tentatively down the ladder of the Lunar Excursion Module (you’ve likely seen it a thousand times before, but unedited and without soundtrack or sentimental narrative, the raw video of that boot planting on the lunar soil is still quite awe-inspiring). There’s newsreel footage of astronaut poster-boy John Glenn and various depictions of the space race in film - Apollo 13, The Right Stuff and Space Cowboys. 

The space race was also the era of the vinyl record. Curators Emma McRae and Sarah Tutton appear to have collected every space related album cover imaginable from Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet to the soundtrack of Plan Nine From Outer Space.

Unique to the exhibition is the short film On Mars 3D. It is too short. You want to see more. The Martian valleys and mountains look incredible and a little unbelievable. Is this really what the surface of Mars looks like? It makes Tatooine look boring. Planetary astronomy was never so cool.

Down a corridor reminiscent of the Discovery set from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (there’s a suspended model of the Discovery in there) you’ll find costumes, props and models from Forbidden Planet, Star Trek, Total Recall and Moon amongst others. Contrasting with their real-life, used-in-actual-space counterparts, you get a sense of how science has influenced film and vice versa. It’s definitely a reciprocal relationship.

Amongst all the relatively familiar imagery, one exhibit is particularly fascinating for it’s unusual visceral qualities; presenting the smell and the sound of our own star, the sun. Eerie and absolutely alien, artists Joyce Hinterding and David Haines have simulated what we could never possibly experience- a solar scratch and sniff.

The overall effect is a montage of original artifacts, props, film, and photographs- an artistic and scientific orgy of everything that is great about imagining or actually going into outer space. Highly recommended.

Star Voyager is on at ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne, until January 29.

Dan North is a Sydney-based architect. He is also an amateur astronomer with a life long interest in the history of space exploration and set and prop design for science fiction films.

Cable ties, the taphonomy of plastics, and the modern world

Truly I need a new life. I'm starting to notice cable ties everywhere. I was waiting at a bus stop last week when I spotted a broken cable tie in the dirt, my eye now being attuned to the characteristic L-shape. I picked it up and took it home (unlike other kinds of artefact, those of the contemporary past are usually 'rubbish'. There is no law against souveniring them). I think there may have been a construction site nearby, but my memory is a little hazy on this point.

Image courtesy of 4Cabling

Examining this orphan cable tie was interesting. The un-cut-off end suggested that it was a very long one indeed, but part of it was missing, as the stub was neither long enough or flexible enough to curve around to meet the opposing break. However, on the remaining length, there is no sign of a manufacturer's label or a patent number. This suggests that it belongs to a later period where cable ties are a generic technology, rather than proprietary.

The wear on the cable tie suggested that it had been lying around for some time; they are pretty robust little beasties, after all. I might interpret it as trampling wear, and abrasion from the stony/gravelly surfaces of the dirt and road where I found it. The flat surfaces are scratched and the smooth edges are roughened and squashed a little.  I don't recollect noticing this on the Orroral Valley cable ties, which were located in lovely soft sandy silt. Clearly this is another feature that needs recording in future fieldwork. This makes me think that it might be useful to examine a bit more closely the ways in which plastics deform and deteriorate. A taphonomy of plastics.

There's very little literature specifically about cable ties that I have been able to track down as yet, although I have no doubt that I shall find more once I get deeper into the technical journals. However, this is for me exactly the justification for taking an archaeological approach: the documents that tell the story of how they became such a ubiquitous feature of everyday life do not exist. No-one is, for example, going on a hiking trip, or building a house, and choosing to focus on the role of cable ties in what they write or photograph about their activities.

They're not just a useful string or wire substitute though - artists and crafters are using cable ties to make all sorts of fabulous things. That might have to be the subject of a separate post.

I'll be talking about cable ties at the workshop 'That was then, this is now' in Sydney on the 16th-17th February. How they'll thank me!

Valley of the Cable Ties: the material culture of the contemporary past

Back in November, me and my intrepid group of graduate students paid a visit to the former Orroral Valley Tracking Station in the ACT.

In the 1990s, what remained of the above-ground structures was demolished, leaving only the concrete footings of numerous buildings and antennas. Near the entrance to the facility, now used by tourists, hikers and other visitors, the grass is cut and the gardens sort of maintained. Deeper into the site, tall weeds and grasses are more prevalent and are invading the antenna footprints. 

