Did astronauts train in ecological wastelands on earth to get used to the barren moon?
Dear Cecil: In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond claims, “When NASA wanted to find some place on Earth resembling the surface of the Moon, so that our astronauts preparing for the first moon landing could practice in an environment similar to what they would encounter, NASA picked a formerly green area of Iceland that is now utterly barren.” This struck me as wrong. Growing up, I heard the slag fields around Sudbury, Ontario, helped get the lunar astronauts accustomed to the moon’s desolation. I’ve heard similar things about islands in the Canadian arctic and deserts in the American southwest. I can’t see NASA hauling astronauts around the world just to look at places without trees. I wonder if the real explanation is that the astronauts had to take geology lessons. True? — Cameron Barr, Edmonton Cecil replies: You nailed it, friend. Most astronaut field trips were about geology, not getting used to a bleak hell unfit for life. For that they could have stayed in Houston. The astronauts
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- Did astronauts train in ecological wastelands on earth to get used to the barren moon?
