Moon Bugs on the Moon?
"Germs from the moon have infected earth. Astronauts believed to have brought alien virus back with them from first moonwalk. Virus has made astronauts seriously ill. President warns NASA it may have doomed us all."
Today, it is hard to imagine that there is life on the moon. In fact, even during the Apollo era in the 1960's few believed that anything could live on or under the surface of the moon. However, many scientists before the first moon landings wondered "what if?" What if the first moon voyagers infected themselves with some kind of organism and then brought it back to earth? Not long ago Europeans had journeyed to distant lands and brought along with them relatively minor ailments that had wiped out entire populations of natives. Believing that a safer than sorry attitude was prudent, NASA instituted a plan of action to protect earth from any lunar contaminants.
Saving the world from a new organism meant that astronauts would have to be quarantined after returning from the moon. At the time many considered this procedure ridiculous. In fact, it looks as though quarantining the astronauts was done more out of a public relations concern than a natural and realistic concern of tiny creatures from outer space. Those who firmly believed that there was no life on the moon even had scientific proof; several unmanned probes from the middle 1960's indicated no life. However, a group was formed in 1965 to establish a set of quarantine criteria to be followed after the first moonwalkers returned to Earth. In fact this group, called the Interagency Committee on Back Contamination (ICBC), took their job very seriously. They assumed that astronauts were actually going to bring back some kind of contagious bacteria. Their primary task was to set up a foolproof quarantine that would keep moon germs from infecting earth. The ICBC was also in charge of providing a sealed off laboratory where lunar samples could be examined. Keeping lunar samples in an isolated vacuum chamber would allow scientists to study them free from the elements found on earth.
NASA was not happy when the ICBC finally devised a procedure for quarantining the astronauts and lunar samples. The procedure was going to prove costly and time consuming( it ended up being very expensive). It was also seen as an unneeded burden in an already hectic program, but NASA had little choice. The challenge of decontaminating the crew, lunar samples, and equipment brought back from the moon would be daunting. Furthermore, planners were finding that a perfect system of containment was not realistic. Early on scientists realized that if a crew actually brought back a contagion foreign to earth, the quarantine process should isolate only the infectious microbes (if any), because the lunar organisms would reach the biosphere eventually. The bottom line was that a 100% effective quarantine was not possible and even attempting to create such a system would prove as costly and timely as the space mission itself( a perfect quarantine would entail never allowing those in quarantine to leave it). The system NASA finally approved was not perfect, but it was considered reliable if the worst happened. However, despite the best efforts of the ICBC many at NASA were not all that concerned about quarantine and cared only about a successful mission. One engineer at NASA said conservatively that the odds were about 1 in a hundred billion of the astronauts bringing back any thing from the moon other than moon rocks.
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