In general, surface visibility is on the low side, and as you walk about, there's not much evidence of past human activities apart from the big stuff. No obvious artefact scatters; no personal objects; no bits of antenna support lying discarded.  Occasionally there's a bit of recent rubbish near the picnic/parking area. The Maralinga nuclear test sites are littered with lovely radioactive garbage, despite three remediation campaigns; by comparison, Orroral has been cleaned up and maintained in a well-ordered fashion.

But I wasn't so sure this tidy surface would yield nothing to the eagle eye of the archaeologist. On my last visit, we found an old scrubbing brush lying outside the canteen building, the sturdy bristly kind with a wooden back, as used in a million domestic and industrial kitchens across the land.  I was very keen to do a pedestrian transect survey of the entire site to see what else we could find relating to the tracking station period, and what its spatial distribution might tell us. I imagined we might be able to knock the whole site over in a day with 10 people.

You'll already have guessed that my expectations were confounded.

We started at what I thought would be the easiest part of the site, below the main 26 m antenna, which is fairly thickly grassed with few weeds. This was possibly the narrowest section of the main site, defined by fences, and with no buildings to confuse things. I really didn't think there would be much there; I thought it would be a nice, quick demonstration of the principles of surface survey.

The team walked 5 m apart, slowly observing the ground within their swath of vision, and placed a pin flag at every location where they saw human material or animal scratchings/burrows. The latter was so that I could get an idea of how disturbed the surface was. We had 100 pin flags (these are spikes of metal with a coloured plastic tag on top) and I thought these would last us a good while.  The line would move from one boundary fence to the next in formation, flagging everything of interest, and then we would look back and see how material was distributed by the density of the flags. Then, in small groups, the team would fully record each artefact or trace, including its coordinates, material, dimensions, shape, colour, likely function if known, etc etc, removing the flag as each location was completed (and leaving the artefact in situ). We'd then move on to the next 50 m traverse.

From L to R: Joan, Rob and Susan in their 5 m transects. (Author's photograph)

Well. Once you start looking ...... the 100 pin flags were running dangerously low before we had even reached the opposite fence. There was stuff everywhere, despite the low visibility as you see in the image above. I was amazed, and so were the students. There were bits of concrete, star pickets, bricks, lead, tin cans, insulation, wire, nails, leather, cable trenches (some of the rabbit scratches turned out not to be, once you examined them closely), metal steps, pipes, and much more. When we made a list of all the observed artefact materials or types, there were over 30. 

Southwest from the antenna footing, showing the location of pin flags. (Author's photograph)

This was all great, obviously, although now it was clear that we would be lucky to get through half of this small area in a day, let alone the whole site. But the best was yet to come. 

In the picture below, you see an erosion scar with a high density of artefacts, as evidenced by the density of pin flags.

Artefact density in the erosion scar (with Lance, Tom and Steve). (Author's photograph)

Obviously visibility was highest in this exposed area, and so we would expect a higher density of artefacts than the surrounding grassed areas. Some, at least, were being washed down or out of the slope; the presence of a small culvert under a path nearby attested to the movement of water through this area. But it was the content of this artefact scatter which was the biggest eye-opener.

Pretty soon, as the teams moved systematically through recording the artefacts, we became aware that there were quite a few cable ties present; so many that some people suggested that there was no need to individually photograph and measure every one. Tempting though that thought was .... I stuck to my guns. This was the methodology and we were going to follow it to the letter.! There was a little grumbling. Why record the same features on so many of them, when they were all identical? What would we learn?

Again, once you start looking...... the first thing to note was that these were used cable ties, not new ones. They had been removed from something. One team observed a tie that had been torn apart, as the edges were jagged. I then instructed everyone to pay attention to the ends and record their state. Three variations then became evident: some had been torn, some cut, and some melted. This tiny observation on a discarded piece of plastic translated into a decision and an action taken by a real person in carrying out a task.

From this starting point, as we compared the cable ties that occurred across the erosion scar, other variations emerged. There were different colours: black, white, translucent. There were different lengths and different widths, from the very skinny and short to the very long and thick. The length, and thickness could be an indication of the diameter and load that the tie was used for. Some had had the loose ends trimmed off. Some had patent numbers on them, or manufacturer's labels. Some were lying flat on the surface; others were actively eroding out, standing upright in a layer of silt.

I was delighted. This ubiquitous, seemingly simple object was raising all kinds of questions about how and why the cable ties had been used. How did they get there? Were they associated with the tracking station? What date were they? When, exactly, had cable ties been invented? None of us knew. We all knew what they were, but we knew absolutely nothing else about this very modern artefact type.

