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NASA Was Prepared to Silence Stranded Moon Astronauts
LarsWestergren writes "The BBC has an interesting article about some NASA documents which have been secret for 30 years, which reveal that if the astronauts of the first moon landing had been stranded because of some technical problem, communications would have been cut and they would have been left to die in silence. Richard Nixon even had a patriotic speech prepared for the possibility. The astronauts, however, did not know about this. "
While it is true that Nasa would be unable to launch a rescue party in time to save their lives, I seriously doubt that nasa would have just cut communications and left them to die out there.
I am certain that in the event of a failure, nasa would have stayed online til the bitter end helping the astronauts try to fix the problems. Leaving them stranded goes against every philosophy that Nasa and the United States stand for. Certainly there were risks, and the astronauts were well aware of those risks, but they were also aware that if a problem developed, and it was unlikely there would be no problems at all, that Nasa would spend every last moment of those astronaut's lives trying to come up with a solution.
Certainly, Nasa would take a big hit if such a catastophic problem occurred, but I think that the citizens of the united states would be much more willing to support Nasa in the future if they saw a group of thousands that went days without sleeping in an attempt, however futile, to save those astronauts lives. It would not be possible to avoid news leaks with that many people involved who were completely aware of the issue.
I'm not saying that nobody ever considered this plan. Anytime there's a crisis, or even a potential crisis, people get paid to present potential solutions, no matter how off the wall, or how politically damaging those solutions may be. Someone might very well have presented the idea that if something went wrong, we cut communications and leave them to die. But just because that plan was presented, along with thousands of much better ones, doesn't mean that it was ever seriously considered a valid option.
And even if they DID decide to cut communications, Michael Collins (I think that's his name) was still in orbit around the moon and would have been unaffected by this problem, so he'd still have to return to Earth. He would be VERY aware of what was happening, and Nasa certainly wouldn't leave HIM to die out there, considering he was still able to return.
I'm also not positive that the two men dying on the moon would have caused the end of the space program. 3 astronauts had died already before that, and it didn't kill the space program. Perhaps all the ciitizens of the US witnessing their death would have brought endless critism, but those men would have been martyrs, and people having witnessed these men dying to advance the space program, and therefore the country they loved, would in retrospect have probably brought more support for the program.
-Restil
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Remember, according to the BBC, the astronauts had no knowledge of this plan. So, we are supposed to take the one confirmed fact-that Nixon had a speech ready in case the LEM didn't make the ascent, and blow in up into a conspiracy. This is worse than the shuttle. For all of this be true, we have to assume that.
1) The LEM was equipped with a remote kill on the transmitter. Note that the crew had a full set of schematics on board. If it was in the schematics, they'd find it. If it wasn't, they wonder what the hell that thing in the transmitter was.
2) That Collins was either in on it, or could be browbeaten into submission. He'd worked with Armstrong and Aldrin for years. I seriously doubt that he'd abandon them to silence if something happened. Of course, the conspiracy buffs will say "Collins would die too..."- but that assumes that we're willing to accept that the LEM and the CSM, currently seperated by about 50-100 miles, would fail at the same time.
I can belive that NASA did have a plan for a failed LEM ascent, and it most likely was "Bring Collins home, mourn Armstrong and Aldrin"-there wasn't much choice if the LEM didn't work-it would be months before another Saturn V/Apollo CSM/LEM would be ready to launch. And I can believe Nixon had a speech prepared for the event. He probably had one read for a failure at launch, a failure at recovery, ect. ect. ect.
Furthermore, a failed ascent would have involved one of four scenarios.
1) The engine didn't fire. NASA wouldn't cut off communcations-they'd pull late nighters to fix the damn thing. Witness Apollo 13. They might have failed, and died-but we'd have heard it live. If they did die, you could bet that Apollo 12's sole mission, if it flew, would be to bring Armstrong's and Aldrin's bodies back home. Medals of Honor, Arlington Cemetary, the whole shebang.
2) The engine fires, but without enough power to put the LEM into an orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin get a few minutes to say goodbye, then suffer an "Uncontrolled Flight into Lunar Terrain". Apollo 12 get to do the science jobs that 11 missed, and lays a wreath. If there was enough left over, see 1) above.
3) The engine blows up. Two smears on the landscape. Communications do get cut off, and Nixon makes his speach, but for obvious reasons. Wreath time again-maybe a return of remains, but not likely to be very much to return.
