DISCLOSURE / FILE
Apollo 14 Crew Describes Cosmic Ray Light Flashes
Segment 2 of 2 of NASA's Apollo 14 post-mission crew debriefing at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, covering the crew's discussion of the cosmic-ray light flash phenomenon.
DISCLOSURE / FILE
Segment 2 of 2 of NASA's Apollo 14 post-mission crew debriefing at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, covering the crew's discussion of the cosmic-ray light flash phenomenon.
NASA-UAP-D027, Apollo 14 Debriefing (Continued), 1971
Segment 2 of 2 of NASA's Apollo 14 post-mission crew debriefing at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, covering the crew's discussion of the cosmic-ray light flash phenomenon.
This is the second of two segments of the Apollo 14 crew debriefing held at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas, dated February 18, 1971. The continued segment records crew members and debriefers discussing the "light flash phenomena," a then novel effect in which high-energy cosmic rays passing through the eye strike the retina and produce the perception of light streaks or flashes. The file is image-only with no machine-extracted text, so no verbatim quotes are available from the pages provided. The effect described is now a well-documented biological phenomenon reported by astronauts on multiple missions.
Extracted text · Page 1
Page 1 · audio transcript
to my streets appeared to be on the periphery and for the first several days I got the impression
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Concatenated page-by-page transcript. Born-digital pages came through pdf.js; scanned pages were transcribed by Claude vision OCR. Pages marked unreadable failed multiple OCR retries (heavy redaction, microfilm artifacts, or blank separators) and are kept in place for audit.
to my streets appeared to be on the periphery and for the first several days I got the impression
that this direction was predominant. Later on it appeared that I don't think I could
get that good a pattern but that was my first impression for the first couple of days.
The next question was there any apparent direction of propagation and could you tell it was coming from one side to the other for which the system would apply?
Some of them I didn't say from the left of the right was something like that.
I tried to correlate it but in my case I couldn't really correlate a pattern out of it.
Yeah I would think that the time period in which we tried to report them street by street, flash by flash was representative.
It was my feeling that it was generally random during that time period and therefore generally random throughout the time that we were noticing them.
No I meant could you detect that it was moving from one side to the other?
Oh yeah.
It was moving in a specific way.
In a specific flash yes yes.
You could see it as a travel from one side to the other.
You really think we tried to report it that way didn't we?
Yes you never want to mess the way it was puzzling us because it has to be very fast you know.
And that question kind of redundant then?
I didn't believe you.
Was there some character to these flashes that had some aspect of direction?
Were they all the same Ron shaped or were they they have a tail on them?
Well what I so what I reported as a streak was simply that now maybe the way we determine the direction
subconsciously was that it was a ball of light moving in a direction leaving a tail.
But I don't I can't say that for sure all I reported was a streak and I had the impression of it moving from one direction to the other.
And I reported that direction and I can't clarify it much more than that.
Do you want to ask me a question we just tell the lights I think they can see this in the dark room.
But just right the idea is to try to see whether this is what you saw or similar to it.
I think you need to like that then wow can you see anything?
Yeah except that's what it looked like except it was traveling in other words it started out and it definitely progressed across the field of view.
The direction of motion for an individual was that right?
Yeah except you're not traveling it was traveling.
You started it quite a bit easy.
I never did see too simultaneously either.
Neither did I.
You have two streaks on that I never saw that.
At one time you saw a semicolon shaped thing.
So what?
A semicolon shaped object this was in the first report before the...
I never did.
If I reported it that's what I saw but I don't remember it.
Did you see anything that looked like this?
All I'd say is whatever was reported is what I saw.
No I you know we discussed the various shapes prior to flight and I concentrated pretty hard on trying to see the shapes and I think as I reported that.
No it was either a streak and just a rather simple streak or it was a flash and rather a simple flash.
Nothing too exotic about it and on a more rare one would be maybe just a pinpoint of light for an instant rather than get the idea of a flash that would just be a pinpoint for a second and it would be gone but that was more rare than the other two.
Yeah I meant you know like watching an explosion you know just a ball versus just a steady dot yes.
Was it was it like this at all?
Did you see that?
No.
Can I see this one?
I think it's a whole house boy.
Can I see it?
Can't see it.
We're not getting any lighting.
I don't think it's lighting.
Oh that there was something just as you turned it there.
Okay you can see that.
I mean multiple this one.
Okay that to me would be the pinpoint that I'm describing the the eruption or the the novas we call them would be more of an explosion.
Yeah yeah yeah well you've got a very very bright center and a diffused edge.
