Working on the Moonby Dwayne A. Day
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| Apollo Ignorance Syndrome, Appollonious Ignoramous, which struck white males under 40 who had been with the agency less than ten years. “Symptoms are a blank expression, and the repetition of the phrase, ‘What do you mean we went to the moon once!?’” |
But this was not the first time that NASA had tapped their expertise. In the early 1990s, after NASA had been given lunar marching orders by a previous President Bush, the agency had consulted with a number of its surviving moonwalkers about designing extra vehicular activity (EVA) systems for the lunar surface. Their recollections were compiled in a 1993 summary document that is currently circulating throughout NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Its lessons are still valid today.
Appollonius Ignoramus
The authors of this document, Mary Connors, of Ames Research Center, and Dean Eppler of Johnson Space Center, explained that they conducted the study to offset what they called two “syndromes that affected some (by no means all) people in the exploration program.”
The first was what they called Apollo Nostalgia Syndrome, or Appollonious Memorilapsus, an affliction that struck white males in the 50–60 year age range who could remember little about what, if anything, they had done with Apollo EVA.
The second was Apollo Ignorance Syndrome, Appollonious Ignoramous, which struck white males under 40 who had been with the agency less than ten years. “Symptoms are a blank expression, and the repetition of the phrase, ‘What do you mean we went to the moon once!?’”
Connors and Eppler sought to “set the record straight about Apollo EVA” and learn something about it from the astronauts who walked on the moon. So they extended invitations to the surviving moon walkers and eight of them responded. The astronauts were Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 12’s Alan Bean, Apollo 14’s Ed Mitchell, Dave Scott from Apollo 15, Charlie Duke from Apollo 16, and Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt from Apollo 17.
The former astronauts agreed to participate in a half-day session. This started with a briefing about NASA’s baseline lunar mission in 1992, known as First Lunar Outpost (see “The last lunar outpost”, The Space Review, March 15, 2004). They were then asked to conduct a hands-on session with various pieces of EVA equipment. This included the Apollo spacesuit, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), the Shuttle EMU, and advanced EMUs. They were also interviewed for approximately two hours. The hands-on session was intended to jog what Connors and Eppler called “physical memories,” or what it was actually like to move inside the spacesuits. This also included a session with the Apollo glove, the Series 4000 glove, and advanced development gloves, all mounted inside a glove box where the atmosphere had been removed, resulting in the glove puffing up like a balloon, just like in actual operation.
The interviewers sought to develop a consensus to be used in planning future EVAs. They discussed topics such as mission approach and structure, EVA suits, the life support systems for the suits, the use of automation in the suits and life support systems, information displays and controls, lunar rovers, EVA tools, operational procedures and philosophy, and training.
| The Apollo astronauts felt that they had been too rigidly scheduled during their missions and that this should change. |
The moonwalkers said that future lunar mission design philosophy should include the complete system, achieving a seamless integration of the crew into the facilities and the equipment, with the equipment designed to fit the tasks that the crew is assigned, rather than the opposite. They emphasized that simplicity and reliability were important, with routine tasks and simple emergencies driving the design, not worst-case scenarios. The crew should also be “essentially autonomous” and take a more active role in planning the mission than they had during Apollo.
The Apollo astronauts also felt that they had been too rigidly scheduled during their missions and that this should change. A two-man crew should be the basic unit, although they thought that contingency EVAs performed by a single moonwalker were reasonable. They also felt that EVAs lasting 7–8 hours every other day were acceptable, and most of them felt that conducting them every day was the way to operate. The Apollo 15 astronauts had conducted the first seven-hour EVA. Apollo 16’s astronauts had conducted two surface EVAs of this duration, and Cernan and Schmitt had conducted three EVAs over seven hours long. However, they felt that the schedule depended upon the crew’s autonomy. On Apollo they had to stay on a rigid schedule, but in the future it should be up to the crew to decide if they were safe and ready for a day’s work.
Building a better suit
The astronauts felt that when it came to designing EVA suits, simplicity and reliability were the most important factors. They believed that the key to suit flexibility is low operating pressure and a pure O2 atmosphere. They thought that variable pressure suits were an interesting concept that held potential, but were unacceptable if they were not simple and reliable. There was no consensus on the suit mass. Some felt that the Apollo suit’s mass was too high, whereas others thought that it was acceptable.
The Apollo spacesuits were essentially disposable—after the last EVA they were not reused and in fact both the astronauts and suit engineers were shocked at the amount of erosion the suits had suffered in their moving parts due to abrasive lunar dust. The moonwalkers stressed that maintenance simplicity was a key design provision for long duration missions. They also were somewhat mixed about more advanced suit designs such as hard suits, rear-entry suits, and docking a suit to the outside of a hab. The rear-entry design, where the life support backpack of the suit swung open to allow the astronaut to slide into the suit, made it easy for a single astronaut to don his suit unassisted. This is the approach that the Russians take with their Orlan spacesuit, and it was also the approach chosen by the Soviets for their Krechet lunar EVA suit. But many of the moonwalkers were concerned that the large seal would be damaged by lunar dust.
