[X] My Assistant

[As old as Voyage...]

Am I right in thinking that the EVA boots worn by Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17) are the only pair to have been brought back to Earth?

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/Schmittlunarbootright1.jpg

Were the other eleven pairs, including that historic boot worn by Armstrong, simply left on the lunar surface due to LM Ascent Stage weight issues?

One of the symbols of human lunar exploration has always been the bootprint so maybe more of these historic items should have been brought home.

[djellison]

should have been brought home.

What would you leave behind instead? Lunar samples? Supplies? Astronauts?

[Phil Stooke]

The photos of bootprints in the regolith are all we needed! Even bringing back that boot was unnecessary.

Phil

[ElkGroveDan]

I'm assuming that we are talking about leaving them in the LM ascent stage. I can't envision any way to "leave them on the moon" per-se. But maybe I'm making some incorrect assumptions here. Were the boots not an integrated segment of the airtight space suit?

[Stu]

Dunno... I realise the weight issue made this unwise, but I can also see Voyager's point, actually... that boot was the first in all of human history to touch an alien world. There'll only ever be one "Apollo Boot", it would have been pretty amazing to see it in the Smithsonian, in the shadow of all those famous artefacts from the history of flight... of course, other man made artefacts (probes) touched the Moon first, but today we treasure and display items of clothing from ages past - suits of armour, war uniforms, crowns and jewelry etc - in museums, so The Boot would definitely have drawn crowds. I go to as many museums as I can, and would much rather see a genuine artefact than a photo of one, so I wonder what impression would have been made on kids since 1969 if they'd had a chance to see Neil Armstrong's dusty boot in the Smithsonian... so I don't think your idea is too outrageous Voyager. But no doubt it will be recovered and put on display one day in the "Armstrong Musem" close to the Eagle landing site on the Moon itself, just as the boots of the first man or woman to set foot on Mars will one day be displayed in a martian museum, one gallery along from the , Pathfinder, MER and beagle exhibits, so its time will come, don't worry.

[centsworth_II]

Were the boots not an integrated segment of the airtight space suit?

The boot pictured doesn't look integrated to me.
I wonder how heavy it is?

[djellison]

They were like overshoes I think.

Doug

[dvandorn]

The Apollo pressure suit assembly wasn't an integrated thing, believe me. The PGA (pressurized garment assembly) was integrated with a lot of stuff, including the pressure bladder, the plumbing and electrical connections that interfaced with the suit circuit or the portable life support system (PLSS). But the gloves, helmet, visor assembly, etc., were all added on to the PGA.

As for the boots -- the PGA did have integrated foot boots, of course. But there were "lunar overshoes" that fitted over top of the PGA boots. Those overshoes were the actual treaded boots that left footprints on the Moon during Apollo.

The overshoe assemblies were made primarily of foam rubber, and weighed something along the lines of a good pair of boots -- a couple of pounds, at most. But you have to remember, they left a LOT of things on the lunar surface. Their boots were only one set of items -- the left the PLSS backbacks. They left their cameras (with the exception of a single movie camera). They left armrests that were only used during descent. Several of the stowage "bays" in the LM were made up of big, shaped canvas-like bags (made of Beta cloth) that were pulled out, filled with trash and left on the surface.

During Apollo 11, they easily could have returned the lunar overshoes. Heck, they probably could have brought back the PLSSs -- there was a fair amount of performance margin on Apollo 11. But they were going to maintain that margin on the first landing -- they weren't going to bring back unscheduled items just because they had enough margin to do so.

Remember, Apollo was a rather fragile daisy-chain. No one knew just how difficult it would be to lift off from the Moon and rendezvous with an orbiting mother ship. If you get any significant out-of-plane error during orbital insertion, you can end up with any number of fuel-expensive trajectories (look up the term "whifferdill" in Mike Collins' excellent book "Carrying the Fire" for an example) to get yourself safe and sound into a ship that can actually bring you safely home. The heavier you are, the more fuel it takes to change your orbit, and since we had *never* done it before, they wanted as much propellant margin as the system could provide. So, no additional weight that wasn't in the plan...

-the other Doug