By this time someone had decided to start substituting cable ties in film names - such a shame that we had no mobile coverage or there would have been a great Twitter hashtag in it - #cabletiemovies - such gems as The Texas Cable Tie Massacre (Jonathan) and The Valley of the Cable Ties (Susan) raised much hilarity. (My own effort:  The Cable Tie, being a film starring Jim Carrey). But I could tell that despite their ostensible skepticism, everyone was getting caught up in the cable tie story.  I decided to have a brainstorm session.

First we considered when cable ties were invented. (We couldn't just look this up; out here our phones didn't have reception. The whole point of locating a satellite tracking station in this valley was its radio quietness). Like many things that people assume are very modern, I thought perhaps cable ties were quite old, 1850s or something like that. Others thought they might be 1950s or 1960s. Rob pointed out that an omega-shaped clip used to be used to secure pipes and cables to structures. Another question was mass production. While the technology may be old, their accessibility may be recent. Early cable ties, he proposed, may have been expensive, and those at Orroral may have all been imported from the US.  Perhaps they were not throw-away technology in the early days.

What were so many cable ties doing near the main antenna? Were they associated with the dismantling of the antenna? Steve imagined a bunch of blokes climbing all over the structure cutting the ties off, as they took it apart to be transported to Tasmania (where it became part of the Mt Pleasant Observatory). The prevailing wind over the last couple of days had been from the north east; if it had been so in the 1980s, then perhaps the cable ties were just whisked off to the ground, scattering over the grass to the south west of the antenna. It was a plausible theory.

Joan, however, drew our attention to the huge numbers of kangaroos throughout the area (they were all over the site - and of course Canberra is renowned for being the one city in Australia where you can actually see a mob of roos hopping through the streets!). What if the national park had culling programs? The cable ties might be used to tie the feet of the corpse together so it could be transported. (Sorry to raise this gruesome topic).

It was Tom who had first noticed the melted ends of some cable ties, and he told us that cable ties were commonly used by hikers and backpackers to secure their baggage.  They would then burn them off with cigarette lighters. Just to the right of us was a path that already we had seen several groups of outward bounders travel down to the other end of the valley. These groups of high school students were camping up near the old canteen, and every day two different groups would walk right past our erosion site. However, as someone else pointed out, they were just walking through: you would expect to see old cable ties more at camping locations.

So we had some reasonable hypotheses here, and would need to do some research to discriminate between them. It was no good making assumptions that antenna cables = cable ties. We had also to consider that many may have washed down from further upslope, and may not have blown down from the main antenna at all. A key piece of evidence was clearly going to be the distribution of cable ties over the whole site. What features were they most associated with?

We didn't get a chance to do any more transects, but we did investigate the 9 m antenna footing with a group of home school children who came out to visit us. Around the footing, we found a sparse scatter of cable ties. So clearly they were present elsewhere at the site, although the association with the actual antennas was not certain since we had only looked at two of them.

Later, we had a wonderful morning out at the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex with Glen Nagle. Towards the end of his talk to us, he asked if anyone had any questions. I saw a few significant glances exchanged between the students. Hello, I thought. I was pretty sure they wanted someone to ask about cable ties - but no-one wanted to be the patsy! Joan, though, was made of sterner stuff. The glances coalesced into consensus and Joan gave a wry smile before asking Glen how common cable ties were in the construction and operation of the antennas at Tidbinbilla.

Glen Nagle tells us about the history of the Tidbinbilla tracking station. (Author's photograph)

Now, I thought, my moment of vindication. I was a little disconcerted when Glen roared with laughter! But when he recovered, he had some interesting insights. On the main 70 m dish at Tid, he said, there would be 1000s of cable ties. They were in fact an OH & S issue, and one of their engineers was meticulous about enforcing this - if the ends are not cut off, then they can easily take an eye out, as had happened to one unfortunate employee. So we had another factor to consider in our assessment of the cable ties from Orroral. Then he sent his off-sider to the office to get us all a genuine Tidbinbilla cable tie! I was in seventh heaven.

It wasn't until Susan got to the airport and logged in that we found out when the plastic mass-produced cable tie was invented - 1958, as it happens, by the US company Thomas & Betts, to use for securing wire harnesses in aircraft.