One possible method for keeping lunar dust out of the habitation module was to keep the spacesuit outside, “docking” it to the habitat module. Although the former astronauts considered this to be an interesting idea, they felt that it required more study.
Any spacesuit consists of two major components—the pressure suit itself and the Personal Life Support System or PLSS. The moonwalkers gave the Apollo PLSS high marks for reliability, functionality and capabilities. They felt that future PLSS design should stress low mass and high reliability.
They were also asked about the possibility of recharging their PLSS during EVA, but some of them were skeptical. They thought that this could reduce mass, but they were concerned about safety and leaving the hab on a long EVA without enough consumables to make it back. They also ruled out the use of umbilical oxygen tubes as unworkable and dangerous.
[Expletive deleted] dust!
There was one subject that the moonwalkers were in violent agreement about—lunar dust was a major problem. It got into everything and was very abrasive. They suggested keeping equipment exposed to dust separated from the living quarters. Suits would have to be cleaned after every EVA, both inside and out.
| There was one subject that the moonwalkers were in violent agreement about—lunar dust was a major problem. It got into everything and was very abrasive. |
Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt has publicly talked about the minor respiratory problems he suffered from the dust, which he has compared to having allergies. Although the moonwalkers did not consider the dust they encountered during their short surface stays to be a health issue, they conceded that it could be hazardous on a longer mission, posing problems such as silicosis.
Gloves
Another subject that the astronauts were passionate about was the spacesuit gloves. They all felt that the gloves they had used were barely adequate and better gloves were necessary. The Apollo gloves imposed serious limitations on hand mobility, finger dexterity and tactility, and resulted in serious arm fatigue. This began within minutes of the start of the EVA and continued throughout the day. They approved of the improvements in the Series 4000 space shuttle gloves compared to the Apollo glove, but felt that more work was necessary. Custom gloves are a necessity—in fact, it is current NASA policy to produce custom gloves for all astronauts training for EVAs. Although the Apollo astronauts were intrigued by the possibility of end effectors instead of gloves, they felt that they required greater study.
The moonwalkers also said that tool control was difficult, with the major problem being gripping the tool. The Apollo glove made it hard to grip the tools, and hand tools caused much fatigue. They thought that it was an absolute must that there be a way of holding the tool in the hand without continuous gripping.
Automation and operations
The moonwalkers were not opposed to increased use of automation, but they still wanted manual backups and overrides. They agreed that automated suit checkout was a good idea. They also liked the idea of visual displays for displaying task information, and aural alarms to notify the astronaut of problems. They also felt that heads-up displays and voice-activated controls were interesting, but were concerned that this would add complexity and possibly overload the moonwalker. Electronic checklists were a good idea, but they had to be updateable.
Three of the Apollo missions included rovers. The astronauts who used them agreed that loading, storage, and access to tools was not very good on the rovers. They also felt that the rovers had to be repairable with dedicated tools. Nobody wanted to repeat the makeshift repairs that Cernan and Schmitt had to make to their lunar rover using such supplies as maps, tape, and clamps borrowed from utility lights.
They also felt that experiments should be sturdy. Several pieces of equipment had been damaged by the astronauts who were clumsy in their big spacesuits. They felt that a number of problems with equipment or experiments on Apollo could have been avoided if they had understood the effects of one-sixth gravity. During their missions the astronauts also found that storing samples was problematic, especially when they were in a hurry. One of the astronauts recommended that a simple shopping bag with handles would have been very useful.
| Despite all of these lessons from Apollo, there was one requirement that they felt trumped all the others: “Better gloves, better gloves, better gloves.” |
When it came to operations, crews on long-term missions required greater autonomy. They needed to hold a daily planning meeting with the operations and science personnel plotting out the next day’s activities based on previous results. Several of them were frustrated that there was never enough time to properly investigate a given site, and felt that it was important to give the crew as much time as necessary to document and investigate the exploration site.
They considered it possible to walk back to the hab from distances as far as 20 kilometers. They also felt that operating under earthshine or lunar noon were feasible, as long as thermal conditions were understood. They also thought that teleoperation of robotic rovers should be integrated into operations planning.
When it came to training, the former astronauts were emphatic: “Train hard: you’re going to the Moon or Mars, damnit, not on a vacation!” Many of the moonwalkers had been in the military and repeated a lesson that had been hammered into them there, and they had seen work well in the field: practice everything “so you don’t have to make it up as you go.”
Despite all of these lessons from Apollo, there was one requirement that they felt trumped all the others: “Better gloves, better gloves, better gloves.”