[Tea With Alice] Alice Gorman – Space ArcheologyCast

Alice Gorman – Space ArcheologyCast

13/07/2019 by Alice Fraser

Web player: http://podplayer.net/?id=75834063
Episode: http://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/alicepodcast/242_alice_gorman_-_space_archeologycast.mp3

Alice Gorman, aka Dr Space Junk talks to Alice about the heritage of the moon, driving giant trucks, mining interests and space animals.

Find Alice Gorman at @drspacejunk
Alice is at @aliterative as ever.

Start Date: 14 September 2019

Finish Date: 6 October 2019

Notes:

• There was a massive gap between starting and finishing this episode, thanks to a trade fair, a vacation, and a general abandonment of routine and commuting for three weeks. So it goes.
• I had come across Dr Alice Gorman in the Flash Forward episode on space junk. So when the episode downloaded and I saw the title and the show notes, it was a pleasant surprise to see her again, and that too, an entire episode with her. When I played the episode and found that she’s Alice Fraser’s cousin, what a delightful coincidence. Moving on, though.
• Right, so of all the things I remember from the first half of the episode that I listened to almost a month ago – the details of her curious career in space archaeology were discussed in the Flash Foward episode, and just discussed in more detail in Tea With Alice. But what stuck out for me is her description of interviewing people on space programs on how they felt about specific satellites or spacecraft, and how reactions would be split between people talking enthusiastically about their emotional response, and people outraged at the thought that they could have an emotional response.
• After ten years in manufacturing, I may have lost emotional responses to both equipment and finished products after getting jaded and losing the wonder. But I can’t imagine being shocked or angry at the thought of having an emotional response.
• I didn’t know that Alice Gorman also worked on cultural heritage site preservation and how it links up with her view of space archaeology. How very cool.
• The bit about moving a power line ten metres hit a little too close to a current work crisis.
• I can confirm that drilling and mining rigs are super cool to look at and be around.
• Her advice on how to maintain sanity with conspiracy theorists emailing in was… interesting. But even more, it made me miss the days of the early 2000s when putting your email up for anybody to email you, and looking forward to email from strangers, was a thing.