Charlie Duke Family Photo

[onebigmonkey]

Never smoked anything.

Aaah - the 'Didn't inhale' defence

There's a poster on the 'Space Hipsters' facebook group that reports Duke himself saying that he saw the photo start to shrink, but didn't have time to see what had eventually happened to it. This was at an Astronaut Scholarship Foundation event.

[bknight]

Never smoked anything.

Aaah - the 'Didn't inhale' defence

There's a poster on the 'Space Hipsters' facebook group that reports Duke himself saying that he saw the photo start to shrink, but didn't have time to see what had eventually happened to it. This was at an Astronaut Scholarship Foundation event.

Maybe Irwin's photo fared better since he put it in a shadowed area.

[Dalhousie]

Never smoked anything.

Aaah - the 'Didn't inhale' defence

Not even tobacco.  Not once.  Disgusting, dangerous, unhealthy loathsome addiction that carries the death penalty.

[Ishkabibble]

Forgive me for asking the obvious, but has anyone ever attempted to contact Charlie Duke to ask him what kind of plastic bag the photo was in? 

A few minutes after I posted this, I went to Charlie Duke's website, found a "contact" link, and sent him the following message:

Dear General Duke:

I'm writing to ask a rather mundane question, and one I hope hasn't been asked and answered so many times that you are tired of it by now, but do you recall the type of plastic bag that encased the photo of you and your family that you left on the lunar surface during EVA-3 at Descartes?

Was it something that the Pad Crew did for you? Did you just pick up a plastic bag somewhere and do it yourself? Was it any special type of plastic that someone at NASA selected, or was it just something to meet the "clean" requirements?

The reason I'm asking is, I am a participant on a message board that has been discussing the properties of certain types of plastics. There is some speculation about how long it took before degradation of the plastic and the photograph began to be visually noticeable, and that sort of thing. The fact is, since none of us know what specific kind of plastic it was, it is nothing but speculation. Adding to that the fact that since none of us have ever gone to space, and you have walked on the moon, you have first-hand knowledge that we don't. So I thought I'd take a chance and ask you directly.

The photo of your family on the moon has been a topic of discussion recently, and I don't think it has ever occurred to anyone (until now) to ask you directly what kind of plastic bag it was.

Cordially,

I just received this response, ten minutes ago:


Dear  ,

I thought I'd been asked every question imaginable about that photo, but you asked one I've never gotten before. I just don't know the type of plastic that was used. The guys in crew systems division packaged it for me. I can say this: when I dropped the photo, the moon's surface temperature was about 230F. The plastic bag started curling up within a few minutes. Hope this helps.

Thanks for writing!
Charlie Duke

So, I guess we'll never really know.

Unless we can contact someone in Crew Systems or the History office and ask them what the most likely type of plastic bag would have been used for this purpose.

I may just try that. I do have some former colleagues who worked for NASA, and some who still have some contacts there. Worth a try, I think.

[bknight]

Forgive me for asking the obvious, but has anyone ever attempted to contact Charlie Duke to ask him what kind of plastic bag the photo was in? 

A few minutes after I posted this, I went to Charlie Duke's website, found a "contact" link, and sent him the following message:

Dear General Duke:

I'm writing to ask a rather mundane question, and one I hope hasn't been asked and answered so many times that you are tired of it by now, but do you recall the type of plastic bag that encased the photo of you and your family that you left on the lunar surface during EVA-3 at Descartes?

Was it something that the Pad Crew did for you? Did you just pick up a plastic bag somewhere and do it yourself? Was it any special type of plastic that someone at NASA selected, or was it just something to meet the "clean" requirements?

The reason I'm asking is, I am a participant on a message board that has been discussing the properties of certain types of plastics. There is some speculation about how long it took before degradation of the plastic and the photograph began to be visually noticeable, and that sort of thing. The fact is, since none of us know what specific kind of plastic it was, it is nothing but speculation. Adding to that the fact that since none of us have ever gone to space, and you have walked on the moon, you have first-hand knowledge that we don't. So I thought I'd take a chance and ask you directly.

The photo of your family on the moon has been a topic of discussion recently, and I don't think it has ever occurred to anyone (until now) to ask you directly what kind of plastic bag it was.

Cordially,

I just received this response, ten minutes ago:


Dear  ,

I thought I'd been asked every question imaginable about that photo, but you asked one I've never gotten before. I just don't know the type of plastic that was used. The guys in crew systems division packaged it for me. I can say this: when I dropped the photo, the moon's surface temperature was about 230F. The plastic bag started curling up within a few minutes. Hope this helps.

Thanks for writing!
Charlie Duke

So, I guess we'll never really know.

