American Moon (2017): superficially challenging

A reposting of Sensible Site's and Moon and Beyond's responses to the documentary by Massimo Mazzucco, American Moon plus links to other debunking

John Young salutes the flag while jumping - Apollo 16 - Note the full-density light flooding the entire landscape against the black sky and the sharp definition of the shadows due to the lack of atmosphere unlike the softer-edged shadows we see on earth

While my catchcry for numerous events in history is “Psyop!” I recognise the moon landings as an astonishing achievement and it pains me that people both miss out on that appreciation and undermine the truth movement Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf style in lacking that recognition. While I am in complete disagreement with Sensible Site’s view that vaccinology has validity as a science, I find his responses to 1-31 (where he finished) of the 42 questions raised in American Moon painstaking and accurate while exposing the poverty of Mazzucco’s investigation.

I do wonder if Massimo Mazzucco is who he seems to be. While his film, September 11: The New Pearl Harbor, exposes some key truths of 9/11 it doesn’t address the fundamental truth of staged death and injury and we know through cartoon characters such as alleged Head of Technical Publications at Rocketdyne, Bill Kaysing, that those in power have pushed out anti-moon landing propaganda in order to undermine those who, in general, are correct in pronouncing government lies (if not always getting the exact nature of the lie correct).

Below are published his responses 1-31. Since writing this post I was alerted to Italian analysts, Moon and Beyond, who’ve responded to all 42 questions to which I also post links.

I welcome attempts to counter-refute Sensible Site’s and Moon and Beyond’s responses in the comments.

For Sensible Site’s original posts on Reddit and informative discussion see:
Debunking American Moon Part 1 and Part 2.

Wagging the Moondoggie by Dave McGowan

Sensible Site has also refuted Part 1 of the 14-part Wagging the Moondoggie (wonderful title if a load of propaganda) by Dave McGowan and another blogger has debunked both Part 1 and Part 2. I challenge any disbeliever of the moon landings to identify anything that debunks the reality of the moon landings in that book.

A different approach - watch the Moon Machines series

The Moon Machines is a fascinating series of six 45-minute episodes on the Saturn-V, Command Module, Lunar Module, Spacesuit, Rover and Navigation Computer. I’m really curious how diehard disbelievers of the moon landings will respond to that series. I found it absolutely fascinating.

• The Van Allen Belts - Questions 1-4

• The crater missing from under LEM - Questions 5-7

• Dust missing from the landing pads - Questions 8-9

• There is no flame under the engine - Question 10

• No engine noise - Questions 11-13

• Audio delay - Question 14

• Rover TV - Questions 15-16

• Dust sticking on the Moon - Questions 17-20

• Steel cables - Questions 21-22

• Air on the Moon? - Questions 23-26

• Where is the radiation damage? - Questions 27-30

• Thermal contraction - Question 31

Following links go to Moon and Beyond

• Hotspots - Questions 32-33

• Shadows - Questions 34-36

• Soft shadows - Question 37

• Backlighting - Questions 38-42

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The Van Allen Belts - Questions 1-4

1. Can you explain why NASA – despite everything van Allen had written on the dangers of radiation – has sent the first astronauts through the radioactive belts without any specific protection, and without even a monkey first, in order to evaluate the effects of radiation on a biological organism as complex as the human being?

The warnings Van Allen gave in the articles highlighted in American Moon were based on an initial estimate of radiation intensity which was out by a factor of a thousand. After writing the articles Van Allen co-authored a paper in 1962 where he admitted “our 1959 assumptions... are seen to be invalid”. Rather than 10¹¹ electrons per cm²/sec, there were only 10⁸. The radiation was much less dangerous than Van Allen had thought. In fact, as NASA knew perfectly well, "The shielding provided by the Apollo space capsule walls was more than enough to shield the astronauts from all but the most energetic, and rare, particles".

NASA knew this because it had detailed knowledge of the radiation belts from the many satellites it had sent up prior to the manned Apollo missions. This page shows some of the satellites, with their launch dates. For example, Explorer 3 provided "Van Allen belt data". Explorer 6 carried out "Magnetosphere studies--radiation belt meteorology". Explorer 7 "Studied energetic particles". Explorer 10 "Studied interplanetary magnetic field near Earth; particle radiations". Explorer 12 carried out "Magnetospheric studies: how the radiation belts around the Earth receive, trap, and lose their charged particles". Explorer 15 carried out a "Study of enhanced radiation belt". Explorer 18 "Studied charged particles and magnetic fields in cislunar space". Explorer 21 "Studied magnetic fields and their interactions with solar plasma, solar wind, cosmic rays, intensities and distribution of space radiation." Explorer 26 "Studied how high-energy particles are injected, trapped, and lost in the Van Allen Belt". The OGO satellites also studied the "magnetosphere, and the space between the Earth and Moon". And Pioneer 4 "sent back excellent data about the Van Allen Belts".

