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

201 Pages·2010·3.86 MB·English

by  P.J. Capelotti

The Human
Archaeology of Space
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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
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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
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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
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