Project RAINFALL
Project RAINFALL

Author: Tom Gilling

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1760872156

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Pine Gap is a top secret American spy base on Australian soil, but how much do we really know about it? At the height of the Cold War the chief of one of Australia's spy agencies joined three CIA men at a remote site in Central Australia to toast the success of a top secret project known in US intelligence circles as RAINFALL. The CIA listening station at Pine Gap was officially called the Joint Defence Space Research Facility, but it had nothing to do with research and was joint in name only: Australians were hired as cooks and janitors but the first spies were all American. The job of the satellites controlled from Pine Gap was to eavesdrop on Soviet missile tests. While government ministers denied that Australia was a nuclear target, bureaucrats in Canberra secretly planned for Armageddon in the suburbs of Alice Springs. No longer just a listening station, Pine Gap has metamorphosed into a key weapon in the Pentagon's war on terror, with Australians in frontline roles. Drawing on declassified documents in Australian and US archives, Tom Gilling's explosive new book tells, for the first time, the uncensored story of Australia's most secret place.

Dr Space Junk vs The Universe
Dr Space Junk vs The Universe

Author: Alice Gorman

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0262043432

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A pioneering space archaeologist explores artifacts left behind in space and on Earth, from moon dust to Elon Musk's red sports car. Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist: she examines the artifacts of human encounters with space. These objects, left behind on Earth and in space, can be massive (dead satellites in eternal orbit) or tiny (discarded zip ties around a defunct space antenna). They can be bold (an American flag on the moon) or hopeful (messages from Earth sent into deep space). They raise interesting questions: Why did Elon Musk feel compelled to send a red Tesla into space? What accounts for the multiple rocket-themed playgrounds constructed after the Russians launched Sputnik? Gorman—affectionately known as “Dr Space Junk” —takes readers on a journey through the solar system and beyond, deploying space artifacts, historical explorations, and even the occasional cocktail recipe in search of the ways that we make space meaningful. Engaging and erudite, Gorman recounts her background as a (nonspace) archaeologist and how she became interested in space artifacts. She shows us her own piece of space junk: a fragment of the fuel tank insulation from Skylab, the NASA spacecraft that crash-landed in Western Australia in 1979. She explains that the conventional view of the space race as “the triumph of the white, male American astronaut” seems inadequate; what really interests her, she says, is how everyday people engage with space. To an archaeologist, objects from the past are significant because they remind us of what we might want to hold on to in the future.

Goddard
Goddard

Author: Goddard Space Flight Center

Publisher:

Published: 1964

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13:

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That Was Then, This Is Now
That Was Then, This Is Now

Author: Anne Clarke

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-02-08

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1443888710

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That Was Then, This Is Now is a compendium of innovative research into the ideas, experiences, and iconographies embodied in materialities of the recent past. Drawing upon a variety of disciplines, including archaeology, history, art, and cultural geography, authors examine themes of relevance to the contemporary world, such as the impacts of automobility, the invisible effects of radioactivity, and the scale of future cities. It serves as a reminder, moreover, that issues that confront us as global citizens – mass consumption, population growth, technological development, and the conditions of belonging – find expression in the everyday objects, images and vestiges encountered in our ordinary lives. Through their examination of such artefacts as comic books, road memorials, bullet holes, showbags and cable ties, the authors explore the complex relations between people, places, and things and the emotions underpinning them – nostalgia, play, grief, and humour. Issues and ideas of international scope are addressed through a focused approach as authors locate their site-specific studies in both rural and urban geographies, as well as in the spaces of the imagination, the universe and even the personal home. Given the enormous scale and diversity of material generated by the practices of living in the present, it is difficult to imagine how the archaeologies and material cultures of the contemporary world may be defined. The studies presented here offer a way forward, and, in doing so, point reflexively to the past, as well as the now and the future of things to come.