| Description | Enclosing a note he has submitted to Science [not included with this letter]. Says that he is concerned about the 'Apollo situation'. Thinks that the main purpose of the Surveyor was to discover 'any circumstances that might need attention in the engineering design of the Apollo mission'. Says that 'I had cautioned for several years that there is an electro-static problem with dust. I could not foresee all the particular ways in which this might be troublesome and I had therefore proposed firstly to examine what one one can of this problem with the Surveyor and secondly to experiment with rock dust in vacuum chambers in preparation for some of the Apollo situations. Thus, I would have thought it essential to have a long series of investigations of vehicles, astronauts moving, and instruments in circumstances of a vacuum chamber and rock powders prior to the Apollo landings or even to the final engineering decisions'. Says that, as far as he knows, no such experiments have yet been done and goes onto say why he thinks that is the case. Also says that 'When the investigators saw evidence of volcanism or volcanic rocks it was always rapidly and very widely publicized. Dust observations on the other hand did not interest these investigators and were not given similar prominence'. Talks about the 'apparent accumulation of some millimeters of dust completely covering a footpad of the Surveyor' and what his conclusions about this phenomena are. Concludes by saying 'The observed phenomena seem to be exactly of the kind I had warned about, but the intensity of the effect is still very much greater. I therefore feel that there is a very serious risk for men and equipment and I would strongly urge a far-reaching investigation'. |