Apollo Quarantine Even Shoddier Than I Thought

In light of the recent discussion of the quarantine procedures for the
first few Apollo lunar-landing missions, the discussion of the
post-splashdown procedures in James Hansen's biography of Neil
Armstrong, "First Man," might be of interest. According to Hansen (p.
555), the Apollo 11 recovery proceded as follows:

"The BIGs [Biological Containment Garments] finally donned, the
astronauts squeezed through the small hatch.... The frogmen spayed
them with a precautionary disinfectant against lunar microbes. Once
inside the dingy, they were then given cloths and two different doses
of chemical detergent to continue the scrub-down. When they were
finished, the frogmen tied the cloths to weights and dropped them into
the ocean, as if banishing them to the deep would eliminate any chance
of a biological Armageddon brought on by an Andromeda Strain.
Supposedly the BIGs were airtight, but within minutes moisture began
seeping into them."

While you're scanning and posting excerpts from the book,
could you scan the page on the mystery object spotted on
the way out to the Moon, that they decided was an SLA
panel -- not the UFO that the buffs still insist on.

Thanks!



"Proponent" wrote in message
oups.com...
In light of the recent discussion of the quarantine procedures for the
first few Apollo lunar-landing missions, the discussion of the
post-splashdown procedures in James Hansen's biography of Neil
Armstrong, "First Man," might be of interest. According to Hansen (p.
555), the Apollo 11 recovery proceded as follows:

"The BIGs [Biological Containment Garments] finally donned, the
astronauts squeezed through the small hatch.... The frogmen spayed
them with a precautionary disinfectant against lunar microbes. Once
inside the dingy, they were then given cloths and two different doses
of chemical detergent to continue the scrub-down. When they were
finished, the frogmen tied the cloths to weights and dropped them into
the ocean, as if banishing them to the deep would eliminate any chance
of a biological Armageddon brought on by an Andromeda Strain.
Supposedly the BIGs were airtight, but within minutes moisture began
seeping into them."

In message , Jim Oberg
writes

"Proponent" wrote in message
roups.com...
In light of the recent discussion of the quarantine procedures for the
first few Apollo lunar-landing missions, the discussion of the
post-splashdown procedures in James Hansen's biography of Neil
Armstrong, "First Man," might be of interest. According to Hansen (p.
555), the Apollo 11 recovery proceded as follows:

While you're scanning and posting excerpts from the book,
could you scan the page on the mystery object spotted on
the way out to the Moon, that they decided was an SLA
panel -- not the UFO that the buffs still insist on.


Is that the object in "For All Mankind"? (I was watching it - again -
last night, and cringing at the occasional wildly wrong film clips.)
In one shot, there's a lot of floating debris and then something which
is obviously a SLA.

Jim Oberg wrote:
While you're scanning and posting excerpts from the book,
could you scan the page on the mystery object spotted on
the way out to the Moon, that they decided was an SLA
panel -- not the UFO that the buffs still insist on.

Sure. On pp. 430-432, Hansen has the following to say about the UFO
seen by the Apollo 11 crew:

begin quote

Less significantly from the point of view of science, but of import
for those who want to believe in UFOs, was a second "sighting" that
the crew could not explain-or at least be 100 percent sure of their
explanation.

It took place the evening of the third day-the day of the first
sojourn into the LM-shortly after 9:00 P.M. Aldrin apparently saw it
first: "I found myself idly staring out of the window of the
_Columbia_ and saw something that looked a bit unusual. It appeared
brighter than any star and not quite the pinpoint of light that stars
are. It was also moving relative to the stars. I pointed this out to
Mike and Neil, and the three of us were beset with curiosity. With the
help of the monocular we guessed that whatever it was, it was only a
hundred miles or so away. Looking at it through the sextant we found
it occasionally formed a cylinder, but when the sextant's focus was
adjusted it had a sort of illuminated 'L' look to it. There was a
straight line, maybe a little bump in it, and then a little something
off to the side. It had a shape of some sort-we all agreed on
that-but exactly what it was we couldn't pin down."

