Space Exploration and the North American West, Request for Panel Participants, 2019 WHA Conference

Benjamin Carver Announcement
Location
Arizona, United States
Subject Fields
American History / Studies, Contemporary History, Environmental History / Studies, Geography, History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

I am seeking panel participants for a 2019 Western History Association conference session that explores the connections between western history and space exploration.  My paper, tenatively titled, "Lunar West: A History of Apollo Mission Training Sites," traces efforts by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA to find training sites analogous to the lunar surface. I argue that the geological diversity of the West, including volcanoes and impact craters, provided a rich training ground for Apollo astronauts and shaped lunar science.  Lowell Observatory historian Kevin Schindler will be contributing a paper on the role of Grand Canyon in Apollo astrogeology training.  While both of our papers deal with the Apollo Program, we are happy to expand the scope of the session to include other aspects of space exploration as they pertain to western history. If you are interested in joining our session, please contact me as soon as possible!

Contact Information

Benjamin.Carver@nau.edu

Contact Email
Benjamin.Carver@nau.edu