I would say that the impression I had which you would have an area like that indicating a blow up but the center wasn't predominantly that bright but that that's getting closer to what we would call what I would refer to as a nova or a flash.
It's not as bright as what I call the nova yeah.
And was your nova in explosion like this or a discrete flight flight?
No it was what I call the nova was was more of a blob that seemed to start with that and kind of expand.
More diffused yeah I'm more diffused as the time went on.
But brighter than that.
That's what I'm about what I call a flash or a star.
Here again you've got too much contrast between the center and the diffused area there though.
Also your time frame that your flashing gets too low it was faster than that.
Am I right?
And what you just said that when you said flash you really meant a star and not a not a would not what you just described.
I think I almost didn't use flash and star interchangeably.
That's not true for you.
No when I flash nova to me were essentially the same thing only distinction I make is the pinpoint versus an explosion.
Okay I think what Stu was calling a pinpoint was about what I'd call a star or flash and a nova to me was a much bigger brighter thing.
Okay a couple of quick ones.
First of all the cabin lighting exactly was it completely dark where there's some instrument lights still on.
Absolutely dark.
Absolutely dark.
Okay well yeah there is you talk about the time period that we ran this quantitative report.
Right right completely dark.
Okay and did you have your eyes closed most of the time where they open in the dark cabin.
Mind we're both.
Even though we had the window shades and when we roll around to the sun when we hit the window there'd be some light seepage around we were aware of that end of the time.
So during that time where we at least I made the time to close my eyes closed open otherwise and of course we closed our eyes when it had flipped his flashlight on.
But generally speaking the eyes were open.
No mine was almost closed all the time. I was floating down the corner of the LED but I kept my eyes closed because I didn't know when I rolled into the sun and I didn't want to pick up any light at all.
Okay the next question on the flashlight was when you shine it in your eyes what was the approximate duration in each eye about how many seconds.
Well I just kind of moved it across for over five seconds or so five six seconds it hurt it's very bright.
And the next question on still your orientation in the LED you said you were looking toward plus X is will you across.
Generally you know how you have the three couches and plus X is I was oriented this way with my head looking face up down in this corner.
So your head was in the same direction as it would be if you were on the couch.
Yes that's it.
The next question is in almost every case you did report that it was in one eye the other is one incident where you had both eye and my question is maybe someone redundant but you absolutely certain that you could distinguish that it was one eye as opposed to.
Yeah I felt I was getting more in the left than the right for some reason but in fact the fact you're all heavily biased was the right on the one on your report.
Really very heavily like like rear water one.
I would have sworn that I was biased to the left.
You have 12 right and six left and Al you had ten right and four left and of the ones you reported still you had six right and two left and the rest were in the lower courts or both eye.
And it was all very heavily been biased to the right eye.
At first present.
No well.
Well I was talking about that.
It seems to me that I would get a flash or a streak or whatever the phenomenon or whatever the shape was simultaneously with somebody else reporting.
That's exactly the next question.
And there were three from listening to the tapes three events and it occurred in cases where different pairs were followed.
Which were coincidences where I think in one case Ed you said flash and then Al you said simultaneous with him.
I had a flash in the whole right eye.
Now my question would be when it was simultaneous was it after he began speaking or was it in fact.
It was his words good enough for you to have been a mark on your flash.
Well certainly with an infraction in the second I think it was simultaneous.
Yeah a couple of times it happened to me it was his mark or whoever the mark he was was good enough.
Okay.
Same here.
And the next question is earlier before the session when you were describing some of the subjective observations you mentioned the halos that you'd seen.
That you'd see a flash followed by a...
And we finally had to take his halo off to put it away.
(Laughter)
Sweet as the upside.
Well okay.
The actor effects.
Were they present most of the time didn't you see?
Did you have a lot of cognizance of a spike and then a sort of glow afterwards?
Only on what I call the nova and the supernova.
Is that true for you to do?
I really know the halo effect myself.
I guess I'm not sure what we're calling the halo effect.
You mean a diffused brightness?
More like an actor.
Did I call any of those? I sure don't remember it.
No I didn't describe it.
Yeah I don't think I saw any of those.
And the other question we had was...
Do you remember making any observations in lunar orbit?
It's not, I know there were no formal theories but...
You know I thought about that on the way back.
And I was so tired that night that I really don't remember seeing any flashes but I didn't look for any either.
So I guess the question would be I consciously did not see any but...
I wouldn't take that as a data function.
And then the final question I have is...
After our formal session I was in about 191 GET.
You then had a sleep period later on.
