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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

*I haven't yet seen this or a similar article posted to New Mars; I searched for the month with "archeology" and "artifact."

Found it in Astronomy Magazine's online bulletin, from "November 4 Astro bytes" feature:

Extraterrestrial digs
Is it time to start protecting space sites for future archaeologists? P. J. Capelotti, writing in the November/December issue of Archaeology, suggests it is. University of Hawaii anthropologist Ben Finney actually promoted this idea in 1993. Finney, who spent much of his career exploring the techniques used by Polynesians to colonize Pacific islands, suggested his future counterparts may one day similarly analyze Russian and American space sites on the Moon and Mars.

"There is a growing awareness, however, that it won't be long before both corporate adventurers and space tourists reach the Moon and Mars," says Capelotti. High-paying tourists have already found their way onto the International Space Station, and the suborbital flights of privately owned SpaceShipOne earlier this year showed corporate space travel will be feasible soon. So, we'd better start protecting important archaeological sites from the history of space exploration before people get there. "Otherwise," he writes, "we must be prepared to someday see pieces of Apollo 11 listed for sale on Ebay."

Capelotti, a senior lecturer in anthropology and American studies at Penn State University Abington College in Abington, reminds us that archaeological fieldwork has already occurred on the Moon. On November 19, 1969, astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean set down the Apollo 12 lunar module in the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms), just a few hundred feet from Surveyor 3, a probe that landed April 19, 1967. The astronauts cut off the probe's television camera, remote sampling arm, and pieces of tubing. They bagged and labeled the pieces, and then returned the artifacts for multidisciplinary study on Earth.

Writes Capelotti: "As such, the mission of Apollo 12 provided the first example of aerospace archaeology, extraterrestrial archaeology and — perhaps more significant for the history of the discipline — formational archaeology, the study of environmental and cultural forces upon the life history of human artifacts in space." — Francis Redd

Yep...I definitely think this is "an issue."  Pieces of Apollo 11 for sale on eBay. 

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

BWhite

Member

From: Chicago, Illinois

Registered: 2004-06-16

Posts: 2,635

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

Apollo cameras collected by oil shieks as souvenirs? People are people, Cindy. We will remain what we are even after going out into space.

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Give someone a sufficient [b][i]why[/i][/b] and they can endure just about any [b][i]how[/i][/b]

Cobra Commander

Member

From: The outskirts of Detroit.

Registered: 2002-04-09

Posts: 3,039

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

If we want to protect the Apollo 11 site (for example) our best bet is to build a big Moon city within sight of it. Turn it into a park. Otherwise it's salvage, even with words on paper saying otherwise.

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Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

Apollo cameras collected by oil shieks as souvenirs? People are people, Cindy. We will remain what we are even after going out into space.

*Yes, true.  But Apollo stuff is sacrosanct to me.  I feel protective of it. 

If we want to protect the Apollo 11 site (for example) our best bet is to build a big Moon city within sight of it. Turn it into a park. Otherwise it's salvage, even with words on paper saying otherwise.

*Yes.  A few other folks have mentioned the MERs some day being in a Marsian space museum.  I wonder.  :hm:  eBay...egad. 

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

Grypd

Member

From: Scotland, Europe

Registered: 2004-06-07

Posts: 1,879

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

If we really do go further than our solar system we will eventually have to do this. Why I honestly, do not believe we are alone and that all species will make it. This means some will have fallen to the Galactic lottery and the only way we will learn what this race was or could have been will be to do archaeology.

We may well learn just how close we can go before we too could become extinct and why some did not make it. Scary aint it.

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Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,967

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

We have not even stepped foot there yet and already they are planning or have
Planetary Parks Proposed For Mars or Conservation ideas.

A set of seven 'planetary parks' have been proposed for the conservation of the martian environment by two European scientists. Each of the parks contain representative features of the landscape on Mars.

Among the many barriers to this proposal is the fact that while many nations, including the United States, Russia and China, have signed the UN Outer Space Treaty, few have ratified the 1979 Moon Agreement. This agreement specifically seeks to regulate the exploration and exploitation of natural resources found on the Moon and other celestial bodies; the U.S. has not ratified this agreement.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,967

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

In terms of archelogy we have so much still yet to learn here on Earth.
New Evidence Supports Terrestrial Cause Of End-Permian Mass Extinction

Two hundred and fifty million years ago, ninety percent of marine species disappeared and life on land suffered greatly during the world's largest mass extinction.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,967

Re: Aerospace Archeology?

Brazilians find dinosaur linked to Europe Fossil comes from the age of Earth's super-continent

Brazil - Scientists have found well-preserved fossils of a new dinosaur species that lived 225 million years ago in southern Brazil but had its closest relatives in what is now Europe suggesting life was able to cross the once vast super-continent here, on migration of dinosaurs across that continent.

Scientists reconstruct ancestral genetic code Computer analysis blends paleontology and genomics in search for mammalian ancestor.

Researchers have reconstructed a long string of genetic code for what they believe is the common ancestor of placental mammals — a shrewlike creature that lived in Asia more than 75 million years ago.

Now with all the possible genetic material that may have arrived for Mars meteorites. I think that we may see just that in the sequening that is shown. Now hire iron content woud possibly change the genetic code pttern or at least for a few spiecies.