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The Human Archaeology of Space: Lunar, Planetary and Interstellar Relics of Exploration PDF

201 Pages·2010·3.86 MB·English
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The Human Archaeology of Space This page intentionally left blank The Human Archaeology of Space Lunar, Planetary and Interstellar Relics of Exploration P.J. C APELOTTI McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London Also of interest are the following works from McFarland: The Franz Josef Land Archipelago: E.B. Baldwin’s Journal of the Wellman Polar Expedition, 1898–1899, by E.B. Baldwin, edited by P.J. Capelotti (2004); The Svalbard Archipelago: American Military and Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941–1950, edited by P.J. Capelotti (2000) LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA Capelotti, P.J. (Peter Joseph), 1960– The human archaeology of space : lunar, planetary and interstellar relics of exploration / P.J. Capelotti. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-5859-2 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Space archaeology. 2. Space vehicles. 3. Space debris. 4. Cultural property. I. Title. TL788.6.C37 2010 999—dc22 2010021587 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2010P.J. Capelotti. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without p ermission in writing from the p ublisher. Front cover: The lunar rover from the Apollo 17mission; (above) illustration from the plaque on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft (both images from NASA) Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com For Jeremy and Jenny This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface: Measuring the Monuments of the Moon 1 Part I: Lunar Archaeology 1. Lunar Archaeology 15 2. Artifacts of Manned Exploration of the Moon 25 3. Artifacts of Unmanned Exploration of the Moon 41 Part II: Planetary Archaeology 4. Planetary Archaeology 85 5. Artifacts on the Martian Surface 103 6. Artifacts on Other Planets and Moons in the Solar System 134 Part III: Interstellar Archaeology 7. Interstellar Archaeology 151 8. Mobile Artifacts in the Solar System and Beyond 161 Chapter Notes 179 Bibliography 185 Index 187 vii This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I grew up a space junkie. It seems almost impossible to imagine the world of the 1960s now, before the internet and cell phones and twenty-four-hour television, when a child was allowed the freedom to invent new worlds to explore largely without the inter- ference of ubiquitous electronics and associated marketing. When one did come in from the treehouse in the yard, it was to watch Jacques Cousteau build houses under the sea or NASA astronauts walk in space. It is still vivid in my mind, the night in July 1969 when I was allowed to stay up late to watch as the first humans set foot on the moon. Later, I learned to combine the magical word “exploration” with the even more beau- tiful word “archaeology.” As I pursued my doctorate in archaeology, I learned about and began to correspond with the anthropologist Dr. Ben Finney, who had pioneered the reconstruction of the technology and techniques used by Polynesians to settle the Pacific Ocean. When I mentioned to him that I wanted to combine my interest in space with archaeology, he suggested that I should construct a catalog of the archaeology of aerospace sites on the Moon and Mars, “the remains or imprint of Russian and American space ven- tures there,” as he wrote to me in December of 1993. From this suggestion I began collecting data in the 1990s, some of which found its way into my dissertation at Rutgers University. I was grateful that preeminent archaeol- ogists of early hominids and human behavior at Rutgers such as J.W.K. Harris and Rob Blumenschine allowed me the intellectual freedom to follow these data into archaeolog- ically meaningful implications for human evolution. Besides Ben Finney, two others, Richard Gould at Brown and Scott L.H. Madry, then of the Remote Sensing Center at Rutgers, encouraged me to expand my archaeological horizons. From their own work at the poles and the equator, colleagues like Susan Barr of Riksantikvaren in Oslo, Norway, and Bill Thomas, now director of the New Jersey School of Conservation at Montclair State, provided intellectual templates for my own thinking. As I finished my dissertation, the internet began to explode the possibilities of data access. What had seemed like a hill of dozens of files on space archaeology on my desk grew into a mountain of thousands of internet bookmarks on my computer. In recent years some of my archaeology students at Penn State Abington—Kevin Drew, Tyler Callum, Noah Elbahtimy, and Allen Naygauzen—and I have begun to excavate this mountain, with a goal ix

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A catalog of archaeological artifacts that have been left behind in space as a result of human exploration, this work describes the remnants of lost satellites, discarded lunar rovers, depleted rockets, and various abandoned spacecraft. The book is divided into three parts covering distinct but inte
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