Space: Terrestrial Troubles

The Apollo 11 moon mission, which functioned so perfectly in space, ran into a number of irritating terrestrial troubles last week. Since the three Apollo astronauts entered Houston’s $15.8 million Lunar Receiving Lab (LRL) nearly three weeks ago, ten contamination alarms have kept the place in turmoil.

Most of the alarms proved false, but last week a leak in the biological-analysis area exposed four technicians—including a pretty brunette veterinarian-pathologist named Heather Owens, 23 —to lunar dust. Just in time for Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s 39th-birthday party, all four were ordered into quarantine. Their arrival brought the roll of uninvited guests to six and the total in the cramped quarantine quarters to 23. Happily for the crowded inmates, the astronauts are scheduled to emerge this week for ticker-tape parades in New York City and Chicago and a presidential “astrofete” in Los Angeles.

Growing Feud. More serious than the technical snafus, though, was a growing feud between NASA’s engineers and scientists. Ever since President Kennedy committed NASA to a lunar landing, it has been ruled by a hierarchy of engineers and technicians. Now the agency’s scientists are demanding a bigger role in managing current programs and setting future space objectives. Among other things, the scientists are calling for 1) greater emphasis on lunar experiments and rock gathering, 2) a longer interval between missions to give them time to evaluate the results, 3) expeditions into more rugged and presumably more scientifically interesting lunar terrain, and 4) serious plans for a lunar base.

The engineers, on the other hand, put priority on proving out their machines and accumulating operational experience. Christopher Columbus Kraft, Director of Flight Operations, explains that many NASA officials consider landings in deep craters or on rocky highlands far too risky. “We can’t commit ourselves to an area where you have to make a pinpoint landing,” says Kraft, recalling Eagle’s narrow brush with a boulder-strewn crater, “when there’s still only a fifty-fifty chance of success.”

So far, the engineers are winning the argument. LRL Curator Elbert King and Don Wise, deputy director of the Office of Lunar Exploration, recently announced their resignations. Dr. Wilmot Hess, a physicist, joined them by unexpectedly stepping down as head of the Manned Spacecraft Center’s science and applications branch. Even the scientist-astronauts recruited by NASA are becoming disenchanted. Annoyed by the space agency’s obvious preference for pilots as Apollo crewmen, Dr. F. Curtis Michel, 35, a physicist, last week became the fourth scientist-astronaut to quit in recent months.

Rare Gases. About one thing, U.S. space scientists have no complaint: Apollo 11 provided them with a wealth of data and lunar material. Last week, as they completed no fewer than 152 preliminary tests on 55 lbs. of lunar rocks and dust, they made several more interesting discoveries. Geochemist Oliver Schaeffer, seeking to determine what gases are expelled from the sun as solar wind, heated a pinch of moon dust to 3,000° F. Analyzing the escaping gases, he found that the lunar surface had absorbed considerable helium and hydrogen from the sun. But he also noted surprisingly large amounts of such rare gases as argon, neon, krypton and xenon, which suggested that the moon may prove a promising solar observatory. At California’s Lick Observatory, astronomers were finally able to get a reading on the distance between earth and moon. Using the reflector left behind by the astronauts, the Lick astronomers calculated that their distance from Tranquillity Base at the time was precisely 227,000.42 miles.

What the scientists were unable to detect conclusively was any sign of life. One chemist placed samples of lunar dust and rock chips under a 300,000-power microscope and found no evidence of lunar organisms, either living or fossilized. Another chemist did detect a trace of carbon, an element essential to life. But it was mainly volatile hydrocarbons that are familiar ingredients of lubricating oil; they might well have come from tools, or from the cabinets in which the samples had been placed.