All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

I recall an article from a long time ago that basically said “astronauts report” the moon smells like spent gunpowder and outer space smell like… I think it was ozone.

What they were actually reporting was the smell of the airlocks after they returned from their excursions. The moon has no atmosphere, so it has been accumulating dust from billions of years of asteroid impacts that have never come in contact with oxygen. Many of the chemicals in the dust are oxidative and so when it is exposed to air for the first time it rapidly oxidizes just like gunpowder!

And I think the outer space report was from space walks, and the explanation was that the first time the airlock itself was exposed to hard vacuum, the surfaces of the airlock would have a reaction that left a scent of ozone.

Mars has toxic levels of perchlorates in the regolith. That will require that humans never come in contact with the regolith or things that touched it. Those space suits that dock to vehicles seem like a necessity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate#On_Mars

This is a big perk of the newer lunar rover design, wherein the suits stay outside the vehicle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Vehicle#Spec...

There has been some great research into laser or solar sintering of regolith, and one of my first questions was if the resulting material is safe for humans.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42008-1

> "I think one of the most aggravating, restricting facets of lunar surface exploration is the dust and its adherence to everything no matter what kind of material, whether it be skin, suit material, metal, no matter what it be and its restrictive, friction-like action to everything it gets on [...] the simple large-tolerance mechanical devices on the Rover began to show the effect of dust as the EVAs went on. By the middle or the end of the third EVA, simple things like bag locks and the lock which held the pallet on the Rover began not only to malfunction but to not function at all. They effectively froze. We tried to dust them and bang the dust off and clean them, and there was just no way. The effect of dust on mirrors, cameras, and checklists is phenomenal. You have to live with it but you're continually fighting the dust problem both outside and inside the spacecraft. Once you get inside the spacecraft, as much as you dust yourself, you start taking off the suits and you have dust on your hands and your face and you're walking in it. You can be as careful in cleaning up as you want to, but it just sort of inhabits every nook and cranny in the spacecraft and every pore in your skin [...]" Eugene Cernan, Apollo 17 debrief[1]

An interactive microscope of regolith.[2] Like tiny broken glass, hard as rock, and sticking to everything like static-charged packing peanuts.

An old tech memo and paper.[3][4]

[1] https://an.rsl.wustl.edu/apollo/data/A17/resources/a17-techd... page "27-28" 258, 50 in pdf. Lots of other mentions of dust. [2] interactive microscope of regolith https://virtualmicroscope.org/sites/default/files/html5Asset... [3] The Effects of Lunar Dust on EVA Systems During the Apollo Missions https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20050160460/downloads/20... [4] IMPACT OF DUST ON LUNAR EXPLORATION https://adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2007ESASP.643..239S

As a huge space nerd, I would like to point out that space, and other planetary bodies appear to really suck.

It seems to be under-reported that the Earth is pretty nice.

They describe the dust on the moon as,

> Fine like powder, but sharp like glass

Sounds scary. But totally worth it!

"In addition the Moon has no atmosphere and is constantly bombarded by radiation from the Sun that causes the soil to become electrostatically charged." - You can use a magnetic or electric field to push the soil away

Have any of them developed cancer from the space asbestos yet?

Isn't this why NASA is developing the Electrodynamic Dust Shield [1] system?

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-dust-shield-success...

we have similar problems with volcanic ash on earth

If you want to get depressed about all the problems with trying to colonize Mars, I recommend A City on Mars: https://www.acityonmars.com/

It's by the cartoonist of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and his wife (the one with an actual science PhD). https://www.smbc-comics.com/

"The toxic side of the Moon" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768039

When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade

That’s such a weirdly specific detail but also kinda fascinating. Imagine going to the Moon and the first thing you notice is “huh… smells like gunpowder.

Sounds similar to asbestos.

Cue Cave Johnson: “The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought 'em anyway. Ground 'em up, mixed em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill.”

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