The Nonlinear Library LW - Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11 by eukaryote
Jan 7, 2024
56:42
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11, published by eukaryote on January 7, 2024 on LessWrong.
[Header image: Photo of the lunar lander taken during Apollo 11.]
In 1969, after successfully bringing men back from landing on the moon, the astronauts, spacecraft, and all the samples from the moon surface were quarantined for 21 days. This was to account for the possibility that they were carrying hostile moon germs. Once the quarantine was up and the astronauts were not sick, and extensive biological testing on them and the samples showed no signs of infection or unexpected life, the astronauts were released.
We know now that the moon is sterile. We didn't always know this. That was one of the things we hoped to find out from the Apollo 11 program, which was the first time not only that people would visit another celestial body, but that material from another celestial body would be brought back in a relatively pristine fashion to earth. The possibilities were huge.
The possibilities included life, although nobody thought this was especially likely. But in that slim chance of life, there was a chance that life would be harmful to humans or the earth environment. Human history is full of organisms wrecking havoc when introduced to a new location - smallpox in the Americas, rats in Pacific Islands, water hyacinth outside of South America.
NASA, Congress, and various other federal agencies were apparently convinced to spend millions of dollars building an extensive new facility and take extensive other measures to address this possibility.
This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at great effort and expense during the 1969 Apollo landing.
I've added my sources throughout, but a lot of this work draws from two very good pieces: Michael Meltzer's When Biospheres Collide [1] and Mangus and Larsen's Lunar Receiving Laboratory Project History[2].
Terms
Forward contamination: The risk that organisms from earth would be present on a spacecraft and would be carried onto a planet (or other celestial body). They might even be able to replicate there.
The risks from forward contamination are:
Harming current research efforts (including determining if there is indigenous life on a planet)
Permanently harming future research efforts
Permanently disrupting a pristine natural environment (whether or not it has indigenous life)
Back contamination: The theoretical risk that organisms indigenous to another celestial body are returned to earth - alongside samples or inadvertently - and replicate in the environment or as a pathogen.
The risks from back contamination are:
Earth ecosystems, crops, or humans are harmed
NASA's modern terms are "restricted vs. unrestricted earth return," about material samples (rocks, dust, gas, etc) returning from celestial bodies. Samples that are understood to be sterile and harmless would not be subjected to quarantine. Since we are now very certain that the moon is sterile, new samples coming back from the moon would be considered unrestricted. (A space agency might still want to handle an unrestricted sample with special precautions, but these would be to keep the sample protected, not because they thought the sample might contain organisms.) Apollo 11 is the first restricted earth return process.
Regarding the facility, I default to using "Lunar Receiving Laboratory" or "LRL" here, which did end up being the name of the facility in question; you will also sometimes see "Lunar Sample Receiving Laboratory" or "LSRL" for the same.
How back contamination risks became a concern
From 1959, concern over back contamination risk was extremely niche. By 1966, mitigation of back contamination risk had become a requirement for the entire moon landing mission. How did this happen?
Forward contamin...
[Header image: Photo of the lunar lander taken during Apollo 11.]
In 1969, after successfully bringing men back from landing on the moon, the astronauts, spacecraft, and all the samples from the moon surface were quarantined for 21 days. This was to account for the possibility that they were carrying hostile moon germs. Once the quarantine was up and the astronauts were not sick, and extensive biological testing on them and the samples showed no signs of infection or unexpected life, the astronauts were released.
We know now that the moon is sterile. We didn't always know this. That was one of the things we hoped to find out from the Apollo 11 program, which was the first time not only that people would visit another celestial body, but that material from another celestial body would be brought back in a relatively pristine fashion to earth. The possibilities were huge.
The possibilities included life, although nobody thought this was especially likely. But in that slim chance of life, there was a chance that life would be harmful to humans or the earth environment. Human history is full of organisms wrecking havoc when introduced to a new location - smallpox in the Americas, rats in Pacific Islands, water hyacinth outside of South America.
NASA, Congress, and various other federal agencies were apparently convinced to spend millions of dollars building an extensive new facility and take extensive other measures to address this possibility.
This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at great effort and expense during the 1969 Apollo landing.
I've added my sources throughout, but a lot of this work draws from two very good pieces: Michael Meltzer's When Biospheres Collide [1] and Mangus and Larsen's Lunar Receiving Laboratory Project History[2].
Terms
Forward contamination: The risk that organisms from earth would be present on a spacecraft and would be carried onto a planet (or other celestial body). They might even be able to replicate there.
The risks from forward contamination are:
Harming current research efforts (including determining if there is indigenous life on a planet)
Permanently harming future research efforts
Permanently disrupting a pristine natural environment (whether or not it has indigenous life)
Back contamination: The theoretical risk that organisms indigenous to another celestial body are returned to earth - alongside samples or inadvertently - and replicate in the environment or as a pathogen.
The risks from back contamination are:
Earth ecosystems, crops, or humans are harmed
NASA's modern terms are "restricted vs. unrestricted earth return," about material samples (rocks, dust, gas, etc) returning from celestial bodies. Samples that are understood to be sterile and harmless would not be subjected to quarantine. Since we are now very certain that the moon is sterile, new samples coming back from the moon would be considered unrestricted. (A space agency might still want to handle an unrestricted sample with special precautions, but these would be to keep the sample protected, not because they thought the sample might contain organisms.) Apollo 11 is the first restricted earth return process.
Regarding the facility, I default to using "Lunar Receiving Laboratory" or "LRL" here, which did end up being the name of the facility in question; you will also sometimes see "Lunar Sample Receiving Laboratory" or "LSRL" for the same.
How back contamination risks became a concern
From 1959, concern over back contamination risk was extremely niche. By 1966, mitigation of back contamination risk had become a requirement for the entire moon landing mission. How did this happen?
Forward contamin...