What goes up must come down—the adage about gravity applies to baseballs and spacecraft alike. Since the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957, thousands of space artifacts have fallen to Earth in an event known as “reentry.” Although most disappear from view, dissipating in the atmosphere or falling into the sea, on occasion a piece of so-called “space junk” will survive the fall and land on terra firma, typically far from its nation of origin. During the long 1970s, a confluence of natural and anthropogenic forces pushed large pieces of hardware out of orbit and back to Earth. These events collapsed geographical boundaries and brought far-flung states, communities, and environments on either side of the Iron Curtain into dangerous proximity. When space junk fell where it should not, cultural and linguistic translation and the influence of a truly global natural environment subject to its own arcane geophysical laws complicated untested international liability and governance regimes. The history of space junk reentries—particularly the 1978 “nuclear reentry” of the Cosmos 954 satellite—demonstrates how the nearest regions of outer space became an uncooperative geopolitical actor in a new form of envirotechnical emergency during the Cold War. Like other extreme environments such as polar regions and oceans, I argue that outer space merits scholarly attention as a significant natural force in human history. Contrary to triumphal spaceflight narratives, I also argue that the Space Age became truly global not solely through acts of innovation but also in moments of decay.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Toshihiro Higuchi;
(2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB347886249/)
Article
Andrea Candela;
(2017)
Sorting Out Nuclear Concerns: The Australian Uranium Debate From Jervis Bay to Ringwood's Synroc
(/isis/citation/CBB414955330/)
Thesis
Celso, Jr. Baldivieso;
(2016)
Irradiating Eden: The El Verde Experiment and the Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear prospecting in Latin America, 1954-1970
(/isis/citation/CBB898540521/)
Thesis
Jolly, J. Christopher;
(2004)
Thresholds of Uncertainty: Radiation and Responsibility in the Fallout Controversy
(/isis/citation/CBB001561963/)
Book
Hamblin, Jacob Darwin;
(2008)
Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000774692/)
Article
McKinney, Gordon B.;
(2005)
The Fractured Land of the Sky: The Image of Western North Carolina during the 1986 Nuclear Waste Controversy
(/isis/citation/CBB000660331/)
Article
Kirsch, Scott;
(2004)
Harold Knapp and the Geography of Normal Controversy: Radioiodine in the Historical Environment
(/isis/citation/CBB000750326/)
Thesis
Verhoff, Gwendolyn;
(2007)
The Intractable Atom: The Challenge of Radiation and Radioactive Waste inAmerican Life, 1942 to Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001561527/)
Book
Valerie Olson;
(2018)
Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics beyond Earth
(/isis/citation/CBB041821305/)
Book
Vincent Ialenti;
(2020)
Deep time reckoning: How future thinking can help Earth now
(/isis/citation/CBB345154320/)
Article
Venus Bivar;
(2022)
The Patriot Ecology of the French Far Right
(/isis/citation/CBB995465162/)
Book
Tom Philpott;
(2020)
Perilous Bounty: The looming collapse of American farming and how we can prevent it
(/isis/citation/CBB168245542/)
Book
Velayutham Saravanan;
(2020)
Water and the environmental history of modern India
(/isis/citation/CBB932612637/)
Book
Laurel Sefton MacDowell;
(2017)
Nuclear Portraits: Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy
(/isis/citation/CBB174282852/)
Book
Toshihiro Higuchi;
(2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB212919708/)
Book
Derek R. Larson;
(2016)
Keeping Oregon Green: Livability, Stewardship, and the Challenges of Growth, 1960–1980
(/isis/citation/CBB268188691/)
Article
Graeme Wynn;
(2020)
Framing an Ecology of Hope
(/isis/citation/CBB879465951/)
Book
Christina Rae Butler;
(2020)
Lowcountry at High Tide: A History of Flooding, Drainage, and Reclamation in Charleston, South Carolina
(/isis/citation/CBB376520456/)
Book
David Bond;
(2022)
Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment
(/isis/citation/CBB856832723/)
Article
Lise Sedrez;
(2022)
Scorched Land: The Erosion of Environmental Governance during the Bolsonaro Administration
(/isis/citation/CBB322723417/)
Be the first to comment!