More fanciful claims from Aulis concerning Apollo 17, albeit, 40 years after the fact!
Quote;
Harrison Schmitt would have unquestionably understood the potentially fatal consequences of frolicking on rock and glass shards putting himself a mere razor’s edge from oblivion. Yet despite this obvious danger, the logical Schmitt actually keelhauled his relatively vulnerable spacesuit over identical shards to those that destroyed the container seals
http://aulis.com/sickman.htm
This simply a load of ignorant handwaving that begs the question of the hazard. "Razor's edge from oblivion" and "obvious danger" and "relatively vulnerable" are scare words that do not even remotely approach an accurate description.
No mention is made in the Apollo 17 debrief of any sample containers being compromised, (to the LM atmosphere)
The SESC seal damage wasn't known at the time the crew debrief had been conducted, nor would that have been a topic for the crew debriefing. The first mention in the literature of possible contamination due to in-flight seal failure is in 1973. It has been discussed several times in the engineering literature as we contemplate a return to the Moon and more viable seal types.
The author here wants to make it sound as if NASA has kept this secret for decades. But in fact it's just the author's ignorance of the literature. Given that his article is single-sourced and relies exclusively on secondary and tertiary sources, he cannot be expected to speak from a well-informed position.
is there any truth that “Shards of glass” could have compromising Smitt’s spacesuit, or the sample containers seals?
None whatsoever, where the suit is concerned. The author here just frantically begs the question that the astronauts were in mortal danger of having their suits punctured by spherule shards. Apollo 11 was asked to be careful because the hazards of the lunar environment were not well known at that time. But by Apollo 17 there had been enough operational experience with the lunar surface environment. It was reasonably known that the abrasion or puncture hazard for the A7L space suit was almost negligible.
Lunar spherules are typically 0.1 mm in diameter. Their shards can obviously be no longer than this diameter. They pose
absolutely no danger for the suit. They can, in some cases, work their way into the Beta cloth weave, but go no farther than the first polyamide layers. A dozen thicknesses of that alternated with cloth have to be breached before the pressure garment is reached. The outer Beta cloth layer is similar to the stuff gym bags are made of, only tougher.
For the SESC and SRC seals, yes small particles such as spherule fragments do pose a danger. See below.
There is mention however that “sample bags” “blew up".
The container in question is the SESC, which is a small self-contained tube. It used the same seal mechanism as the SRCs, which are briefcased-sized and held Teflon bags of individual samples: a knife edge that is driven by a highly-leveraged clamp mechanism into a strip of soft metal alloy. Spherule and regolith particles driven into the alloy by the blade edge leave grooves behind them, and air can enter through the pressure side of the groove and pass between the knife edge and the contaminant particle into the corresponding groove on the vacuum side.
Who is David Orbell anyway?
Well, apparently someone who doesn't know what he's talking about. There's an email address in the Aulis article, so you can email him and ask him. The name doesn't stand out as notable among Apollo historians, professional or amateur.
