WI: The Apollo 11 crew died in quarantine?

[Mumby]

Inspired by this;



IOTL, the Apollo 11 crew were quarantined for 21 days upon their return, in case they had contracted 'moon germs'. But what if they had, and had died in quarantine?

Of course, this is something of a fantastical premise, requiring a POD billions of years in the past but lets work on assumptions of quantum mechanics, that all possibilities are simultaneously occurring until they are observed. IOTL, we observed the Moon to be sterile and lifeless, ITTL they very much do not.

What would the repercussions of this be? There would be the obvious trauma of the 'one giant leap' falling into a black hole of disease - but what of the realisation that yes, there is life on other worlds, even worlds as hostile and seemingly inimical to life as the Moon. Assuming that the Apollo missions abruptly end after 11, what happens next for NASA, and for that matter other countries space programmes?

And to be a little more esoteric, how might the rest of the Solar System be different - at this point we had already observed Venus to be Literally Hell, Mercury isn't tidally locked and Mars doesn't have canals, but what else might there be if life is possible on the Moon?

 

[Yokai Man]

I presume that people are gonna view space as dangerous to explore and not really worth the risk.NASA might be viewed in the public eye as wasting money and lives on a pointless endeavor.The Soviets might try the same thing that results in them a) being successful and winning the space race or b)died due to moon germs like the Apollo crew and be really tragic.

Norman Mailer will mostly likely consider himself vindicated in his belief that the moon landing was proof of Man’s hubris in thinking he can conquer space and the living embodiment of a future soulless mechanical run world and say”I told,I told you were foolish to destroy the sanctity of space but NO,you didn’t want to listen did you,you WASP TWATS”.

Yes,he actually thought that:https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mailer-on-the-moon/590629/

Outside of germs culture existing on other planets and scientists creating more safe suits,I don’t know how much it could change in terms of space travel.The public was pretty bored of the whole space race by now and it had more pressing problems at hand,like Vietnam or counter culture movements.I don’t see SCI FI writers stopping to create stories about space travel and whatnot.

Idk,maybe people are gonna share Mailer’s views on it and ignore space? Hard to say.

 

[AndyC]

You could do it for Apollo 12 without too much handwaving or creating a primordial virus evolving on the Moon.

Apollo 12 landed next to Surveyor 3 and broke off parts of it to bring home. There were (contested) claims that bacteria found on the Surveyor camera survived, dormant, in the lunar environment until returned to Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reports_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_Moon

What if: this is true, and solar radiation/harsh conditions caused a mutation in the bacterium to make it fatal to human life? A minor breach in containment protocol on the way back (easy enough from the gloves of the space suits) and the astronauts are infected. They die, over Thanksgiving, in the quarantine facility.

No-one knows why. Was it from native lunar bacteria or viruses? And - would it spread anyway? The quarantine system was realistically just a sop to the idea; the divers that opened the Command Module to throw in the quarantine suits would have been exposed, as would the ocean around the Command Module where wipes were jettisoned.

 

[libbrit]

I watched an ITV documentary about the Moon landing, just last night, and i was interested to find out that Nixon actually had a statement prepared incase something went wrong. It didnt show the whole speech, but from the snippet i saw, it was quite the grim speech that would no doubt have a chilling impact on the cultural attitude to space travel-it was all `man was arrogant to even try this`. If that speech had been read, i doubt they would have even built the ISS never mind anything else

 

[Charles EP M.]

The quarantine system was realistically just a sop to the idea; the divers that opened the Command Module to throw in the quarantine suits would have been exposed, as would the ocean around the Command Module where wipes were jettisoned.

The astronauts slowly dying in quarantine is going to be traumatising enough (especially if it's the very first men on the moon and not Apollo 12), but if the damn thing spreads, woof. Quite a few people could be dead across America before any cure or vaccine can be worked out, assuming there is one. That would be the end of manned spaceflight - never mind the astronauts, you might die! And the Space Race ending in a great plague and failure is going to be shattering for the entire scientific community, the NASA and USSR staff, the sci-fi creators and fans et al.

Would surely have nasty knock-on effects on other scientific projects: "yeah, that sounds good, but so did going to the moon and look how that turned out."

 

[Yokai Man]

The astronauts slowly dying in quarantine is going to be traumatising enough (especially if it's the very first men on the moon and not Apollo 12), but if the damn thing spreads, woof. Quite a few people could be dead across America before any cure or vaccine can be worked out, assuming there is one. That would be the end of manned spaceflight - never mind the astronauts, you might die! And the Space Race ending in a great plague and failure is going to be shattering for the entire scientific community, the NASA and USSR staff, the sci-fi creators and fans et al.

Would surely have nasty knock-on effects on other scientific projects: "yeah, that sounds good, but so did going to the moon and look how that turned out."

Like I said,Mailer is gonna be realllly smug about it and probably people are going to use the phrase he used to describe the Apollo mission(”A work of art designed by the Devil”) more often.Hell,I could see him making a play/novel about how the Devil tricked Columbus,Oppenheimer and Von Braun/Korolev into discovering America/the Atom bomb/waste humanity’s time with deadly hubris.And it would be so goddamn unbearable to read,yet be successful somehow.

 

[Mumby]

I presume that people are gonna view space as dangerous to explore and not really worth the risk.NASA might be viewed in the public eye as wasting money and lives on a pointless endeavor.The Soviets might try the same thing that results in them a) being successful and winning the space race or b)died due to moon germs like the Apollo crew and be really tragic.

I was going to say, the Soviets seemed a bit more, uh, cavalier when it came to taking risks, to put it kindly.

 

[Mumby]

Also, a grim thought comes to mind of attempting to weaponise moon germs

 

[Resurgam]

You know, I've thought of this concept before and I'm surprised no one's played with it.

 

[Arthur_Phuxache]

The astronauts slowly dying in quarantine is going to be traumatising enough (especially if it's the very first men on the moon and not Apollo 12), but if the damn thing spreads, woof.

The mobile quarantine facility was on the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. I expect the US military would drop a tactical nuke on that ship before the contagion could reach the general population.

 

[Von Callay]

I watched an ITV documentary about the Moon landing, just last night, and i was interested to find out that Nixon actually had a statement prepared incase something went wrong. It didnt show the whole speech, but from the snippet i saw, it was quite the grim speech that would no doubt have a chilling impact on the cultural attitude to space travel-it was all `man was arrogant to even try this`. If that speech had been read, i doubt they would have even built the ISS never mind anything else

You can read the whole prepared statement here. It's not very long.