[X] My Assistant

[Stu]

I call a lot of my female friends "mate" Canopus, so no offense meant

It sounds like your friend is having you on, if he really is that knowledgeable usually. If not, then he really needs to stop talking to other people about space and astronomy if he believes this story is actually true, because he could be telling them other things that aren't accurate.

Anyway, I found the real Moon photo that NASA didn't want the world to see...

[David]

Arthur C. Clarke was not the first to broach (in a fictional format) the possibility of a human being able to survive a very short period of exposure to vacuum; Clarke borrowed the idea from a 1935 story by Stanley Weinbaum called The Red Peri.

[Canopus]

My favorite is Neil and Darth Vader having a lightsaber fight.

But I can't seem to link the photo here, lol.

[dvandorn]

Just a couple of quick points:

- The photo is indeed from Apollo 12. The hardware on the ground is the Apollo Hand Tool Carrier (HTC). This equipment was not carried on Apollo 11, since on the first landing, the crew was not expected to wander more than a few tens of meters from the LM.

- The positive pressure from within the suit would indeed have blown the helmet out of one's hands as soon as the neck ring was disengaged.

- The visor assembly (called the LEVVA) fitted over the actual pressure helmet. You couldn't get to the neckring to unlock it while the LEVVA was on top of the helmet. Therefore, you couldn't even take the helmet off in the configuration shown.

- A human being can retain consciousness for about 30 seconds in the absence of oxygen. After that, he/she falls unconscious, and within another 30 seconds, brain damage has begun. A couple of minutes go by like that, and you're just plain dead.

-the other Doug

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Indeed guys, the small wheel barrow like cart, officially Apollo Hand Tool Carrier, was first used on Apollo 12 and the NASA photo ID number speaks for itself. The cart was later also used on Apollo 14. Of course, the last 3 Apollo missions ( J-missions 15 + 16 + 17 ) were equiped with a real lunar rover

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALSEP

A good high resolution photo source is:
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html

[climber]

I guess "your" photo is not a fake canopus!
It's actualy the only decent picture of Neil taken by Buzz on the moon.
I knew, he took at least one

[JRehling]

The link in Post 7 actually tries to look at the human-to-vacuum problem - it's quite interesting.

Doug

An added perspective that I find interesting: A few souls have managed to ascend to the top of Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen. The pressure at the summit is about 30% of sea level. Mitigating factor: The decompression they experience during their climb is extremely gradual and requires weeks of acclimatization. Exacerbating factor: They are engaged in considerable physical exertion!

Now to achieve the same partial pressure of oxygen in a pure O2 supply, you would only need a pressure 6% that of sea level. And for someone undergoing less than extreme exertion, perhaps even that could be lowered.

So if you had someone hyperventilating pure O2 that is as just high enough to permit oxygenation of a resting person (who was also well acclimatized first), you might be able to introduce them to a vacuum "nonexplosively". The pressure difference would be about the difference that a tall person standing in a swimming pool might have between their feet and their head!

I wonder if with this slight pressure differential someone might be able to hold a partial pressure in the lungs without harm. If so, then I would expect them to be able to maintain consciousness for much longer than 10 seconds. Perhaps 60 to 90 seconds. Of course, all of the conditions I presupposed would be more like an effort for someone to "set the record" than the conditions of the Apollo moonwalks.

[PDP8E]

here is a pix from 10 years ago that proves that Photo-shop and/or the typical user's skill has come a long way...

thanks for the chuckle on this thread.....cheers

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[nprev]

Just remember this: Vacuum sucks...bad!!!

Those are some seriously big beers, PDP. I doubt that the LM waste management system could deal with the results...although the thought of getting ripped in 1/6 g does have its appeal. (Hey, man! (hic!) Ya...ya wanna bet me if I can jump over the LM? Ya wanna...uh...(hic)...oh, yeah, I can so jump it, dude. Beer me!)

[dvandorn]

Indeed guys, the small wheel barrow like cart, officially Apollo Hand Tool Carrier, was first used on Apollo 12 and the NASA photo ID number speaks for itself. The cart was later also used on Apollo 14. Of course, the last 3 Apollo missions ( J-missions 15 + 16 + 17 ) were equiped with a real lunar rover

Unfortunately, no. The HTC was just a little legged device that you could pick up and haul around with you, in which you could hang a big bag to put smaller sample bags in and on which you could hang collection tools, like core tubes, a hammer, a scoop and a set of tongs.

The wheeled cart, the MET (Modularized Equipment Transporter) was only flown on Apollo 14. It would have been flown on Apollo 15, had that mission been an H mission (45 hours on the surface, two 5-hour EVAs) as originally planned. But it wasn't ready yet for even Apollo 13.

The interesting thing is that the MET seems to have slowed down the crew more than it helped. Hauling it along took more effort than just hanging all the same tools off of clips on the backpacks would have...

-the other Doug