Word: apollo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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EVEN if their mission is a complete triumph, the Apollo 11 astronauts will face a reception far different from those accorded to previous space heroes on their return to earth. There will be no casual camaraderie with the frogmen after splashdown, no lengthy welcoming rites aboard the recovery carrier, no embraces with their wives in Houston. The moon voyagers will be treated-literally-as if they had the plague...
...guard against the remote possibility that they are harboring unknown lunar organisms that might endanger life on earth, the astronauts will be forced to exchange the isolation of space for a terrestrial variety nearly as lonely. For 21 days after Apollo leaves the moon, they will be in quarantine...
...recovery site in the Pacific, a frogman dressed in an all-enveloping biological insulation garment (BIG) will open the command-module hatch, toss in three similar garments and quickly close it again. Inside the Apollo cabin, the astronauts will don and seal their BIGs before reopening the hatch and stepping into a pool of antiseptic at the bottom of an adjacent rubber raft. Almost immediately, the frogman will again close the hatch, spray antiseptic around its edges, and then give the astronauts themselves a thorough spraying...
...biological filter designed to block the passage of tiny organisms. Conversely, the frogman will be protected by a biological filter to screen the air that he inhales. Some scientists fear that these elaborate precautions-and those that follow-could be negated during the two brief intervals when the Apollo hatch is opened; alien organisms inside the spacecraft could take these opportunities to escape into the air and the sea. Space officials consider that an extremely remote possibility. Says Persa Bell, director of NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory: "The chance of bringing anything harmful back from the moon is probably...
...Manned Spacecraft Center, the van will be rolled up to the Lunar Receiving Lab (LRL), an 83,000-sq.-ft., $15.8 million building designed specifically to house the astronauts and lunar samples during the quarantine period. After walking through an airtight plastic tunnel extended from the van, the Apollo crewmen and their two traveling companions will enter the astronaut-reception area, which occupies about a third of the laboratory. A dozen others -NASA physicians, technicians, a cook and a public relations man-will join them until the quarantine period ends...