lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (10/23/83)
I have done a little research on the moondust issue, which was raised by the creationist speaker whose talk Allen England recently summarized. The thing that got me started was that the speaker ( a Dr. Brown ) stated that the LM foot pads were designed with the expectation of a deep dust layer being present at the landing site. This didn't make sense to me for two reasons: First, several Surveyor spacecraft had already made soft landings and examined the surface. Second, the whole lunar EVA had been planned on the basis of being able to walk on the surface, so obviously a deep dust layer was not EXPECTED, even if the possibility was not totally dismissed. In his talk, Dr. Brown recalled Neil Armstrong's descent down the LM ladder. In a humorous aside, Dr. Brown allowed as how Neil Armstrong's "first words" were actually composed by committee. He stated that, being a former military man, he knew how these things were. Well, Neil Armstrong stated publically that the words were his own, and that in fact he hadn't decided finally on them until a few hours before he spoke them. Having made a liar out of Neil Armstrong, Dr. Brown asked how many recalled Armstrong's expression of surprise at not sinking in as he stepped off the foot pad. Of course, Armstrong did carefully report the exact nature of the surface as he found it. But Dr. Brown was asking us to construe this final confirmation of the surface structure as a revelation which swept away any possibility of the moon's billion year antiquity. Anyway, I recalled that there was quite a flap over the possibility of being swallowed up by deep dust, so I looked it up. In "Appointment on the Moon", by Richard S. Lewis (published 1968 !), I found that the concern over miles thick dust originated with Thomas Gold in 1955. This is contrary to Dr. Brown's implication that the concern was a result of satellite measurements of micro-meteorite accumulations. Anyway, as I had thought, these fears were laid to rest by the Surveyor landings. The Ranger photos had been inconclusive, even though Gold's camp was in the minority in seeing them as supporting the "deep dust" theory. Another point is that Gold's theory depended on dust being transported into the basins from the highlands. Dr. Brown made some mention of this but counted it as secondary to the accumulation of micrometeorites in situ, which cause he implied was generally accepted by the majority of lunar scientists as implying a deep dust layer. My whole point here is that Dr. Brown was severely distorting the historical facts concerning the "deep dust" theory and its relation to the Apollo program. Some issues I haven't touched on are, the relationship of satellite data and Pettersson's 1960 SciAm article on the meteoritic accumulation issue, the discrepancys between Dr. Brown's assertions and the book "Scientific Creationism", which was offered for use in the California Public Schools, and finally what the accepted facts actually are concerning meteoritic accumulation and the Lunar and Terrestrial surfaces. I have comments on these and will probably post them later. Please note how creationists (as represented by Dr. Brown and the book I mentioned) can create an incredibly complex tangle with a few oversimplifications and distortions. I shouldn't complain about being goaded into the Sunday research required to straighten things out, since I always feel like I should know more about these things than I do. However, it worries me that most people don't take the time to understand and are left with the vague feeling that the creationists just might be right after all. Let us pause... Lew Mammel, Jr. ihuxr!lew