"The bean counters said we could literally not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Did it anyway! Ground 'em up, mixed 'em into a gel. And guess what? Ground-up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill."
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Turns out he’s also a climate change denier.
Obviously the moon dust, which was adulterated by aliens specifically for this purpose, did that to him
...that's either a one-in-a-million chance or a VERY common allergy
Or anywhere in between
or less likely than one-in-a-million
Or more likely than 1 in 12
Far as i know it was overdose (and not allergic), because the sharp dust shards (because no erosion) got in the suit and the module? And the other two had symptoms too, just not as much?
isn't this like saying some people are allergic to asbestos?
That's funny and all but if it happened 1 in 12 the chances that it's very common are orders of magnitudes higher than it being super rare DUH
It's a very non-representative, very small sample. The error bars in the statistical inference to the whole population includes both "very common" and "one-in-a-million".
Assuming a representative sample, the best point estimate is 1/12 (8.33%), and the 95% confidence interval is 0.21% to 39%.
Longer explanation here: https://lemmy.zip/comment/19753854
Assuming a representative sample
That's the thing I doubt a team of highly skilled astronauts will be representative of the human population
I think if anything they would be biased towards having fewer allergies than normal people. Which suggests that 0.21% (1 in 500) is a reasonable bound for how rare a moon dust allergy could be.
Never really verified it but I think allergies are more common in developed countries. If that's true, that the data is skewed in the opposite direction
Probably more commonly identified
What do the bar represent in 3d space?
What do they represent in 3d space?!? (aggressiveduck.jpg)
Gaussian distributions.
Not every error bar represents a Gaussian, if for no other reason that most error bars aren't symmetric.
The error bars for small sample size relative to population size are Gaussian.
Error due to a non-representative sample can have a variety of shapes, but their distribution might also be unknown. We do frequently, almost implicitly, assume unknown distributions to be Gaussian, but we should recognize that's not necessarily a true fact about the universe.
What if the moon is haunted and he's allergic to ghosts
Edit: Ew I didn't see the watermark, sorry
ifunny watermarks on memes are like sprinkles on sugar cookies
I don't prefer them, I'd never go out of my way to add them, and I prefer their absence just barely enough that I'd pick one without over one with
That being said, I'd also never complain about it being there XD
“The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought ’em anyway. Ground ’em up, mixed 'em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill. Still, it turns out they’re a great portal conductor. So now we’re gonna see if jumping in and out of these new portals can somehow leech the lunar poison out of a man’s bloodstream."
What I want to know is: how the fuck did he have an allergy to it in the first place?
IMO (not a scientist), moon dust is basically pulverized glass, only without the benefits of weathering and erosion. So think of lots of microscopic sharp, abrasive, shards of finely pulverized volcanic rock and obsidian. Get that stuff anywhere near a mucous membrane - eyes, nose, mouth, throat - and it's going to irritate you. At the same time, it's pretty much intert; well, at least the parts that don't instantly react to oxygen or humidity that is. My guess is that Schmidt is just a little more sensitive to the physical sensation of it, or perhaps he rubbed his eyes with a glove by accident, giving him an extra big dose.
And for the uninitiated, it's well documented that everyone in the lander was physically exposed to moon dust. There was no airlock on the lander, so every excursion resulted in bringing whatever was on the suits right into the cabin. They reported that it "smelled" like burned gunpowder, so they were at least all inhaling the stuff.
I think moon dust doesn’t qualify as an allergen because breathing sharp glass dust is not something people are supposed to do without harm. IIRC ithings that are intrinsically irritant, like smoke or pepper, don’t qualify as allergens.
An allergy isn't the allergen causing harm. An allergy is when your body FALSELY identifies something as a threat. The symptoms you experience are your body's immune response.
So no, things that actually do the harm themselves are not allergens.
Wait... So I'm not allergic to radiation!?
Superpowers here I come!!!
TIL I'm not allergic to conservative bullshit.
We should let him know he's not allergic. He might be going out of his way to avoid moon dust for no reason.
astronauts are such goofballs
"I hate moon dust. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere."
"I hate Mars dust too."
It's actually a huge problem to solve before any rational long term settlement occurs in these places. The stuff is pretty bad.
I thought mars wasn't quite the same issue, since it has 'weather,' while the moon doesn't. Its soil should have some measure of erosion, making the dust not quite as large and jagged.
You're correct in that it's not as sharp, but it still poses problems with getting into seals and lungs and sticking to everything. Plus it's very toxic, probably the bigger concern for living there.
I don't know how you think allergies work but if it was actually an allergic reaction it probably went something like immune system encounters a foreign never seen before substance and overreacts. Alternatively he was just the unlucky guy who didn't clean his suit enough and breathed in more of it than the others.
Shit happens.
Relevant study. tl;dr Earth is more toxic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214552425000252?via=ihub
But less shard dust.