| Summary/Abstract |
At the beginning of the twentieth century, geology was a terrestrial science, one that had no place making pronouncements on astronomical objects. Yet, by mid-century, this science was de rigueur in lunar studies. This article examines the heated debate, leading up to the Apollo missions, amongst geologists as to whether their discipline could tell scientists anything about the surface or composition of other celestial bodies. Precisely because the United States Geological Survey opened an Astrogeology Branch and geology education became a part of astronaut training, geologists gradually accepted the extraterrestrial application of their field and the prestige that came with it. In addition to recounting this disciplinary shift, this article considers how Earth itself became an analog for understanding the Moon. Before Neil Armstrong took his “one giant leap,” astronauts traveled with trained geologists to sites that they thought would resemble the geologic composition of the Moon. There, astronauts were trained to identify different rock types and perform “analog fieldwork” that would prepare them for the science objectives of their lunar voyage. Upon landing on the Moon, several astronauts remarked at how much the Moon looked like the American Southwest, the landscape in which they were trained. Analogy is not just a cognitive heuristics used by scientists, but it is also a technique that can be embodied and enacted, as illustrated by this case of taking geology to the Moon.
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