A friend of mine posted a photo elsewhere of Neil Armstrong supposedly having briefly de-helmeted while standing on the Moon, to see what effect this would have.

I think my friend must be joking.

I have NEVER heard of this prior, nor seen the photo. Google yields no results.

I was a little kid during Apollo, know quite a few things about the program though not exhaustively. But I do question this.

? Can anyone advise? Thanks.

Complete fiction - there are pictures of Neil with his helmet off INSIDE the LEM after the spacewalk finished - but if he had done it on the moon during the EVA it would have meant a very rapid and certain death.

Doug

I think it's a pretty safe bet he was, yes...

One thing you don't want to do in a vacuum is take your helmet off. Have you seen what happened to Arnie in the film TOTAL RECALL when he takes his helmet off? Well, it wouldn't be as melodramatic or bloody a death as that, but it would definitely be a death.

My friend is dead serious, though; have interacted with him for years. And he's otherwise not the "joke around" type -- especially not when it comes to facts. He's quite knowledgeable about planetary science, the history of space exploration, etc.

I'm frankly surprised he would post and comment on that photo as though it were fact:



That's his comment. I've known him long enough to know he's serious. :-\ If he's not being serious, it's the first time I've "misunderstood" him in that context.

And yes, I'm certain such a thing is impossible...which is why I'm surprised HE apparently does! Just the fact that he'd put it forth as fact made me wonder if I were losing it...

Well....
You obviously don't know him well enough yet.

An obvious photoshop job - the 'head' in that shot has been lifted from a shot taken inside, after the EVA.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/...S11-37-5528.jpg
high res : http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/...1-37-5528HR.jpg

Doug

He also posted this link in conjunction with that photo/comment:

http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum.html

He refers to Joe Kittinger, Jr., having (supposedly) lost pressurization in his right glove during a 19.5 mile ascent in an unpressurized balloon gondola...

Again, my friend sure seems to take the Armstrong photo seriously -- which flabberghasts me. :-\

It's a fake - the story is fictional, the image is a photoshop job. There's no debate to be had. You could always get the complete Apollo 11 downlink DVD set and sit him infront of it for the full EVA duration to see that it didn't happen.

Doug

C'mon mate, look at the photo, it's not even a GOOD Photoshop job. The head is the wrong scale, there's so much "build up" behind his head he looks like he's wearing Chris Bonnington's biggest rucksack, and as Doug pointed out that "head" is lifted from a very well-known pic.

No offense, but if your friend really is "knowledgeable about planetary science, the history of space exploration" then he should know the basic fact that taking off your helmet in space is not a brilliant idea. I hope you don't ever believe him if he tells you he's "knowledgeable" about installing a gas boiler or fixing car brakes...

I mean, next he'll be telling you that someone played golf on the Moon, or sneaked some first day covers onboard their spaceship to sell afterwards...

Moreover Apollo 11 didn't carry a small chariot/wheel barrow as shown on the leftside in that photo.
A wheeled cart like that was used on Apollo 14 by Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell...

Serious question: what would happen if You take off Your helmet in a vacuum (as space and the lunar surface without an atmoshere are in fact a vacuum). I believe as our body has 1 standard atmosphere to counteract, in a zero atmosphere, the body would explode (outwards)

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

Doug

Well, even if you could get the helmet retaining ring loose with the pressure from the air inside pushing out, I imagine said helmet would immediately fly like a released kid's ballon. I don't think they had 14psi air, more like 5psi right? But give the area of the bottom of the helmet, say 150-300 square inches, I would wager the helmet would get completely blown out of their hands.

As for the physiological effects, I think you would asphyxiate in seconds, since the vacuum would actively suck the oxygen out of your blood, then your exposed skin would freeze, and then you would slowly sublimate. Similar to what happens with a comet, in a manner of looking at it. The skin would be strong enough to hold in fluids, so you wouldn't expand like a ballon. After all, divers who come up from depth too quickly and get the bends don't explode.

Actually, that picture comes from Apollo 12. It has been inverted and modified with Neil Armstrong's face.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/AS12-49-7318.jpg

A drop in pressure from 5 psi to a vacuum would be survivable if it is gradual (5-20 seconds); removing the helmet without first depressurizing would not be possible, and replacing the helmet and repressurizing before Armstrong passed out rather impossible: The design of the apollo helmet latching system is definitely not phone booth-friendly.

So either the photo is a fake, or the lunar landing is a fake. You decide.


Edited to add: Some people live in vacuum their whole life.

I'm a woman.

Yes, I know...and I certainly figured if something like this HAD occurred, I'd certainly have heard about it before now!



Well...honestly, he IS knowledgeable. Have seen him interact with other folks for years regarding physics, astronomy, planetary science, etc.; others who are more his equal in that regard than I, who agree/converse with him.

Now this, out of the blue.

For a moment there he had me questioning just what I do know about the vacuum of space and etc.

Ah well, enough said...

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...

Click to view attachment

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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!)

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