2. If it were true, like the debunkers maintain, that “a lunar mission entails a total of radiation equivalent to an x-ray”, why does NASA describe today the Van Allen belts as “an area of dangerous radiation”?

The NASA engineer, Kelly Smith, who says the Van Allen belts are dangerous in the clip starting at 1:09:44 actually explains the reason. He says "radiation like this could harm the guidance systems, onboard computers or other electronics on Orion". Smith does not say that the radiation is a danger to humans. NASA scientist David Sibeck gives more detail here, stating that "Our current technology is ever more susceptible to these accelerated particles because even a single hit from a particle can upset our ever smaller instruments and electronics." It is the threat to sensitive electronics, not to people, which is the problem.

3. If it’s true, like NASA maintains that during the trip to the moon 50 years ago “the astronaut doses were ‘NEGLIGIBLE’, why does NASA state today, in regards to the Van Allen belts, that “we must solve these challenges before we send people through this region of space?”

Because if there are people on board a spacecraft whose guidance systems or computers or other electronics are damaged by radiation, those people could be in trouble.

I might also point out that at 1:11:17 the narrator says the Van Allen belts are now considered "very dangerous", showing a picture of Kelly Smith, when Smith only said the belts were "dangerous". The film-makers added the word "very". Also, in the clip of astronaut Terry Virts shown at 1:11:22 where Virts says that astronauts can't currently go beyond Earth orbit, he isn't talking about the radiation belts, he specifically talks about NASA needing to build larger rockets to go further, so I'm not sure what that clip is supposed to prove except that NASA hasn't been building large rockets recently...

4. How is it possible, that one of the very few astronauts to have ever crossed the Van Allen belts doesn’t even know where they are, and even doubts having gone “far enough out to encounter the Van Allen belts”?

Perhaps because the astronaut, Alan Bean, was in his seventies when he was interviewed, and had been retired for over 20 years. People in their seventies do occasionally forget things. The mission was in 1969 and Bean was interviewed around 2004. He probably didn't spend much time thinking about the belts, since they'd proven not to be a problem.

??Are we truly to believe that NASA has spent all this money to spend a vehicle covered with loose pieces of cardboard into space?

This question is at 1:17:26. Images are shown of foil sheets attached to the lunar module (LEM) with tape, and buckled panels. The narrator ridicules the makeshift appearance of the LEM. He's forgetting that space is a vacuum. There's no wind to blow off the foil so using tape is fine. Also he implies the tape is holding the LEM together. It isn't, it's just holding the foil blankets on. The blankets provided additional insulation to the LEM without being as heavy as standard heat shields and also provided a reflective covering to reflect away sunlight.

The narrator notes that some hoax debunkers have stated that the adhesive tape was used to keep weight down. He rejects this explanation, pointing out that rivets were used in other places on the LEM, and if weight was so important, why wasn't tape used everywhere? The answer is that tape was OK for the lightweight foil blankets attached to the exterior of the LEM, whereas the LEM itself obviously required rivets.

As for the buckled panels, they were not buckled when the LEM was built (which the narrator implies). They were buckled because they were damaged when it lifted off from the moon. An analysis of how the damage happened is found in section 14.2.2 of the mission report.

The narrator says "the lunar module cost over $2 billion dollars at the time" ($26 billion in 2016 money), implying this was the value of a single module, but this was actually the cost for all fifteen modules, including development costs.

The crater under the engine is missing - Questions 5-7

5. If a simple leaf blower can remove the dust from the surface, revealing the hard rock underneath, why has the same not happened under the engine of the LEM?

I'd argue that the same thing did happen under the engine of the LEM, but the rock is the same color as the dust so it's difficult to see in most of the pictures. However, in this picture (which is included in the film so the narrator can ask about what appear to be "pebbles" in it) you can clearly see that the bare rock is exposed.

6. And why do we still see several pebbles sitting under the engine, which weren’t even blown away during the landing of the LEM?

I think these "pebbles" must be stuck in the ground. If you look at the bottom right of the picture you can see similar lumps that definitely look like they're part of the ground. Bear in mind that this is not actually solid rock like you'd find on Earth, it's "regolith", a kind of heavily compacted debris caused by meteorite bombardment, so there's no reason to expect a smooth surface.

