…did NASA have a protocol on what to do with the body? A recent film made me wonder. Assuming it was during an EVA and not in the lander itself; how hard would it have been for the other astronaut to drag a dead body in a space suit (while wearing a space suit) around without help and load him into the lander? Would the body just have been left on the Moon? Nixon did have a back up speech written in case the mission failed. NASA had plans for the guy who stayed in the command module to return to Earth & splashdown solo. They must have had a plan in place to cover this scenario.
Could the LEM even have been operated by only one crew member to re-dock with the orbiter?
I’m assuming had any of the LEMs crashed on the moon, it would to this day remain the “burial” and memorial site for those astronauts.
FYI (and as alluded to by the OP), here is the text of the speech that was planned for Nixon to deliver in the event that Armstrong and Aldrin were not able to return from the moon.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to move a body on the moon, at least. Let’s say they have 360 lbs of mass with the space-suit, that makes 60 lbs of weight to carry in 1/6th gravity so an astronaut should be fit enough to handle it without problems.
I almost wonder if they would have needed to take the deceased astronaut home because otherwise the lander would have been unexpectedly light on its return trip to Earth.
They could have added more moon rocks if they had to.
Possibly. I don’t know much about the LEM, so I don’t know if there would have been room to safely carry another ~170 pounds of moon rocks.
If you left one astronaut behind, there would be room.
Probably, yes. But the question is if they can be carried safely. If they’re loose, you might have a lot of moon rocks floating around during the flight and flying around during the landing like a small avalanche. We’re already talking about making the best of a bad situation here, but that could be terrible. Flying home with a dead body sounds safer from that standpoint, but there might be practicalities I don’t know about.
Would there be a risk of the lunar environment being contaminated with bacteria from the decomposing body, if it was left behind?
They had duct tape with them. It wouldn’t be too hard to secure an astronaut’s weight worth of rocks.
As for the protocol, I don’t know if they would have buried the astronaut on the moon, but they should have. Under the wide and starry sky…
Unlikely, it’s airless and bathed with unshielded ultraviolet rays on a regular basis. And given that it’s dead, I’ve not sure if the proper word would be “contaminated” or “colonized”, anyway.
I would think there’s something poetic about leaving the remains on the moon. It would certainly have been my wishes.
“Ashes to Ashes and Regolith to Regolith…”
But I think Marley23 might have a point. Apollo 13 was coming in to re-entry too shallow, then they realized it was supposed to be carrying moon rocks. I don’t know how many lbs. they were intending to bring back, though.
Chronos, where is *Under the wide and starry sky…*from? That’s beautiful.
Robert Louis Stevenson. (No, I didn’t know that offhand.)
The movie calls it “a couple hundred pounds”.
Rocks or corpse – the main issue would be securing it so walls and buttons didn’t get inadvertently bumped.
For those who don’t realize it, Chronos was actually referring to Heinlein’s story Requiem
The lander didn’t return to earth, though. The astronauts transferred all the rocks and all of the equipment they wanted to take back into the command module while still in lunar orbit, then jettisoned the ascent stage and let it crash into the moon’s surface. I recall scientists on earth would even record the seismic shock of the LM’s crashing into the lunar surface.
Does anyone else find the term “widows-to-be” a little… off? :dubious: