Biomedical Results of Apollo (NASA SP-368)
- Source document: 1975-biomedical-results-of-apollo-nasa-sp-368_djvu.htm — text edition only (Internet Archive DjVu OCR). The scanned original (~100+ MB PDF) is deliberately not stored in this library; it lives at archive.org/details/biomedical-results-of-apollo and NTRS 19760005580. Tables and figures did not survive the OCR (per-crewman numeric tables are garbled).
- Original: R. S. Johnston, L. F. Dietlein, and C. A. Berry (eds.), Biomedical Results of Apollo, NASA SP-368, Washington, D.C., 1975.
Summary
Section titled “Summary”NASA’s program-wide medical retrospective: the biomedical program developed for Apollo and the findings on how spaceflight — including the lunar surface EVAs and the quarantine program — affected the crews. A whole-program reference mined here for its Apollo 11 specifics: EVA metabolic findings, the portable life-support cooling experience, the crew’s minor medical events, and the authoritative end-to-end account of the lunar quarantine program.
Key takeaways
Section titled “Key takeaways”- Lunar EVA metabolic rates ran lower than predicted, and crews moved “easily and confidently”; the costliest work was the “overhead” activity — egress, offloading and equipment setup around the LM, ingress, sample stowage — with experiment deployment and geology cheaper, and (on later missions) LRV riding cheapest of all.
- The Apollo 11 LMP logged the highest average EVA metabolic rate of the whole program — he had been assigned the task of evaluating modes of locomotion and “was quite active in performing this task.” Consistently, he was the only crewman who frequently used the maximum cooling position of the liquid-cooled garment’s diverter valve (Apollo 11/12/14 PLSS: ~21 °C min / 15 °C intermediate / 7 °C max water temperatures). The PLSS design point was ~250 kcal/hr for long EVAs.
- The quarantine arc, end to end: biological isolation garments at splashdown (July 24) → helicopter to USS Hornet → the Mobile Quarantine Facility trailer → the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston — isolation for 21 days after lift-off from the lunar surface. “Extensive medical and biological tests determined that no harmful organisms were present in any of the materials returned from the moon, and quarantine was terminated”; Apollo 14’s crew was the last quarantined, after which “the U.S. postlanding lunar quarantine program ended.”
- Apollo 11 minor medical events: the Commander had a mild barotitis media (right ear) post-flight, cleared without treatment; the crew reported streaks and points of light during transearth coast (the “light flash” phenomenon systematically reported from Apollo 11 onward).
- Reliability caveat: the book’s one-paragraph gloss on lunar science (e.g. “minute deposits of gold, silver, and rubies in the lunar rilles”) is garbled pop-science and is not carried into this wiki — geology claims stay with the geology sources. Its authority here is medical, not geological.