Of all the things I expected to get out of using a very 'traditional' archaeological technique on a space site, the discovery of cable ties was certainly not amongst them. My initial field seasons to Orroral had led to me realise the importance of cables, as opposed to the fancy, obvious stuff like antennas (and don't get me wrong, I'm still completely in love with antennas), but it took the application of the archaeological eye and a systematic approach to recording to tease out the implications. It's so obvious when you think about it. Glen, once he had recovered from his hilarity, agreed: there is another story to be told about technology through cable ties, and part of that story is their dissemination throughout contemporary culture, their adaptation to all kinds of uses, leading to their virtual invisibility.

As far as I'm concerned, cable ties are the quintessential artefact representing the potential of the archaeology of the contemporary past.

I will make them visible again.


Postscript
A few weeks later, I'm having dinner with the president of the Australian Archaeological Association, my esteemed colleague Dr Lynley Wallis, in a regional Queensland town on a Sunday night. There's not many places open and we have to settle for a cafe which is also hosting a Christian a capella group.  'Lynley', I say, 'I have to tell you about my recent discovery concerning cable ties!'  'Keep your voice down', she replies.  'There's a lot of elderly Christians about who may not be comfortable overhearing such a conversation'. I'm nonplussed. Why would anyone care?  Then I realise: she assumes I am about to impart some revelation concerning kinky sex. And this, sadly, is the immediate association that many people have with cable ties:  restraint, whether in the boudoir, down at the police station, or in a hostage situation.

Happy Christmas from Dr Space Junk

I'm organised this year!  This collage is from my Facebook status updates, those (mostly) with a space theme, of course.

 

If the text is too small to read click on the picture to get a larger version.  That's if you really want to know my innermost thoughts.

Communicating the archaeology of the contemporary past: an experiment in methodology

Recently, I took some graduate students out to one of my favourite places, the former Orroral Valley Tracking Station in Namadgi National Park, Australian Capital Territory. We did some normal archaeological things (pedestrian transect survey, mapping with DGPS, RTK-DPGS and baseline-offset), but I also wanted to do something different, to see if methodologies touted as being distinctive to the contemporary past had anything to offer us as archaeologists.

This is what I asked the students to do:

All that remains of a once vibrant facility, where over 100 people worked in shifts around the clock, is now concrete footings: the spikes and sky-gazing arcs of numerous antennas are represented by flat surfaces over which a person can walk without really registering what they are - as we observed with numerous Outward Bound hikers, who filed over the main antenna footing as if it were only a changing texture underfoot.  They seem to barely notice the interpretive signs. There are two generations of interpretive signs at Orroral; most people agree that the older ones are not very effective, but the more recent ones, which are far more informative, are only present at a few places near the most accessible parts of the site.  There's a lot of scope to do more, and this was also something I wanted the students to think about too.

So what happened?  Was this experiment worth it?  Most definitely, but not necessarily in the ways I was expecting.  And I wasn't really sure what I was expecting!

A few students took a little while to feel comfortable with the fact that it was THEIR instincts that were important here, and what appeared to be stupid to them was really exactly what I was looking for. Some were initially cautious, but no-one refused to do it or made too much of a fuss about it, despite the fact that it wasn't being assessed.

The first result was that approaching the site in this way caused the students to be very observant, paying attention to the meaning of ephemeral traces and relationships between structures.  They saw things that I had never paid any particular attention to, even though I was far more familiar with the site than they. Helen wrote an evocative piece about the fading white paint outlining parking places outside buildings such as the Minitrack Operations Building, a presence implying the absence of cars and workers. She noted that while these lines were "Ephemera appearing on no plan or map or survey, they have yet outlasted the buildings and hardware and people". Tom used photographs, from the interpretation panels, of the tracking station in operation and located the same perspectives now, juxtaposing the vibrancy of the peopled landscape with the silence of the concrete footings, and the decades of tree growth since the original photographs were taken. Steve put the people back in: on the flat floors without walls, he posed his fellow students carrying out activities that would once have happened in that building:  serving food in the canteen, sitting on a toilet, processing data in the operations building while looking at the view out to the 26 m antenna, sweeping the concrete curtain around the dish's base.

Cultural significance is not just about historic events and people; it's also about the senses, or what the Burra Charter (1999) defines as aesthetic significance (NOT to be confused with aesthetics).  Some students chose to engage senses other than sight, using both the real and imagined sounds of the site to evoke Orroral as it was in the past and in the present. Joan put a schematic engineering drawing of the 26 m antenna together with a broadcast from space: the voices of the astronauts communicating with ground control as the dish provided comms for a space shuttle mission, thus giving life and rapid movement to this monolithic structure. Jon showed a picture of the almost desolate, windswept northern end of the site, the valley enclosed by a bowl of alpine ranges that isolate it from radio interference, and played a recording of the wind and solitary bird calls: the loneliness of the abandoned tracking station that once spoke to the stars.

