Author Topic: Buzz Aldrin's EKG  (Read 8002 times)

Offline Daggerstab

  • Earth
  • ***
  • Posts: 122
    • Badly Honed Bytes (my blog)
Buzz Aldrin's EKG
« on: April 25, 2012, 02:14:22 PM »
The Moon Landing, As You've Never Seen It Before, the Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-moon-landing-as-youve-never-seen-it-before/255745/

Wasn't there something about "patient confidentiality" about the biometric data of the astronauts? Do I understand correctly that this is in a private collection?

Offline BazBear

  • Mars
  • ***
  • Posts: 396
Re: Buzz Aldrin's EKG
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2012, 11:43:33 PM »
As far as I can tell, this is all public information. This page of BIOMEDICAL RESULTS OF APOLLO (table of contents) contains a sample of A11 ECG data, and other sections cover various medical topics, including the various illnesses Apollo astronauts suffered during their missions.
"It's true you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl." - Mark Watney, protagonist of The Martian by Andy Weir

Offline Glom

  • Saturn
  • ****
  • Posts: 1102
Re: Buzz Aldrin's EKG
« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2012, 02:13:58 PM »
It was declassified about 10 years ago, wasn't it?

Offline ka9q

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3014
Re: Buzz Aldrin's EKG
« Reply #3 on: July 04, 2012, 10:08:24 AM »
I don't think the astronauts ever had much medical confidentiality. If all you had to do to get a ride to the moon was to waive confidentiality for your medical records, wouldn't you do it?

Commander Frank Borman got sick during Apollo 8. He thought he had a stomach virus, but the consensus now is that he was the first American casualty of space adaptation syndrome. The crew was sufficiently concerned to alert the surgeons on earth, but they wanted to do it privately. Instead of using the regular air-to-ground voice circuit with the whole world listening in, they used the tape dump system, with considerable delay. Yet almost immediately after Mission Control heard the tape, the PAO described the whole affair in detail to the world. So much for medical privacy!

It's stuff like this that makes me laugh out loud whenever I hear some hoaxer invoke "compartmentalization" as the reason the Apollo "hoax" still hasn't come out.





Offline Noldi400

  • Jupiter
  • ***
  • Posts: 627
Re: Buzz Aldrin's EKG
« Reply #4 on: July 04, 2012, 11:03:34 AM »
At last we're in an area where I have some actual expertise.

I want to dig a little deeper into the data presented in that article - that ECG shows a rate somewhere around 300 beats per minute, which is generally well beyond the speed that can be generated by adrenaline and should, in fact, cause a person to lose consciousness. Cardiac ouput drops because the heart doesn't have time to refill between beats.

What it shows looks like SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) and is definitely not a stress reaction but a heart problem. The author's obvious lack of knowledge about the LM and landing precedures (stranded on the moon?!) is not very reassuring about the authenticity of the ECG.

EDIT:
Well, hell. Never mind. After I got the image cleaned up a little bit, I found that they used paper with a scale I'm not used to, That rate's about 150, right about what you would expect.  :-[
« Last Edit: July 04, 2012, 11:59:15 AM by Noldi400 »
"The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are... a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut." - Dean Koontz

Offline ka9q

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3014
Re: Buzz Aldrin's EKG
« Reply #5 on: July 06, 2012, 01:19:05 PM »
The Apollo mission reports show a steady fascination with astronaut heart rates; they're plotted for the lunar landings, ascents and EVAs. I also seem to recall hearing their heart rates cited in real time by the Public Affairs Officer, though I'd have to check that.

I think these guys practically invited this kind of scrutiny by their studied appearance of calm under stress. Seeing Neil Armstrong's heart rate go to 150 during the landing somehow made him seem a lot more human.
 
« Last Edit: July 06, 2012, 01:22:43 PM by ka9q »