Cosmic luck: NASA’s Apollo 11 moon quarantine broke down

It's worth asking just how small did scientists in the era consider the contamination risk. Was this a case of willful ignorance of a legitimate risk, or a begrudging theater to placate a general public's overactive imagination?

Even based on what was known 50 years ago, what was the hypothesis for how microscopic particles with billions of years of geographic isolation might hurt the biosphere?

I'm reminded of the "LHC might create a black hole and swallow the earth" craze in our more recent memories.

You can go see the Apollo 11 quarantine airstream trailer on display onboard the USS Hornet in Alameda, CA (right across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco). It's a very interesting exhibit (and the Hornet aircraft carrier is fascinating too) and very easy to get to from San Francisco with direct ferry service from the Ferry Building. https://uss-hornet.org

I may be incorrect here, but based on what my studies of the Apollo Command Module design so far, this article doesn't accurately convey their strategy. I am sure that it wasn't up to the snuff based on what we know now and that some groups (read, Deke Slayton) in the Government didn't take it seriously, but there are a few things that are (arguably) portrayed incorrectly.

Let's start here,

    > The Apollo 11 astronauts’ very return to Earth also put the planet at risk. Their vehicle, for instance, was designed to vent itself on the way down, and the astronauts were to open their hatch in the ocean.

Their argument was that they had a filtration system on board that would continuously filter and re-filter the air through, what was arguably, a HEPA filter. The crew was required to clean and vacuum every part of the spacecraft before splashdown. Therefore, the argument went, that the Command Module's air would be "clean" even if the samples weren't. What would the post-landing filters filter that hadn't been already filtered multiple times?

We can disagree with them on whether or not their strategy would have work, but omitting this aspect and saying that it was designed to vent itself on the way down is less than half the story. Here's the full story,

    > During the three-day trip home, the interior of the spacecraft would be vacuumed several times to remove any lunar dust that had managed to slip into it, and the atmosphere would be constantly circulated through a series of lithium hydroxide filters that studies showed would trap any bacterial-size particles. He insisted that these procedures would result in a “clean” spacecraft that would make post-landing filters unnecessary and allow opening the hatch without posing a threat to the environment.
    >
    > Slayton was adamant that filtering the exhaust from the command module as it bobbed on the surface would raise the level of carbon dioxide to dangerous levels and make the interior too hot for the crew to tolerate in less than ten to twelve minutes. The ICBC members agreed to waive the requirement for filters but were still reluctant to allow the crew to leave the spacecraft and potentially spread germs everywhere. Slayton refused to force his astronauts to take the risk of being hoisted aboard ship but did agree to an earlier proposal that they put on biological isolation garments (BIGs) before they exited the spacecraft. Johnston assured the ICBC members that the filters in the respirators of the BIGs had an efficiency of 99.98 percent for 0.3-micron-sized particles and should trap any organisms they exhaled.

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/winter/n...

They assumed that the astronauts themselves, the surfaces of the spacecraft, and the samples were the biggest risk.

    > Tests convinced spacecraft engineers that the command module's environmental control system - specifically the canisters of solid lithium hydroxide that absorbed carbon dioxide - would effectively filter particles (including microorganisms) out of the spacecraft atmosphere during the 63 hour trip back from the moon. Thus only the astronauts would be a potential source of biological contamination, and they could be isolated from the environment by donning the special garments provided for the purpose. Johnston reiterated that adding a biological filter to the command module ventilation system was not necessary and was undesirable. However, MSC would continue to study the implications of adding such a filter to later missions. 

https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4214/ch8-5.html

They went for a defense in depth strategy. First, samples were vacuum sealed on the moon in containers Oak Ridge National Laboratories built, (maybe the thinking was that they have experience in designing and building high stakes systems that operate under extreme conditions?)

    > These were no ordinary cases, but had been designed with the purpose of containing the lunar samples in a perfectly sealed environment until the box would be opened in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory on Earth. To keep the lunar samples pristine, once they were closed on the lunar surface, nothing could get in and out of them, thanks to the sturdy construction, the locking mechanisms and a triple sealing mechanism at the lid. They were designed to withstand great physical forces, and even a computer simulation of a rock box was created to calculate the possible G forces it might have to endure during the mission. It is perhaps a good indicator of the seriousness of this effort that they were constructed at the Y-12 Plant at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, at a government facility best known for manufacturing nuclear bombs.

Then, once they were on board the Lunar Module, they would use a vacuum cleaner to store as much dust as possible. They had to clean multiple times, store films and other material inside sealed bags etc. Post-docking with the Command Module, the Command Module was made to have a higher pressure than the Lunar Module so that air would flow into the LM as opposed to vice versa.