Do you remember whether you saw any during that sleep period closer in?
It's significant whether you're inside the magnetopole.
I don't consciously recall but I don't really recall if there was any night except on the lunar surface.
That I didn't and sometime or another see some.
You definitely didn't see any on the lunar surface?
I just know I don't remember about the lunar surface.
There was precious little sleep at night at the end.
Okay well I saw all the questions I had.
We'd call some light for a minute.
Well while you're dousing light I have one additional question.
Did you get the impression that light flashes could have been within the cabin or definitely within your eye?
Definitely within the eye.
Okay.
I want to get some idea about orientation and length of the streets.
Did you ever see anything about light?
No, no I never did.
You used the terminology of six o'clock or hours of the clock.
Does that mean do you say six o'clock to the center about how long the street is at?
That's a hard question to answer.
If you were visualizing something about the arms length away from you,
how long would you say your long history was?
That long?
Did you see my fingers?
I'll show them.
Let me describe it a different way.
It appeared to me that the things I would say were three or four inches away from my plane
whatever that means and were a couple inches long.
Tell us what it means.
A couple inches long.
It's reinforced inches in front of you.
It looked like this.
Too long for me.
Two, I guess.
Do you see that one up above?
One up above looks better.
Probably fairly close.
Yeah, I'd say as close as the longest one.
See, I'm not sure what our scale is here.
I'd rather say that if I consider whatever it may be,
but the field of view of saying my right eye and take a radius of that,
then I'd put a streak at about a half, the radius, would be the language street.
Half or a little longer?
Is there any way that you can associate this language street to what you said?
Well, it depends on how big a circle I want to draw from my field of view.
Yeah, I saw streaks that long because with my eyes closed,
I imagine a rather big field of view here in my eye.
Yeah, I'd see streaks that long.
One time you said you saw streaks orient in a certain direction.
Do you remember that?
Yes.
The way you had it, bring it on up that way.
And what about you?
Well, I think I had them from several directions,
and I reported them as moving from one direction to the other at that time.
There were several others.
What helped any particular direction up and down, left and right?
I didn't notice any preferred orientation.
And here again, I think it tried to express the length of the arc of the flash
in terms of the peripheral field.
And if you're talking about a horizontal peripheral field as being somewhere in the vicinity of 150-160 degrees,
in some cases, the light flashes would go across as much as 50-60 degrees of that.
What's interesting?
Where the life flashes broken in the center?
In some cases, they were.
In some cases, I had the feeling it was two dots, one immediately following the other,
giving the impression of right to the left and top to bottom or bottom to top or left to right.
The point is you see that the retina is so curved that if you draw a straight line,
you can't get too long, you shouldn't be able to get too long a straight with that
breaking out of the retina again.
You'll find the retina goes straight like that.
But it has some depth, doesn't it?
It could have been any longer than that if it just is around the retina.
Can't hear that.
Through a couple of portions.
Can't hear you.
It should not have been any longer than what I showed you.
It could just went through the retina in one track, but it went through a couple of eyes.
It could have even had an impression along the street.
That's why we're interested in the character.
One more about the cloud that you saw.
This is a new phenomenon which we hadn't expected.
Did you describe this lightning behind the cloud?
I think it occurred, I reported it a couple of times, and it appeared, as I recall,
to be down low on one eye or the other, and it was just a diffuse lighting.
Any color?
White, silver.
If you were out in the country and looking at the horizon,
there was lightning behind a cloud, was it like that?
Except generally, if you do that, you can see a street behind the cloud.
There was no streak, it was just a diffuse lighting.
Similarly, I don't know what gives my little simulate.
That sort of boss thing when you get out of the car and make it look at it.
One last attempt to try to do the cloud here.
That was lights a minute.
Good job.
The car is still black.
Was there anything like that?
I didn't see it.
That's pretty dim cloud, right?
They have no dark adapt, but I still don't see it.
I've seen anything on it, Jeff.
But what you're trying to describe is just what we used to call heat lightning.
It's a kid.
That's a general diffuse light.
You didn't see the relief of the cloud, are you?
No, not necessarily.
Just a blob of light.
The final question, we didn't voice up to your question about whether you noticed any other sensations
besides flashes, which was the reason for asking that was the difference.
Did you feel a tingling, or find yourself twitching, or hear anything?
The reason for that is if it is an interaction back in the brain,
then your other senses are just about as sensitive as your visual sense,
and maybe you should feel something, but you never know this value.
Didn't notice any sensation.
There are two things to think about.
Did you notice your thumb etching or your lips twitching?
No.
Never looked for it either.
These are suggested questions, and the fact that you say no is significant.
You can press on with different parts of the anatomy.
You might get a yes, but you might get a yes.
Right.
You know if there's something significant about your thumbs or your lips,
or maybe you should warn people to look for that.
Because, I don't know, unless it's going to be so obvious that if you would...
Are you saying you'll offer it?
Well, sometimes you might think you should be.
I feel very comfortable.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
I think I said to me yesterday that you really did provide a normally improved metadata on this phone,
and then we've been in the previous one, so it's great.
Well, I would add this to that.
I think that's the way you really have to go is to take a definite trip,
set it aside and do it, because otherwise it's so random,
and so many other things going through your mind
that the only way you're getting quantitative about it.
However, you did a remarkable job of concentrating on something like the time.
Do you feel that that was being unreasonable to ask you to do that
if you've done the sleep or something like that?
It's a pretty boring thing to do. You're sitting there lying watching.
You think we should be in planning for doing this sort of thing on future missions,
that we shouldn't try and do much more than we try to get you to do,
because there's too much just to sit there lying.
They're trying to concentrate on it.
I think you can find a time period during the fight when they have...
when there isn't anything else to do.
I think it's a reasonable to suggest that.
I don't think I would do it before a sleep period or when they're tired
or they'll go to sleep while you're in there.
I think along that line, Phil, by the time you talk a little bit of brief life like we did,
and then you know the phenomena is there because your first sleep period
or the first time you get to spacecraft dark and close your eyes,
you're going to see flashes.
So then that sort of sparks your curiosity a little more,
and then when they say, "Let's settle down and count them while I think you're agreeable to it."
Hey, one other comment on that, and I'm not even sure that it's related,
but I really think that this is just a general impression
that if I would look at my...
look at, say, the glow of the wristwatch or something like that
and then close my eyes again, I'd almost always see a flash.
And I tried then to correlate looking at, say, a crack through the window shade
or looking at my watch or something and then closing my eyes.
And I really came to the impression that the two may have been correlated,
but I never really looked at it enough to say that for sure.
But I think there was a correlation between seeing a light of something like this
and enclosing your eyes and pretty soon you pick up that flash.
That's an important observation.
If the action is directly in the bipolar or the retina cells, the other segment,
you might expect it to behave the way electrical phosphines do,
rather than just from light, which takes dark in action.
What do you think about that in?
I'm not quite sure what your point is.
I was going to make the comment that, with respect to the flashes,
putting a flashlight in my eyes did not seem to destroy my dark adaptation.
Now, what that means, I don't know.
Did you do it like that?
Yep.
That's low and that fast.
Yep, for some time.
Well, you said you wiped out some of the nerves.
I wiped out something.
Why did you wipe it off?
I'm not sure that's true, Chuck.
How long did you do it?
You should wipe it off.
Oh, a couple of minutes.
A minute?
A minute?
Back and forth like this, about five seconds per drive.
Something like that.
Yeah, hey, you know that.
I mean, where you're seeing, though, is it the reason you think you didn't knock it all out
is because you could still see the flashes.
Is that what you're seeing?
Well, the cockpit looked different.
Remember, I was doing this eyes open.
Right.
And it seemed like, with just what I consider dark adaptation, that I was more dark adapted,
that I dark adapted much sooner after doing that than I did when we started the experiment.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, that you would.
We should wipe out the cums less for that.
Just with the flexibility to do with the tungsten light or whoever's in the mouth.
Hey, I'd like to make sure that on this dark adaptation, I know during the, during the formal
hour or 40 minutes, whatever it was, that Ed was, was shining the light.
But I don't know whether you picked it up on the air to ground or not.
But I had done that prior to that during one of the sleep periods.
And there's, there's just, you do not have to be dark adapted to see these.
Yeah, I think that's a completely good problem with Ed.
That's a very significant data point because it almost certainly proves that it's not, not a real light in your eye.
You know, in your eye, it takes a minute to interact with yourself.
Yeah, but why did it take us along when we started the experiment?
Before we saw anything, it was quite a while.
And yet when I wiped the light across my eyes within 30, 40 seconds, there they were again.
The 17 minutes.
Yeah, but when I did it with the flashlight within 30, 40 seconds, they were right there again.
You, you said that they were fainter.
They seemed fainter than they had on previous, previous, previous times that you deserved them.
But there definitely is a threshold effect from some sort because you saw twice as many during that period as the other two did.
And I think maybe it's just, my guess was when you didn't see them and then you started to see them regularly,
was that it was just that they seemed fainter than your expected.
