These things were mainly publicity stunts. The supposed biohazard quarantine for returning Apollo astronauts was a theater performance, too. https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/the-apollo-moon-l... ( "The Apollo moon landing was real, but NASA's quarantine procedure was not" ) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/science/nasa-moon-quarant... ( "A review of archives suggests that efforts to protect Earth from con…
The actual claims of the paper are not that this was 'for show', but that NASA considered the risks unlikely and prioritized the more likely risks to the astronauts lives. I see how the authors got to 'so it was all for show', but it simply isn't true. There is plenty of evidence that the risk was taken seriously (regulations and treaties surrounding the issue, ICBC activities in the years prior to launch, the expens…
> For example, the Apollo spacecraft hadn't been designed to prevent potential lunar contaminants from being exposed to Earth's environment; once it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, the capsule's cabin had to be fully opened in order to let astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins out.
Another obvious "oversite" was that the "biological isolation garments" (BIGs) they wore were tossed into the open capsule door, and donned by the potentially contaminated astronauts! It's true that they were sprayed down with disinfectant afterwards, however the spray and whatever it washed off were drained directly into the ocean.