Poetry featured too. Lance asked us to close our eyes while he recited his words, removing us from the large common room and into his private vision; Susan used a whiteboard to draw the features of the site as she wove the outline of a yet-to-be-written poem together from fragments of the past and the present, a work in progress.

Susan, Liam and the poem taking shape on the whiteboard

John, our intrepid technical officer, emerged in his fluoro vest, set up the dumpy level tripod, tipped a bag of rubbish on to the floor, and lay down with his hat over his face: the postprandial nap amidst the wreckage of lunch. The rubbish had been collected from the site: he had very carefully picked up drink and food containers on which the use-by date was after 2011, reasoning that they were actually rubbish and not artefacts as they half-existed in the future. In this careful act he has captured all the paradoxes of the archaeology of the contemporary past, and I think he was a little taken aback when I insisted that we keep his collection for analysis .......

John naps amidst the artefacts of the future

Another principle of contemporary archaeology is 'making the familiar unfamiliar'. When you're looking at recent material culture, we are so used to it that we don't necessarily perceive its role in our lives. But, as Colleen Beck has pointed out, much of the technology of the recent past is anything but familiar. We all know of nuclear testing and the terrible deployments of these weapons, but could any of us identify the components of a test site and figure out what went on there? We all use satellite technology, but could we identify Orroral Valley as a tracking station by the layout and antenna footings alone? These kinds of places, which define the global technologies of the recent past, are frequently inaccessible and mysterious. They need interpreting; they're places that help us make sense of the world we live in.

Jonathan showed a photo of the 9 m antenna footing: much more intimate in scale than the big dish. He talked about popular quizzes where people have to guess what an object is. Asking us to place ourselves in the role of a 'lay' listener/viewer, he asked 'What is it?'.  Indeed. What, actually, is this circle of concrete with a sloped half-amphitheatrical wall behind it? How do we describe this structure?

The students connected a place, trace or structure with imagined human actions - and hence stories - creating new avenues for approaching the interpretation of the site and making it real. But the most stunning outcome was when the students presented their pieces before the small audience of ourselves and four visitors, Johnn, Geoff, Adam and Liam, who had joined us for dinner that night. I wasn't sure if our guests would want to stay for this part of the evening, but they were riveted. Afterwards, Johnn said 'You should do this for the ABC'. He made an interesting argument: because there were nine small snapshots of the site, all highlighting completely different things in different ways, there was something to appeal to the most diverse of audiences. If one approach didn't do it for you, then one of the others was bound to. So in terms of communicating with non-archaeologists, he saw this as a way of engaging the public effectively. The very personal choices the students made about what appealed to them, what caught their attention and how they expressed it, mirrored the diversity of the broader community, creating points of entree into what otherwise might be opaque technology. I was very struck by this insight, that reaffirmed a position outlined in Harrison and Schofield's recent textbook on the archaeology of the contemporary past: that we are the best authorities on the archaeology of us; that the process of autoanthropology or autoethnography is revealing of our own approaches to the material world.

And of course the question you're all asking - was there an interpretive dance?  Yes there was, but Chantal was too shy to perform it!

That was then, this is now: contemporary archaeology in Australia

In this workshop, we're going to explore what makes the practice of contemporary archaeology in Australia distinctive.  Naturally, I'll be doing the space thing.  If you'd like to be in my session, give me a hoy and we can have a chat about it!

CALL FOR PAPERS:

That was then, This is now: Contemporary Archaeology in Australia

February 16-17, 2012   University of Sydney

This two-day workshop explores the role of contemporary archaeology and the state of research in Australia. It is aimed at exploring the methods, theories and subjects currently informing this nascent field of study. What role might Australian scholars play in advancing this area of research?

This workshop is intended to be a platform for open conversation and discussion of ideas. Students, scholars and professionals are welcome to offer presentations of 15 or 30 minutes.

Topics may include but are not limited to: auto-ethnography, late twentieth and twenty-first century technologies, space archaeology, contemporary graffiti, urban landscapes, mobilities, new methods of archaeological practice (social media, art, performance, re-enactment), the post-human, archaeologies of protest, anarchy, internment, migration and the cold war, the body, affect and the narrative turn, the materialities of contemporary life.

Please send 100 word abstracts to the convenors. Deadline: 31 January, 2012.

