Fifty years ago this week , humankind landed on the Moon for the first sentence . It was one of the most impressive technical exploit ever pulled off , fulfill with peril and uncertainty . Given that , it ’s fairish to marvel just what on the nose NASA scientists were disquieted could have happened to the astronauts during and after their lunar head trip . And yes , alien ( specifically , alien microbes ) were on the shortsighted leaning .
The most urgent safety concerns about space change of location during the Apollo program all had to do with the equipment used to institutionalize the cosmonaut there and back , harmonise to Rod Pyle , a space historiographer and author of the recentbook , “ First on the Moon : The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Experience . ”
From exiting Earth to the spacesuit used for the historic legal brief Moon walk to the scalding temperature the spacecraft experience during reentry , Pyle noted , there were a million point of failure that could have end in disaster .
The Apollo 11 astronauts, in orange, being disinfected upon successfully returning back to Earth and landing in the Pacific ocean.Photo: NASA/Newsmakers (Getty Images)
“ The fragile organisation was very robust , what we had at the prison term , but this was an era that was just a few years past the use of void tube in computing machine and electronics , ” Pyle tell Gizmodo by the phone .
One example of possible trouble regard the rocket used to launch them past Earth ’s atmosphere , the Saturn V. During Apollo 6 , the final uncrewed mission , the rocketexperiencedseveral failures , let in violent , destructive vibration that sent pieces of the rocket take flight . NASA lay claim to have worked out the kinks following the mission , though , and the Saturn V maintained a gross flight book throughout the Apollo program .
On the Apollo 11 mission itself , Buzz Aldrinaccidentally brokethe circuit breaker switch on the lunar module meant to ignite the engine that would have returned him and Neil Armstrong to the command mental faculty revolve above . After radioing mission dominance , Aldrin finally improvised by using a feel - tip pen as the shift instead , maybe relieve them from being stranded on the Moon ( the faculty ’s lunar launching in all probability could have work even without the pen , Armstrongsaidin a 2011 consultation , but it was “ nice to get a little policy . ” )
As for the Apollo astronauts themselves , there was ab initio some worry that the downright emotional gravity of hurtling through quad could have weighed on their mind and affect the foreign mission . But the earlier Mercury and Gemini programs , which sent astronauts into orbit around Earth for up to a workweek , had disperse most of these veneration . And all throughout the space race , astronauts were screen for psychological job . There were no hiccough seen during any of the Apollo missions , according to a 1975government reportdetailing the medical aspects of the programme .
“ It is perhaps remarkable that there was virtually no difficulty from a psychological and psychodynamic stand among highly competitive , driving , and emphatic individuals , ” the report said , attributing at least some of the credit to the constant work that had to be done by the three - mortal crew during the missions that provide little sentence for “ deep contemplation . ”
scientist were reasonably sure that lifetime did n’t exist in any form on the Moon by the time the Apollo program launch . But they were n’t taking any chance , having established a quarantine protocol for the astronauts as presently as they land back on Earth . consort to Pyle , though , there would have been a black defect if something unfeignedly villainous had issue forth back with them .
“ So when these guy landed in the water , the Navy divers swam over , opened the hatch , threw in three biological pollution garments , and they had to seal themselves up in these things and go into quarantine for three weeks , ” Pyle explain . “ Now , of course , when they opened the hatching to bewilder the garment in , then anything could have come out of there . We could have had tentacle monsters running around — that did n’t hap thankfully . ”
The astronauts were n’t affirmative about the program , either .
“ Suppose there were source on the Moon , ” Michael Collins , the third Apollo 11 astronaut who manned the command faculty in lunar orbit as Aldrin and Armstrong touched down on the Moon , saidin a recent documentary about the mission for PBS . “ There are germs on the Moon , we come back , the command module is full of lunar germs . The instruction module lands in the Pacific Ocean , and what do they do ? get to the hatch . You get to start the hatch ! All the damn germs come out ! ”
Ultimately , the quarantine was give up after Apollo 14 , for obvious reasons . And though Apollo astronauts did live mild ills like upset stomach and head frigidness during the flights , there were no major health problems document throughout the totality of the programme .
That is n’t to say there were n’t some health event for the men who flew to the Moon . Buzz Aldrin famouslyexperienceda serious bout of low and an addiction to alcohol upon his return . Though some of the tenseness was due to the outsized public aid he was now engender , he also went through an experiential crisis .
“ Further , [ Aldrin ] had expected that the landing of homo on the Moon would have a marvelous impingement on the earthly concern , ” the 1975 report noted . “ He was super distressed to find that the mankind did not exchange appreciably , and certainly not immediately , as a outcome of the achievement of Apollo 11 . ”
The short duration of existent time spent in space during the Apollo flights ( the prospicient missionary work was 12 days ) is thought to have had little lasting strong-arm effect on the astronauts who ventured to the Moon . But a 2016 studysuggestedthey were more potential to die of cardiovascular disease as they got onetime than astronauts in the course of study who never fly retiring Earth ’s ambit , likely due to cosmic radiation vulnerability . A 2018 studylater contradictedthose consequence , finding no connexion between the amount of radiation early NASA astronauts got and their chances of dying from cardiovascular disease or Crab . Anotherstudy , publish just this month , also ground that space radiation did n’t increase mortality for astronaut . But even if the original Moon military mission were harmless to humans , the long ( at least six calendar month ) missions to Mars plan for the future will undoubtedly present newpotential hazards and challengesfor astronauts .
So it ’s worth appreciate the slap-up risk that the Apollo astronauts and others since consider and will continue to take to explore space .
“ Basically , we flew to the Moon using the central processing unit you come up in microwaves now , ” Pyle say . “ It was just stunning , but it work . ”
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