4) The engine fires enough to put the LEM into an orbit, but not the correct one. Here, it depends on food/air/fuel states aboard the LEM and CSM. Co mputers churn, and either they dock and rescue, or they fail and Collins comes home. Apollo 12 goes and get the remains later.
Occam's razor, gentleman.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
This is simply false. When the orbiter failed structurally, there were no reactant tanks to feed the fuel cells that power the orbiter. No power, and there's no way that Challenger could have sent back anything. (As it was, the final frames of telemetry were not send back via radio, but instead extracted directly from the magnetic core memories used by the computers.)
The operations recorders are powered by the shuttle's main power system, connect to, IIRC, bus MNA. You can read about the power system here.
Note that all the power comes from the fuel cells under the payload bay. Note that the cabin was seperated from the orbiter at the moment of the expolsion. Note no batteries on the shuttle. The AC inverters were located forward-but AC would have dried up the moment DC died. So...
The power was disconnect at the moment of explosion.
The operations recorders require power to operate, therefore:
There was no voice recording following the explosion. QED
The last recorded clear voice record from the Challenger was "Rodger, go at throttle up" - this is when the shuttle is through the densest part of the atmosphere, and can push the engines back to full throttle. There is another word/sound shortlu, which in buried in static, but all you can hear are the vowels. They do sound alot like "UhOh", but with the static, there's no sure way to tell.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
They were pioneers of a new land and new, untested technology. Physicists and aeronautical engineers can only do so much with the information given, and it's up to testing and fate to decide the outcome. The chance of failure on the mission was astronomical, and it is only natural that the government was prepared for the worst.
The men had to know, deep down, that, in the event of technological failure and complete radio silence, there would be absolutely no way NASA could scrape together the resources required to save them before their all too short air supply ran out.
Either in failure or victory, the men would have been heroes, daring to explore new worlds with shaky means of exploring it. They knew in their hearts that the rest of their lives would not amount to that experience, and I believe they would have done it again, even if they knew they could have been stranded.
Boy, that would've made Apollo 13 (the movie) very short..
Houston: "Well guys, we're ceasing all communications. Houston out."
Apollo 13: "BUT HOUSTON! IT'S JUST AN EXPLOSION!!"
The End
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The Avro Arrow was the number one military aircraft of the time - but our very own John Deifenbaker (responsible for the Deifenbunker and the Deifendollar in Canada) said "we don't need that! that's too expensive!" and all 10 Arrow's built were cut up for scrap and the instructions and documents on building it were destroyed. If you are looking for a conspiracy theory grab this and run with it.
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>Hey, wait a second. Back then they were probably using ordinary, unscrambled radio to communicate. I wonder if the HAM operators would have been able to talk to them.
This is in fact what I was wondering also. I remember some of the later missions, some people were monitoring transmissions direct from the moon. Almost certainly the Russians would have had some capability to monitor these transmissions as well, and would no doubt have been quite capable of releasing recordings of what really happened after "communications failure" happened, just to embarass the US space program.
Makes me wonder if they had a way to transmit a command to the LEM to turn off transmissions remotely. Although I agree with most of the posts here that have said this was probably necessary and reasonable for whatever reasons, it still rings kinda sinister and creepy that they would do it this way.
Who is to say astronauts didn't get stranded on the moon? NASA could :)
have made up the rest of several of the voyages in a studio. For all
you know, NASA established a permanent base and left astronauts behind
on purpose!
All my life, the moon shots have been the subject of television
commercials. I appreciate the enormity of these events, but when I
see an astronaut bounding along to surface of the moon, luxury cars
and life insurance spring to mind.
Look, what the hell would you expect NASA to do in such a situation?
Stranded astronauts begging for help which would never arrive while
they run out of air is not how you, me or any of the thousands of
people involved in those projects would want them to be remembered.
Frankly, I am forever amazed by the fact that no one did die on the
moon. Fretting over NASA's contingency plans for the very likely
possibility of someone being stranded on the moon is the sort of naive
ignorance that provides millions of lawyers with gainful employment.
Perhaps it provides an incite into the reasons why, after thirty some
odd years, we haven't made it any further.