Unless we can contact someone in Crew Systems or the History office and ask them what the most likely type of plastic bag would have been used for this purpose.

I may just try that. I do have some former colleagues who worked for NASA, and some who still have some contacts there. Worth a try, I think.

that makes sense since it appears to be "crinkled" on the edges.

[ka9q]

Well, we can rule out Kapton (polyimide). It's orange, not clear, and it is famously heat tolerant (to +400C). PTFE (Teflon) melts at 327C. Also probably not Mylar (m.p. 250-260C) or polystyrene (mp almost as high). The lowest melting point for a common plastic that I can find is polyethylene at 115-135C.

The bag looks like polyethylene but I wonder because it's flammable and Apollo had some famously strict post-Apollo-1 rules about that.

But even polyethylene seems unlikely to melt at 230F, and I also think Duke's estimate is too high. It's certainly known to get that hot at local noon, but he and Young were long gone by then. It could already have been that hot if the surface sloped to the east so that it was normal to the sun at that time, but it doesn't look that way to me.

My take is that the curling was caused by the photo, not the bag. Photographic paper is notorious for curling due to contraction of the emulsion on the picture side, usually by drying. And the moon certainly is dry.

[JayUtah]

So, I guess we'll never really know.

Still, you went to the source and got an answer.  Kudos to you!

If Crew Systems packaged it, then my bet is on Teflon.

[JayUtah]

The bag looks like polyethylene

Teflon looks a lot like polyethylene.  And sample bags made of polyethylene typically have a quarter-inch seam around the edges, much as we see in the in situ photo.

[dwight]

Wow! This is what makes coming to this board all worthwhile! Ishkabibble - outstanding work!

[mako88sb]

Thanks for taking the time to contact Charlie Duke about it Ishkabibble. I didn't think he used a bag from somewhere other then NASA but there was always the possibility he had so it's good to know that's dealt with. Hopefully one of your former colleagues can bring some closure to this topic.

[raven]

It's going to be a sad day when the last Apollo astronaut passes into the undiscovered country and a human who knows what it's like to walk or orbit the moon will no longer be still with us.
I'm glad we can contact these people while we still can.

[bknight]

It's going to be a sad day when the last Apollo astronaut passes into the undiscovered country and a human who knows what it's like to walk or orbit the moon will no longer be still with us.
I'm glad we can contact these people while we still can.

Amen.

[dwight]

I am so very glad I interviewed and spoke with Stan Lebar extensively prior to his utimely passing. Despite what that idiot Adrian would have people think, we discussed _EVERY_ aspect of the Westinghouse Space TV camera development. I am thankful that I was able to have that information published so that his legacy lives on. I shudder to think how all that information would have been lost forever had I not started my work when I did. I mean, you can obviously read the memos and reports, but you don't get the personal touches and recollections which make the work all the more astounding.

[onebigmonkey]

I think the outcome of thread should serve as a salutary lesson to HBs and Apollo supporters alike.

Too often the response to this question (not necessarily here) is an instant "don't be stupid...", mainly because it has originated from an HB perspective.

What neither stance tends to acknowledge is that the photograph represents a snapshot of exactly what the HB proposes ought to be happening: the photograph is responding to the thermal conditions of its environment, and close examination of the image and the eye-witness testimony of the photographer supports that view. It has to be recognised that the photograph is not the start and end point of the process it underwent on the surface, just a very short glimpse of it.

Just as the 'Just Asking Questions' stance usually masks a predisposition to an answer someone wants to hear, the dishing out of stock responses to those questions has to actually give a correct answer properly thought through, not simply a contrarian one.

[Ishkabibble]

I'm not going to give up on this until I either get a specific, definitive answer, or someone tells me that there's nothing existing to indicate precisely what it was.

I did talk to a former colleague of mine who mentioned to me that someone had asked Duke about the photo (not the bag) and Duke's response was "a few minutes after he'd dropped the photo, he looked back and it was already browning and curling up." That leads me to believe that ka9q's opinion that it was the photo and not the bag has greater credence than any of the other speculation we've entertained so far. I say "speculation" simply because I have not yet found out any specifics, not as a slight against the fine members of this forum.

I have inquiries out to two other colleagues of mine, both connected to NASA, and one other who had a meeting on our behalf at the HQ library in Washington, DC. As a side note, I have two models on display there, that were used in that meeting. Maybe someone there can do a bit of digging on our behalf, and locate the information. As well documented as Apollo was, someone somewhere had to make a note of what the specifications were of that damn bag. And I'm going to find them.

I have two other avenues of inquiry to undertake after I find out what this one's results are.