And so it took you a while to sort of get your attention now to fainter ones than what you're looking for.
Well, that may be the case except they did indeed the peer fainter in the beginning.
And it wasn't a matter of looking for fainter objects, they were brighter after a while.
And they didn't diminish the brightness when I did the flashlight across my eyes.
They were still just as bright 30 seconds later as they had it in before I used the flashlight.
And that's why I'm questioning the dark adaptation bit.
Either I didn't wipe the dark adaptation out or there is something related to dark adaptation that influences the phenomenon.
I don't understand it, it did make sense.
I think there are gone time period that we did it and the few flashes we saw was very surprising to me.
And we talked about this and we commented on it at the time.
Boy, it seemed like you'd wake up during a sleep period and...
They were all over the place.
Now, here again, maybe I'd lose track of time.
Maybe you're laying there in the dark cabin and maybe it was longer than what I thought.
But it just seemed like there's abundance of flashes.
And I was amazed when it took 17 minutes to see a flash.
I thought any time that you wanted to close your eyes and concentrate on it, you were going to see these things.
And I suggest that you really understand that it's a time period aside because it is a random function for us, I'm concerned, to try to do it in a non-quantitative basis itself.
Plus the fact that I think that each individual is going to report different levels of activity too.
I had to feel there was maybe some little fake things that I would sort of say that I didn't want to talk about because I couldn't define them as a function.
But I had those too.
I think also it's a good idea to do it this way because your subjective impression is not necessarily right.
Like you felt that you saw a moment and left out on your right and that wasn't true.
Those were all perfect.
We need to get the data real common.
When you go to sleep at night, do you see any of these things?
Most people do see something as they're going to sleep in a dark room.
They can't sleep right away, down here.
Thank you.
You've got lights blinking around on your eyes if you're getting a real dark room occasionally.
Maybe because we've never really concentrated on looking for this particular type of phenomenon.
These phenomenon that you saw were different from the ones that you see once in a while.
Sorry, a lot more frequent than the question.
I didn't write this.
I guess I'll make a note to see if I see any of those from here on.
But I certainly haven't since we've been back.
But here again, and Ed mentioned this, and I agree with him, but it's another subjective thing,
that the flashes you see when you wake up in the middle of the night as a whole appear to be brighter
than the flashes as a whole during that experiment that we did during the day.
And I'm like Al, I was a little reluctant to call anything except a very positive flash during that timeframe.
I want to make really sure that that was indeed a market at the time that I called it.
But those that you saw during the middle of the night appear to be brighter,
and I can say appear to be more of them, but here again, you know, you may lay there for an hour
and you think it's five, ten minutes or something, I don't know.
Maybe you lose track of the time, but it's a subjective thing.
Ed saw one blue flash, did anyone else see color?
No, wait a minute, that wasn't blue. It was a silver, a blue white, sort of like a blue diamond.
It was like a blue diamond.
Was that the brightest that you saw?
I don't recall it, it was the brightest note.
Has anybody been hitting the head and seeing stars?
Yeah, yeah.
Would these anything like that?
Yeah, I think I'm more concentrated on the pain.
[laughter]
When you go to bed tonight, if you're in the dark room, if you just knock on your eyeballs,
you should see flashes in the muck away, try that and see what they look like the same total.
Yeah, we cry a lot in here.
[laughter]
Okay.
No, I'll say, you know, if you can get the next cruise interested, Phil, you know, it makes a great topic of conversation,
and, you know, during the flagging, you've got nothing else to talk about, you can talk about like flashes.
So, you know, I think if you get the cruise, curiosity around, it's a good deal.
Well, I think the pressure which is on the subject, which is built out of such a movie,
some formal experiment on this thing, is probably the way to go.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We're okay.
We'll keep back in time for you, and let you know what we're going to do with this other thing
and what we're going to do, and how things are coming time-wise for the end of the next two.
So, watch out.
You know what the date is, you know what the time is now, 0731 on Saturday.
Oh.
You're at least timing.
Yeah.
Work on springing a certain check.
Somebody said that 21 days ended up on Saturday morning, yeah.
[laughter]
I would have been led to believe otherwise, Chuck.
[laughter]
Indeed, briefing plan is to 0,800 to 26th on Friday.
Jake says we get out Friday morning.
Yeah.
He called yesterday.
[laughter]
And he called me, and I thought he says, "How did we ever get this number in here?"
I said, "I don't know what you guys said."
Well, the radiation people are here.
We're talking about release and all that kind of business.
Can we get a half on when they're going to get total body counts?
[silence]