Perfectly preserved or recklessly wrecked? Thoughts on space heritage.

I’ll admit I thought the idea of extra-terrestrial heritage sites was nonsense when I first heard it. A few people have changed my mind, especially the work of Alice Gorman who has made the point that a lot of history could be lost if we think of satellites purely as junk. Now she’s considering what should be on a space heritage list. Greg Fewer has already suggested that a Lunar and Martian sites and monuments record is needed. Alice Gorman is expanding that idea to anywhere off-planet. How do you draw up a list of space heritage sites?

Alice is using a Facebook application and there’s a discussion board to go with it. She mentions two things about her list that are odd. One is that the list is supposed to be a coherent list. There could be gaps in her list which need to be filled. In contrast something like the New 7 Wonders list just needed seven top wonders. There was no overall aim.

The other is she’s very open about the importance of nationalism in the list. Archaeologists can get very worked up about nationalism. Just glancing over to my book shelf I can see a couple of books on the topic, and the dangers of nationalism in interpreting archaeological sites and artefacts. Alice Gorman’s very honest about taking a different tack, and I think she’s absolutely right. Space exploration doesn’t really make any sense without considering nationalism. I think if you’re going to make a meaningful list, one that’s actually accepted and used, then you have to take that into account.

Why would you need such a list? Already plans are being drawn up to revist Tranquility Base by private corporations. It’s not going to happen next year, but if investment follows the recession it’s not impossible we’ll see Richard Branson landing on virgin soil* on the Moon. Sooner or later someone will decide the world would be better off without a specific piece of junk – or else declare it derelict and salvage it for its historical value. While it’s not an immediate threat, I think Alice Gorman’s work would be important in establishing the principle that some of these satellites have heritage value. The alternative is realising that after they’ve been lost.

That’s why I’d respectfully disagree with the Ghost Writer who says, in an otherwise excellent post, that Exoarchaeology is a pseudoscience. (Now if the word xenoarchaeology had been used I might have agreed. The only remotely good xenoarchaeology paper I can recall was one which proposed massive orbital structures might create diffraction patterns visible in starlight)

*It wouldn’t actually be soil, it’d be regolith because there’s no organic component.