Re: moon dust info - clarification

Arthur V. Chadwick (chadwicka@swau.edu)
Mon, 02 Nov 1998 20:01:02 -0800

At 04:16 PM 11/2/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Regarding my previous e-mail, I have gotten some very very informative
>private e-mails that have been very helpful. I am well aware of the
>general claims and have read most of the pertinent stuff (Talk.origin FAQ
>etc..) some time ago but it is this above comment that I am wishing to get
>some specific comments on. Is Abshire's claim that, at least publically,
>it was widely accepted and taught in classes that there was mountains of
>dust and were there actually NASA scientists claiming this was a problem
>right up to the moment that the astronauts landed? I understand that
>scientists knew it wasn't likely a problem but what was the actual public
>perception of the situation. Do some of you have personal recollections of
>what Walter Conkrite (sp?) might have actually been saying those days on
>the evening news?

I am old enoug to have some first hand recollection. There was no doubt in
anybody's mind that there was lots and lots of dust on the moon. The
papers talked about the precautions that were being taken, and I remember
lots of jokes around about astronauts were going to disappear in the dust
when they tried to land there. This had nothing to do with any
creationists, since I didn't even know what one was back then. It was in
the news, was in the newspapers, and was commonly talked about here on
earth in the 1960's. I have no idea what the scientific rag on the subject
was, since at the time I was a molecular biologist with little interest in
astronomy.

Art
http://biology.swau.edu