--- title: Quarantine, With Smiles: Remembering Apollo 11 After Splashdown description: Photos of the Apollo 11 crew interacting with family members and the president suggest that there's quarantine, and then there's quarantine. canonical: https://time.com/3881355/ebola-vs-apollo-11-quarantine-after-splashdown/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-27T19:59:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:35.031Z og:title: Quarantine, With Smiles: Remembering Apollo 11 After Splashdown og:description: Photos of the Apollo 11 crew interacting with family members and the president suggest that there's quarantine, and then there's quarantine. og:url: https://time.com/3881355/ebola-vs-apollo-11-quarantine-after-splashdown/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt96a932dbb7af0f95/69884cc035ba6fdac2c0cefa/141027-apollo-11-quarantine-1.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Apollo 11 Quarantine, President Nixon, 1969 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Quarantine, With Smiles: Remembering Apollo 11 After Splashdown twitter:description: Photos of the Apollo 11 crew interacting with family members and the president suggest that there's quarantine, and then there's quarantine. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt96a932dbb7af0f95/69884cc035ba6fdac2c0cefa/141027-apollo-11-quarantine-1.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Smiles in Quarantine: Remembering Apollo 11 After Splashdown by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 27, 2014 7:59 PM UTC  Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, in NASA's mobile quarantine trailer, meet President Nixon aboard the USS Hornet after splashdown, July 1969. Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, in NASA's mobile quarantine trailer, meet President Nixon aboard the USS Hornet after splashdown, July 1969.NASA by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 27, 2014 7:59 PM UTC The current national—indeed, international—discussion around [quarantines for suspected or confirmed ebola patients](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/nyregion/nurse-in-newark-to-be-allowed-to-finish-ebola-quarantine-at-home-christie-says.html), and the supercharged emotions accompanying that conversation, got us thinking about what just might be the most famous quarantine in American history. In July 1969, after their safe return to earth, the Apollo 11 astronauts spent more than two weeks in quarantine, including several days and nights inside NASA’s Mobile Quarantine Facility, a converted Airstream trailer, on the very slim chance that they might have brought some sort of unknown contagion back with them from their lunar mission. The two circumstances are not, of course, equivalent. Today, people are dying from ebola in frightening numbers, and the spread of the virus has health officials around the globe scrambling to contain it. The Apollo 11 crew, meanwhile, was comprised of three very healthy men who willingly submitted to the quarantine as one more logical step in the long, long mission that had, in a very real sense, begun years before. Still, the photos of Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin at ease in quarantine—in fact, almost giddy with excitement—while interacting with family members and with the president are about as different in tone from the somber images of quarantined ebola patients as one is likely to find. At the risk of oversimplifying, one might say that the difference resides in that place between certainty and doubt. For the astronauts in quarantine, the most intense part of their great adventure was over. For those suffering from, or those who might have contracted, ebola, the most intense part of their journey is just beginning. --- ---  Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, in NASA's mobile quarantine trailer, meet President Nixon aboard the USS Hornet after splashdown, July 1969. NASA  Within the Mobile Quarantine Facility, Apollo 11 astronauts (left to right) Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong relax following their successful lunar landing mission. They spent two-and-a-half-days in the quarantine trailer en route from the USS Hornet to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. The Hornet docked at Pearl Harbor where the trailer was transferred to a jet aircraft for the flight to Houston. 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