In short, those of you who feel a chill crawl up your spine when you
consider these matters; grow up. Sometimes people in hopeless
situations have to be left behind or put down. I am certain that if
NASA's horrible plot was known to the astronauts before hand not one
would have hesitated to go anyhow.
TopSpin
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Depressurizing the LEM would be a quick way to kill yourself. It would result in rapid loss of consciousness and death. Contrary to numerous cheesy Hollywood movies, people do not explode in a vacuum. A similar technique has been used to euthanize animals in animal shelters.
I wouldn't expect NASA and the astronauts to give up too quickly. Most of the astronauts were test pilots, a profession with a high death rate. I've seen cockpit films of test pilots calmly reporting aircraft behavior as they were seconds away from death.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
During the early 80's that community was a tight family. There was excitement and pride. The piggybacked shuttle would do a victory lap around Clear Lake on its treck back from Edwards AFB to Kenedy Space Center. All the local schools would have televisions in classrooms and common areas so that students from that NASA community could watch that month's launch. Everything was becoming routine.
Students watched the Challenger launch from hallways and classrooms at Clear Lake Highschool. There was a sudden explosion. The entire school went deadly quiet. A few seconds passed. The shocked silence was broken by the wails of students who realized they had just watched their parents die on national television.
The torment was just beginning.
Clear Lake was beseiged by reporters. The local police force was mobilized to try and provide some privacy to horrified family members of the astronauts who had just died. But the reporters were tenacious; they were caught climbing into windows and even taking pictures into bathrooms. Clear Lake Highschool was forced to close for a week because of the disruptions caused by the press. And when it did re-open, the children of the slain astronauts fled there; the press didn't allow them the privacy to greive at home.
The press learned that NASA had copies of supposed transmissions from the shuttle during the incident. NASA had found the wreckage of the crew compartment. There were also body parts found by the disaster recovery crew. But the recordings, the wreckage, and the associated carnage were closed off to the media. The media howled. They would have their sound bites and shocking pictures! But NASA insisted on the dignity of the deceased and weathered all complaints. The press were denied.
How dare you call this a case of government coverup! This was a case of people trying to preserve the dignity of their friends, family, and the familys of those people who died.
You want something to get upset about? There's plenty of real issues involved with the Challenger incident.
Go after the media hounds who's appetite for sound bites drove them to invade grieving family members' privacy. Criticize inaccurate reporting as media organizations fumbled facts in an attempt to scoop competitors.
Criticize the American public's shock when they realized space travel, at least with current technology, is anything but a safe, routine function.
But mostly... go after the administration of NASA. Be critical of the leadership that very possibly squandered the entire future of a program that strove towards mankind's next great exploration endeavor.
Dig into why warnings were ignored. How politics played a more important role than technical considerations. And look very hard at the internal "machine" that was generated to keep this status quo functional.
Finally, and most importantly, ask... does that machine still exist today?
The deceased don't have the answers to these questions. Raising their spector does not serve the interest of truth.
I don't think it's justified to assume that the
plan was to cut communications at the first hint
of trouble.
Most likely they would have been allowed to say
their goodbyes to their families, in as much
privacy as could be afforded with the comm loops
they had at the time (probably the surgeon's
channel). But only after all efforts at
troubleshooting and repairing the problem had
been exhausted. It's probable that these efforts
would continue until the last possible window for
rendezvous with the command module.
At that point, of course, they would terminate
communications and allow the crew to die in peace.
What you wouldn't have would be a bunch of
reporters trying to ask them inane questions
about what it feels like to die a quarter-million
miles from home.
Personally, if I were stranded in the LM with only
a couple hours of O2 left, I'd see how far I could
hike on what was left in my suit...
I advise everybody to take information from the BBC with a grain of salt.
While the BBC used to enjoy a good reputation when it came to news, it looks like it's now drifting the way of the British paper press, that is, to tabloid-like "information".
For a precise example: the BBC had a story, linked here on Slashdot, saying that the French Government, disapproving of the use of the Greenwich meridian instead of the Paris one as reference, was organizing the plantation of olive groves and a mass picnic along the meridian. This was bogus. This nevertheless generated 200 comments here.
So, until some serious press gives an independent report on this, I'd not believe in this too much.