In the post-flight briefings, the ICBC stated that the crew performed these steps with diligently and "with professionalism" (which shouldn't be a surprise given that they were chosen for their Type A personalities).

Reading further from the article,

    > NASA officials were well aware that the lab wasn’t perfect. Dr. Degroot’s paper details many of the findings from inspections and tests that revealed gloveboxes and sterilizing autoclaves that cracked, leaked or flooded.

AFAICT, the overwhelming majority of these leaks were found during testing. Some of the measures that were proposed at the time were a bit... extreme. Some of the ICBC and medical community wanted to expose NASA employees to a debilitating pathogen to see if their measures could stop it,

    > John Hodge had suggested testing the ability of the lab to actually contain infectious agents by using Q Fever, a nonlethal agent that incapacitates people for several days. MSC management strongly objected to the plan, and the ICBC recommended against using “high hazard agents.”52 Even the regulatory members of the ICBC did not want to take the risk of incapacitating most of Houston to test the integrity of a facility that would probably never have to contain any lunar organisms.
    > 
    > No live agents would be used to test the laboratory’s ability to contain organisms, and no inspections would be done to verify that NASA had actually made the changes requested. The Phillips committee conducted its inspection on May 26–28 and submitted its report to the ICBC on June 5, 1969.53 Area test directors were made responsible for implementing the recommendations and had to sign a certificate of test area readiness stating that each laboratory was “in a state of readiness to conduct the Apollo 11 mission.” The last of these certificates, which were forwarded to the ICBC for concurrence, was not officially signed until less than 24 hours before Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific.

From the article,

    > In the weeks after the Apollo 11 crew returned, 24 workers were exposed to the lunar material that the facility’s infrastructure was supposed to protect them from; they had to be quarantined. The failures of containment were “largely hidden from the public,” Dr. Degroot wrote.

There was tension between the mission and what the medical community wanted. No one wanted to be the reason the country didn't deliver on President Kennedy's dream. But neither were they eager to sign up for the "reasons why humans went extinct" list. Post-splashdown, they did test the samples for pathogenic material immediately, and observed the crew for 21 days.

    > No pathogenic material was found in any of the samples, and the ICBC agreed to the release of the crew on August 11.

They were also diligent at looking for potential spills and contamination. From the paper that Dr. DeGroot wrote,

    > By 3 August, twenty-four people had been quarantined—and the LRL’s malfunctioning autoclaves were largely responsible. For almost a year, tests and simulations had uncovered critical problems with the autoclaves, and federal officials had repeatedly warned that they urgently needed fixing. Yet there had not been enough time to prepare them for the arrival of the Apollo11 astronauts, the command module, film mag-azines, and samples

I am unclear re: what fixes NASA made in the lead up to Apollo 11, but these incidents are the main reason why the author says that if lunar organisms existed, they would have escaped. Except, they weren't idiots and they had a defense in depth strategy here as well, from the same paper,

    > To leave, personnel deposited their laboratory clothes within an ultraviolet "irradiated contaminated clothing receptacle,” showered, walked nude through ultraviolet locks, and, finally, dressed in street clothes. It was considerably harder to leave the Sample Operations Laboratory or Crew Reception Area than it was to enter, enshrining—in theory—the pri-macy of concern over back contamination within the facility

Not to mention that the facility was under negative pressure as well, to reduce the risk of contaminants flowing out.

Were their precautions inadequate? Most likely, but the aspersion that they were irresponsible renegades isn't well founded. Based on Dr. DeGroot's own research, they did their best to be diligent and the final system that emerged was a compromise between meeting the goal and the existential risk involved.

I think NARA's conclusion is fairly appropriate,

   > It is still debatable whether the LRL could have really contained deadly moon germs if any had existed.60 It is certain, however, that building and operating it proved to be much more difficult than anyone imagined. The lunar samples were moved to a new facility at MSC in 1979, and the old LRL is now used primarily for offices and support laboratories. Visitors to Space Center Houston, a nongovernment museum operated on the grounds of what is now the Johnson Space Center, can view exhibits of the equipment used in the LRL and touch a piece of the Moon worn smooth by millions of exploratory touches.

This seems an overly complicated way to reach this conclusion. Should lunar microbes have existed, it's unlikely they would have preferentially targeted humans, or land animals, or macroscopic animals, or animals, or eukaryotes, etc. "Quarantine" was broken at the moment the hatch was opened, if not before.

Trying and failing still is growth if we can learn from our mistakes. I don't think it's wrong to try, rather we must try our best to learn and grow, and that includes as a large scale organization such as NASA.