Convenors:

Ursula.Frederick@anu.edu.au

Annie.Clarke@sydney.edu.au

In praise of ComRadSat and community broadcasting from space

For many years, I was a broadcaster in the community radio sector. I loved it. I started out with 2ARM in Armidale, NSW, Australia's oldest community radio station, which began in 1976. I won't bore you with the details of the shows I worked on, but suffice it to say that I met people I consider among my dearest friends in the world (even if we rarely communicate - I still completely love you), acquired a rather massive CD library, and had an absolute ball. I also worked with the University of New England on their distance education radio shows through 2SER in Sydney.  This was one of the few times I did talkback, and let me tell you, it's hard, hard work (fancy talking evolution to a born-again Christian student live on air with no preparation?  Well, never again, thanks very much). Then there was a hiatus of a couple of years, and I found myself on Radio NAG in Yeppoon, Central Queensland, with my first solo show, The World According to Alice. (I made my first website for that show too!) Again, I had the most fantastic time working with such wonderful people (ditto as above. I do love you even though I am a terrible emailer sometimes).

And I threw it all away to pursue space archaeology.  This happened maybe a year after the beer/verandah/satellite episode described in this post on How I Became A Space Archaeologist (so you see there is a bit more of the story to tell yet).

In my early wanderings through the vasty halls of space history, I became interested in amateur and public space, particularly the AMSAT programme, and even more particularly the Australis Oscar V satellite. But strange to say, in all of this it never occurred to me to put my radio days together with my current research interests and wonder how the community broadcasting satellite ComRadSat fitted into all of this.

The - what is the word I want here? - zenith of community broadcasting was to have your show sent out to all the community stations across Australia via satellite - in other words being syndicated on a voluntary basis. I aspired to it, and I like to think I was maybe not as far from that goal when I left Radio NAG as I had been previously. I'll never know now. And broadcasting has changed so much. No need to cue vinyl, or edit on reel-to-reel (and it wasn't THAT long ago, just so we're clear about that).

Changed so much, that in this google age I do a quick search and find in some small print somewhere that ComRadSat is not a stand-alone satellite launched by a bunch of hippies from Bellingen, as it might have been in the true history of community broadcasting in Australia, but actually Optus B1. And I have written about the Optus and Aussat satellites, particularly about the impact of satellite television on Aboriginal communities in northern Australia (Gorman 2009), and I didn't think to explore this avenue.

In this FoxNewsedUp world, community broadcasting is more important than ever. So many passionate people are out there sharing their visions with the world, and I want them to continue. They are, as I once was myself, part of the story of space that I want to tell.

References

 Gorman, A.C.  2009  Beyond the Space Race:  the significance of space sites in a new global context.  In Angela Piccini and Cornelius Holthorf (eds)  Contemporary Archaeologies:  Excavating Now.  Bern:  Peter Lang

For more information, go to the website of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia

 

Re-entry frenzy: Australian Skylab documentary

An interview with Stan Thornton, who claimed the $10 000 reward for the first piece of Skylab to make it back to the states, and much more ......

Theory, atheory or anti-theory? The state of play in Australian archaeology

I wasn't planning to go to the annual Australian Archaeological Association conference this year (it's in Toowoomba from 1-3 December), but pressure from my esteemed colleague Dr Lynley Wallis (president of the Association) who wants company in the presidential penthouse, plus an enticing suggestion from my new partner-in-crime Tom Sapienza to run a session on theory, has put an end to that.

Here is our session abstract. It's actually nearly too late to submit a paper if you were feeling so inclined, but we will consider anything, however briefly. 

Theory, atheory or anti-theory?  Issues in Australian archaeology

From students to professionals, many archaeologists in Australia today deny that they are operating in a theoretical framework, or question the usefulness of theoretical approaches to their practice. With ever greater numbers of archaeologists in academia and cultural heritage management, what are the implications of this retreat from archaeological theory for the discipline? Since all data are theory-laden, what does Australian archaeology's particular interaction with theoretical matters say about our data?