The crew fretted, "What are we going to say about this?"
Aldrin remembers, "We sure as hell were not going to talk about it to
the ground, because all that would do is raise a curiosity and if that
got out, someone might say NASA needed to be commanded to abandon the
mission, because we had aliens going along! Our reticence to be
outspoken while it was happening was because we were just prudent. We
didn't want to do anything that gave the UFO nuts any ammunition at
all, because enough wild things had been said over the years about
astronauts seeing strange things."

At first the crew speculated that what they were seeing was the
shell of the Saturn S-IVB that had been slingshot away more than two
days earlier. After the S-IVB's propulsive maneuver, the astronauts
had seen it traveling well out of their way, on a trajectory that would
miss the Moon and send it into solar orbit. (On later Apollo missions,
NASA intentionally maneuvered the S-IVB to impact the Moon for the
purpose of taking seismographic readings, but it did not do that on
Apollo 11.) So, at two days, twelve hours, forty-five minutes, and
forty-six seconds of elapsed time into the flight, Neil radioed,
"Houston, Apollo 11. Do you have any idea where the S-IVB is with
respect to us?" The answer came back some three minutes later:
"Apollo 11, Houston. The S-IVB is about 6,000 nautical miles away
from you. Over." "Okay. Thank you," replied Neil.

The astronauts scratched their heads. At far closer than 6,000
miles, the object in sight could not be the S-IVB, but rather one of
the four panels that had enclosed the LM's launch garage. When the
LM was extracted for face-to-face mating with the command module, the
side panels had sprung off in different directions. Analytical studies
had indicated the most likely trajectories for the four ejected panels,
but NASA could not track the panels because there were no transponders
on them.

The Apollo 11 crew was convinced that what they saw was one of the
panels. According to Aldrin, "We could see it for about forty-five
seconds at a time as the ship rotated, and we watched it off and on for
about an hour.... Its course appeared in no way to conflict with ours,
and as it presented no danger we dropped the matter there," and went
to sleep. Nothing more was said about the sighting until one portion
of NASA's classified debriefing. Armstrong is confident that no one
in NASA suggested what they should or should not say in the future
about the UFO. What was to be said was left to the individual crew
member.

In Armstrong's mind today, there is still no doubt that what they
all saw was a detached part of their own spacecraft. "We did watch a
slow blinking light some substantial distance away from us. Mission
Control eventually concluded-and I agree-that it was one of the
Saturn LM adapter panels. These panels were enormous and would have
been given a rotation in the process of their ejection from the S-IVB.
The reflection from these panels would, therefore, similar to blinking.
I do not know why we did not see the other three panels, but I suspect
that the one that was directly down from the Sun from us would have
provided the brightest reflection."

How the panel had kept up with the Apollo 11 spacecraft for over
two days-and in fact, was out in front of it-was a simple matter of
Newtonian physics. "When the SLA panels were ejected," Neil
explains, "they had a very slight outward relative velocity, but
their velocity along the flight path was essentially identical to that
of the CSM-LM combination. The panels, therefore, having no
atmospheric drag to slow them, traveled at the CSM-LM speed, but
developed an ever-increasing lateral separation from it." As for why
the S-IVB was so far _behind_ the spacecraft, that was explained by the
fact that the S-IVB was traveling along the same velocity vector but
after separation was traveling slightly slower than the CSM-LM. Over a
couple of days' time, a sizable distance developed between the two.

No matter the thoroughness of the scientific explanation, however,
the fact of the matter is that Apollo 11 did see what technically has
to be called an unidentified flying object. "When somebody asks,
'Did you see a UFO?' Aldrin admits, "technically we should say we
did. But given all the misstatements that would come forth from that,
I'll only tell the story if I'm given enough time. I'll tell a
complete story to somebody with the idea that, once they understand the
whole story, they won't make a big thing of it. I'll try to manage
the information in the right way. But immediately after Apollo 11 we
all thought it was so, 'No, no, no.' "

end quote

Imagine the day time travel becomes reality

One on the most interesting list would be apollo 11/

if ETS did exist they would want a look too/

jusst something to ponder