GUARD AGAINST THE UNKNOWN

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.

To 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.

Pool of Antiseptic

At the 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.

In their suits, the astronauts will be effectively prevented from contaminating the atmosphere. When they inhale, air will be drawn into their BIGs through a one-way valve; the air they exhale will be vented through a 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 one in a hundred billion."

After the astronauts are taken by helicopter to the recovery carrier, they will be hustled without ceremony into a biologically sealed van that vaguely resembles a house trailer without wheels. There they will join a flight surgeon and a technician, who will share the remainder of their quarantine time with them. During the next 67 hours, the sealed van with its five occupants will travel aboard the carrier to Ford Island, Hawaii, where it will be unloaded, flown in a C-141 to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, and transported by truck to the Manned Spacecraft Center.

The airtight, watertight van is divided into a lounge, a galley and an area for sleeping and bathing. Meals will be passed into the van, through an air lock and prepared in a microwave oven in the galley. Air pressure inside the van will be lower than it is outside; if a leak occurs, the "negative" pressure will cause outside air to flow in, preventing organisms from escaping.

Ultraviolet Shower

At the 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.

In the LRL, each astronaut will have a separate room furnished in Sears, Roebuck Early American style with single bed, dresser, night table, chair and lamp. In identical adjoining rooms, there will be three physicians, one for each astronaut, to provide constant medical attention. The astronaut-reception area also contains a recreation room, a shower and locker room, a lounge lined with bookshelves, a dining room and a kitchen. In a nearby complex of rooms, NASA has also put together one of the most complete biomedical centers in the U.S. There the physicians will subject the astronauts to exhaustive clinical, chemical and microbiological tests.

Like the van, the astronaut area will be completely sealed off from the outside world, with its own air-conditioning and negative-pressure system. The air that the astronauts and their companions breathe will be continuously filtered and treated as it is recirculated, to cleanse it of any unwelcome organisms. Body wastes will be sterilized, and any notes that the astronauts wish to pass outside will be sterilized first for 16 hours in ethylene oxide gas. Even the traditional flight debriefing will be sterile. The astronauts will review details of their mission on one side of a glass wall while NASA officials question them and listen on the other side, communicating through a speaker system. In the same room, the astronauts will chat through the glass with their families.

Drastic Measures

NASA has not revealed how it would react to the outbreak of a strange illness inside the astronaut-receiving area. If the symptoms were mild, the quarantine would presumably be extended at least until the disease had run its course. NASA would have to consider more drastic measures to protect the health of the world's population if the illness proved disabling or deadly--like that in Novelist Michael Crichton's bestseller, The Andromeda Strain.

If, as NASA fully expects, no alarming symptoms develop in the astronauts, their attendants, or the test animals and plants in the adjoining lunar-sample laboratory, the three men of Apollo 11 will at last be allowed to emerge into the outside world in mid-August for a belated and well-deserved welcome.

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