Because of Australia’s history, location and unique archaeological record, archaeologists here have the potential to offer new theoretical insights into such questions as the origins of behavioural modernity, the relationship between lithics and social behaviour, cultural responses to climate change and the role of communities in creating heritage, to name a few.  Despite the existence of outstanding scholarship in many of these areas, we suggest that an a- or anti-theoretical culture, perhaps related to a broader Australian anti-intellectual tradition and the “cultural cringe”, has limited the realisation of this potential. Moreover, disciplines such as history and geography are currently engaging with a “material turn” (eg Bennett and Joyce 2010), acknowledging that material culture is a legitimate and indeed necessary component of their enquiries. As they look to archaeology to understand how this works, we find ourselves in an awkward position. The question of whether archaeology has developed its own theories, as opposed to borrowing in bower-bird fashion from other disciplines, remains contentious. In this session, we want to examine the nature of theory in Australian archaeology today, both in the academic and private sectors.  We invite contributions which address, but are not limited to, the following themes: 

• Teaching archaeological theory• Theory and communities; theory and students• Contemporary theoretical developments in Australia• Case studies in the application of theory• Historical analyses• The use of theory in cultural heritage management

References
Bennett, Tony and Patrick Joyce (eds) 2010  Material Powers:  Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn.  London and New York: Routledge

Alice Gorman Alice.Gorman@flinders.edu.au

Tom Sapienza sapienza@berkeley.edu

Orroral Valley Tracking Station as it is today

A video shot by mddawson1, which gives you a feel for the abandoned and demolished site.

Orroral Valley NASA Tracking Station in action

Orroral Valley was a NASA tracking station in the STADAN network, designed for telemetry, tracking and command, from 1965-1985.  Orroral veteran Philip Clark has put together this short film of original footage.  You can see the fabulous SATAN antenna, the operations room, and the whole tracking station under snow (it's in the Australian Alps).  There's also the Wresat 1 satellite, which was sent to Orroral prior to launch at Woomera to check that all the systems would work. And - guess what - there's a rocket cake!  Well, a space shuttle cake to be precise.

The Australian Space Science Conference 2011: are we really all "nerds, carpetbaggers, enthusiasts and nutters"?

The week before last I was at the Australian Space Science Conference in Canberra, the annual gathering for space scientists of all kinds: astrophysics, astronomy, planetary science, astrobiology, robotics, satellite development, propulsion systems, education, policy, history, heritage and a whole heap more. (I gave a paper about why Skylab is remembered while Wresat 1 is forgotten, and what this means for the kinds of stories we want to tell about Australian space). A highlight of the conference was the opening address by Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Among many other things, he said that:

Combined, the Australian space industry involves around 630 organisations employing 8,400 people and generating revenues of up to $1.6 billion.  I cannot overstate the importance of the products and services these businesses provide. Today in Australia, there are some 30 separate federal government programs that depend on space industry infrastructure  ....

We need to secure our future in space, to ensure our prosperity in Australia. We have made significant progress towards that goal over the past four years. I have every faith in the exceptional talent represented here today.

Thanks, Kim! After this vote of confidence, it might seem a little surprising that Brett Biddington (Chair of the Space Industry Association of Australia and member of the Space Industry Innovation Council) should give a presentation where he said politicians viewed us as

 ... a very odd mix of people: nerds, carpetbaggers, enthusiasts and nutters .... typically long on assertion and exceptionally thin on evidence ....

An account of his talk was was written up by SBS World News Australia. Now, Brett is one of us, of course; and I interpreted his conference presentation as a bit of a pep talk, delivered with a measure of affection to his community, but aimed, perhaps, at jolting us out of our silos and thinking a bit more about the importance of good communication with both the public and politicians. (I have to confess that I don't know what a carpetbagger is, apart from the title of a trashy novel by Harold Robbins, which I hasten to add I have never read). When I saw the special coverage on the SBS website, I was actually a little shocked at how harsh the printed words seemed in comparison to his delivery. With so many things happening in Australian space, it's not a good time to feel undermined by one of our own!

To me, it was clear that his talk was not intended as a public statement, although there is of course no reason why it should not be reported. And he's right too: clear communication is a key factor, especially at this critical time when political attitudes towards space are on the upturn. However, reflecting about this characterisation of the space community (and wondering which one of the four I might be - I can see I'm going to have to google carpetbagger before I finish writing this; if it involves snakes, which I feel it might, I'll take it), it occurs to me that it probably required a level of nuttiness and enthusiasm to keep dreams, and more importantly, specialist knowledge, alive through lean times when there was no support, funding or recognition of how space underpins late industrial states and all the things that we now take for granted, like global navigation and telecommunications. So while politicians may see these as bad things, we don't have to feel ashamed of our own nerdiness. It can be a good thing, too (leading, possibly, even to Nobel prizes!)

Brett's point is simply that times have changed, and we need to learn some new skills, to be more politically savvy. I like to think I do my bit for science communication in the space realm. 

OK: now for the denouement.