This has already been done with the Challenger disaster. Despite the impressive pictures of the explosion, most of the "smoke" was water vapor. The crew of the Challenger were not killed in the explosion. The shuttle remained largely intact and only broke apart on impact of falling into the ocean. The crew were conscious until they hit the water. Radio communication was ongoing for several seconds after the explosion and NASA has refused to release the tapes. The screams of terror they hold are said to be horrifying. And NASA has refused to show photographs of the remains that were recovered because they are too horrific. From the start, NASA tried to cover up. And remember it was NASA who demanded that the launch go ahead despite the advice by lower level MT engineers.
It's consistent with the official statements about the Apollo 204 pad fire - it sounds much more heroic and clean to hear that Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White were "killed instantly" rather than struggled for a minute to open the hatch before the hull ruptured.
Or Challenger - it's more heroic to think that they went up with a flame than to know the truth - the damaged orbiter, passenger compartment virtually intact flew for a few more minutes in a ballistic trajectory until it crashed into the water. The astronauts died on impact.
This patronizing attitude from governments officials who think they know better about what we should or shouldn't be allowed to know about what is being done with our money is certainly not as strong as it was 30 years ago, but it's still with us.
In a way, I can understand them, tough. They were trying to protect their budgets which depended on public image. And these budgets did send my childhood heroes into orbit and to the moon...
P.S. NASA's budget, adjusted for inflation, is almost at big as it was at the peak of the Apollo program.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
One thing I found offensive about that article is the bit at the end where they refer to Michael Collins as "the crew member that did not take part in the lunar landing".
Shee-it, that bugs me for some reason. If he didn't take part in it, how the heck did Neil and Buzz get back?
In my view, Michael Collins deserves as much respect as Neil and Buzz, and its truly a shame that future generations will not be educated in the skill, professionalism, patience and understanding it took for him to be able to look down on the moon, oh so close, and do his job so that Neil and Buzz could do theirs too.
This is a perfect opportunity for media to teach humility and respect for true professionalism, yet it's missed every time.
Shee-it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
What was the alternative? A rescue mission? The technology wasn't up to it. But dwelling on it would have led to pressure to mount such a mission --- which wouldn't have been possible. It would have been a disaster, and not just a PR disaster.
Yes, it sounds cold and callous. But read "The Cold Equations" to find out why it had to be that way. (Quick summary: the universe doesn't give a flying fart about human sensibilities, and cares even less about breast-beating over the unfairness of it all.)
NB: that doesn't mean we should give up on human sensibilities. It *does* mean that sometimes we lose, and there isn't anything to be done about it.
-- brandon s. allbery, sysadmin @ cmu electrical & computer engineering "Think, youth, THINK!"
Following on from the link given above,
http://onlineethics.org/moral/ boisjoly/RB-intro.html
it would be good to know the names of the Morton Thiokol managers that repeatedly overrode Roger Boisjoly's detailed technical presentations on the flaws in the O-rings and decided to launch Challanger despite overwhelming reasons not to do so. In a sane world, those managers would be criminals.
Those same paper pushers are now probably making equally clueless judgements in other major corporations. Should we not be told their names so that we can stay clear of their next disaster?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
:)
That's the media...
Poor Collins is a "minor part" of the mission. He worked like Hell during the whole thing but that does not matter for these people. Not him nor Mission Control nor all the people that made it reality.
They didn't leave their footprints on the Moon so they mean "nothing". It's the typical media stereotype. The Hero made it. And it seems this the reason why Neil Armstrong hates journalists. He just does not want them to turn him into another "media star". Apollo's team was not there filming Holywood footage.
When (nobel prize winning physicist, the discoverer of QCD amongst other things) Richard Feynman investigated the challenger explosion, he found that very specifically it was known inside NASA that the O-ring seals were not functional at too low a temperature.
:)
The engineers specified the lowest temperature the shuttle should fly at as being 53'F. On the day the challenger crew died, the temperature was 29'F. At his report to the commission, Feynman's rather low-tech demonstration of the O-ring material's behaviour was to put a piece of it into a glass of ice water, and show how it would not spring back to shape when deformed - as a seal should do.
Anyone interested in a very detailed story of what NASA knew should read Feynman's book: "What Do You Care What Other Poeple Think?". Feynman was one of the most brilliant people to live this century, as well as being a very interesting individual
They are all covering up the fact that aliens built both our heart and brain. And you'll never hear the government admit this fact. Partly because it's not true, but primarily because they must cover it up or else something bad might happen...