[FWD] Apollo veterans to get moon rocks (sort of)

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 05:16:02 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

I wrote:
The quarantine procedures were abolished for Apollo 14 and later...

Wups, correction: Apollo 15 and later.

Discontinuing quarantine was recommended after Apollo 12, based on the
completely negative biological results from the first two landings'
samples, with a possible exception for unusual missions that might have
new opportunities for contamination. Quarantine was in fact retained for
Apollo 13 (and then 14, whose mission plan was basically a repeat of 13's)
because of some vague combination of the first non-mare landing site and
the first deep core sample, plus probably a certain amount of bureaucratic
inertia.

....In fact, it was stated on most of the news services at the time
covering A14 that, had A13 not had its little incedent, A14 would have
not undergone quarantine. Apparently the decision was to go through
the entire quarantine procedure one more time "just to be safe", even
though the entire procedure was somewhat flawed to begin with. Had a
full quarantine been desired, once the CM was in the water, the first
thing the frogmen do is douse the hell out of the apex docking port(*)
with betadine, then latch on the chopper tethers and, with crew still
safe inside and sealed up, hoist the CM to the carrier deck. Then,
once on board, the CM would then be encased in a special portable
"clam shell" room that sealed the CM off from the outside world. From
there, the crew would egress with the assistance of the Airstream
crew, and proceed through an airlock corridor to the MQF instead of
donning the BIGs and walking through the open air to spread more germs
if they exist.

(*) Note that this would be the only area exposed to "moon germs" that
was outside the sealed cabin, and would have been protected from
reentry heat that would have sterilized the outside of the CM.
Granted, if anything did in fact exist to hitch a ride back in this
area of the CM, it would have had ample time to escape when the apex
cover blew off prior to chute deployment. Still, the exposure level
would have been a magnitude less than what was actually experienced
during crew recovery.

OM

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In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:
...Had a
full quarantine been desired, once the CM was in the water, the first
thing the frogmen do is douse the hell out of the apex docking port(*)
with betadine, then latch on the chopper tethers and, with crew still
safe inside and sealed up, hoist the CM to the carrier deck...

If (dim) memory serves, that *was* originally the plan... but then they
found out, on one of the pre-landing test flights, that under just the
wrong sea conditions, it was possible for the carrier's crane to *drop*
the capsule back into the water. At which point, crew safety trumped
quarantine thoroughness.

(There was a lot of lip service to the quarantine stuff, because many
people found it impossible to take seriously, given the surface conditions
of the Moon. It would have been easier to insist on doing it right if
there had actually seemed to be a significant chance of trouble.)
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