(Wait while I look up carpetbagger)

Lordy!  It turns out to be a very complex term with lots of history, generally meaning a bit dodgy, and no snake involvement at all. I'll stick with nerdiness for the time being.

Skylab: fear and loathing on Saturday Night Live

A couple of weekends ago I was glued to the computer, waiting to hear when and where the UARS re-entered.  The blogosphere and the twitterverse were in a frenzy.  One of the gems that emerged, via @cosmos4u and @spacearcheology, was this video of John Belushi in a sketch from Saturday Night Live in 1979.  I'd not come across it in my search for the cultural footprint of Skylab.  (Actually that's quite a good concept, I think!).

There's a creepy World Trade Centre reference, and talk of probabilities - just the very stuff that psychologist Talma Kushnir identified as an issue feeding public fears.  In general the sketch betrays a lack of faith in official information: of course they're going to tell us there's nothing to worry about!  Skylab ends up not as passive technology, but a vicious world-destroying monster, paid for by John Belushi's hard-earned taxes.

Shades of Skylab: the re-entry of the UARS satellite, and the psychological effects of orbital debris

This Friday, debris from NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is predicted to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Twenty six components are expected to survive, with a 1-in-3200 chance of hitting someone or something. Where it will re-enter is not precisely known. 

Artist's impression of UARS. Image courtesy of NASA

When Skylab was about to re-enter, there was a great deal of speculation and fear across the world. In the early days, NASA did not give much thought to managing public expectations, only establishing an information centre towards the end. Some thought that it was best not to give the public the impression that NASA was in control (only partially true) as it would reduce the blame if anything went wrong! People thought the world might blow up, or that the spacecraft would descend upon them in vengeance for their misdemeanours (see also my previous post here). Psychologist Talma Kushnir investigated how people in Israel perceived the risk.  This is how she summed up the situation:

The anticipation of the fall of Skylab was a worldwide event. Several features of that situation might have caused confusion and emotional arousal in at least part of the population. For example, catastrophes usually occur without prior notice, but in this case the whole world was alerted for weeks beforehand. While the fall was inevitable, its exact timing, location and consequences were unpredictable. For many people it represented a risk of unknown magnitude. The public was constantly bombarded by the mass media with bulletins of confusing information. Moreover, the information provided at the time was mainly probabilistic and varied from moment to moment, within and between available sources. On the whole, many individuals might have perceived the situation as stressful. (Kushnir 1982:85)

Among her conclusions were that 

1. The media played a role in exaggerating the risks; and presented statistics about the risk that were not very accessible;

2. Stress was higher among women, youth and uneducated people - the less education the person had, the more unrealistic their expectations;

3. Fear of science and technology may have contributed to higher levels of stress.

The gendered dimension is interesting here. Kushnir noted that:

in almost any sample, females are more likely to have less years of formal education and less knowledge of scientific and technological matters. These reasons may contribute to their stronger feelings of helplessness. (Kushnir 1982: 92) 

Moreover, they may also be more likely to express their anxiety than men (Kushnir 1981:112), thus skewing the results.

What was the ultimate result of Skylab's fall on public attitudes?  Back in the 1980s, Kushnir felt that Glass's gloomy prediction of 1970 had only been reinforced by Skylab. Glass argued that there would be:

more and more massive resistance to technological change. I predict in equal measure a growing hostility to science .... Hence the fifth .... limiting factor in the growth of science - the psychological resistance of and the restricted support by a population inadequately educated in the understanding of science and militantly opposed to it because of its identification with the technological annihilation of the human environment. (Glass 1970:75)

Sure, it's very Cold War, but one could argue that at least part of this prediction has been played out in subsequent decades. How will re-entries like the UARS, which are highly publicised across forms of media that didn't exist back in the 1980s, in an environment where the public are increasingly aware of the problems created by orbital debris, affect attitudes towards space industry, exploration and science?

You can watch the UARS tumbling in its decaying orbit in the video below, shot by Thierry Legault with a 14 inch telescope in France on September 15th.

References
Glass, B.  1970  The timely and the timelessness. New York: Basic Books 
Gorman, A.C. 2011 The sky is falling: how Skylab became an Australian icon.  Journal of Australian Studies 35(4): 529-546
Kushnir, Talma 1981 Anticipating Skylab: subjective probability of injury in relation to birth order, anxiety and affiliation.  European Journal of Social Psychology 11:109-113
Kushnir, Talma 1982  Skylab effects:  psychological reactions to a human-made environmental hazard. Environment and Behaviour 14:84-93