7. Given that James Irwin described “about 6 inches deep of soft material” around the footpads, why is there no hole in the sand under his LEM’s engine cone?

It looks like most of the dust has been removed from under the engine, it's just hard to tell because the underlying rock is exactly the same color as the dust. You can see that the actual dust has accumulated further away from the engine, to the bottom right of the photo. The dust Irwin was referring to could have just been pushed there by the engine during landing.

Dust missing from the landing pads - Questions 8-9

8. Given that this is the amount of dust thrown around by the descent engine (video @ 1:22:43), why is there no dust whatsoever in the LEM’s foot pads?

Maybe because the engine cut off prior to landing, while the foot pads were still far enough above the surface not to get dust in them? Bear in mind that there is no atmosphere on the moon so you would not get billowing clouds of dust like you'd get on Earth. Dust would simply have blown away from the landing area, with no air molecules to bounce it around and keep it in the vicinity.

[From a comment on a video: in fact, we do see minute amounts of regolith particles on the landing pads which can be seen using the magnifier. Nothing could be greater testimony to the reality of the moon landings than the subtlety of this imagery. We wouldn’t expect this virtually invisible level of subtlety in “normal” fakery and we most certainly wouldn’t expect it in sloppy psyop fakery which goes out of its way to let us know underneath the propaganda that we are being lied to (see Revelation of the Method).
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS11/40/5926.jpg]

9. How is it possible that the jet from the engine is at the same time strong enough to wipe the footpads clean, but weak enough not to even form a crater in the sand during the moon-landing?

The engine didn't form a "crater" because the dust was only an inch or two deep. But it definitely did push the dust away. It's just hard to see.

Lack of visible flame - Question 10

10. Given that this is the LEM’s ascent engine tested on Earth (video @ 1:26:36), why is there no visible flame under it when it takes off from the moon.

There is no visible flame when the LEM lifts off on the moon because the fuels it used don't produce a visible flame in a vacuum.

The narrator disputes this explanation by pointing out that the LEM engine was "hypergolic" and saying that "hypergolic fuels produce a clearly visible flame", even in a vacuum. Clips of other hypergolic rockets, with visible flames, are shown. The narrator says "This is a Draco engine, which uses hypergolic fuel", and "The space shuttle also uses hypergolic fuel". The way the narrator speaks, you would naturally assume that all the rockets shown use the same fuel--hypergolic fuel. But they don’t, because “hypergolic” isn’t a single fuel but a class of fuels, and there is no reason why one hypergolic rocket has to use the same fuel as another. As it turns out, the actual fuel used by the LEM ascent engine is different to the fuels used by the other rockets shown.

To be specific, the ascent engine used a 50:50 mix of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) with an N₂0₄ oxidizer. The Draco engine and the space shuttle orientation rockets both use monomethylhydrazine with N₂0₄, while the Soyuz orientation rockets use UDMH (without added hydrazine) with N₂0₄. To make a fair comparison with the ascent engine we should look at a rocket using the exact same fuel, not just a similar kind of fuel. It turns out that the Delta II second stage rocket uses the same fuel as the LEM ascent engine. And if we look at videos of these rockets firing in the vacuum of space, we see that their exhaust plumes are completely invisible. The only way you can tell they are firing is the sudden increase in the speed with which the first stage recedes.

The narrator also asks why the LEM's ascent engine produced a visible plume when it was tested on Earth. The reason is actually quite complicated, though it relies on the fact that when fired in an atmosphere, a supersonic rocket exhaust forms a standing shockwave due to pressure differentials with the surrounding air. This causes "shock diamonds", areas of increased heat which can ignite unburned fuel or exhaust products, or debris from the ablative layer of the rocket nozzle. In a vacuum this additional combustion would not happen. Chemiluminescent reactions of radical combustion products in the exhaust can also produce visible light, as is apparently the case with exhaust from the space shuttle's main engine. Again, these reactions don't happen in a vacuum in the absence of shock diamonds. So it is the Earth's atmosphere which made the ascent engine's plume visible in the test (and you can clearly see the "shock diamonds" in the footage).

This video shows that outside the area of the shock diamonds, the exhaust plume from a rocket using the same fuel as the ascent engine is invisible even on Earth. It's fascinating to see this rocket rising on an almost invisible plume. (More footage here).

If any additional evidence were needed that the lunar module did take off using a rocket, this sequence of stills from the Apollo 17 liftoff, courtesy of a poster on Quora, highlights that there was a visible flame where the rocket exhaust hit the descent stage. The burning of the materials of the descent stage no doubt caused the visible flame.

No engine noise - Questions 11-13

11. Given that, as confirmed by the debunkers, “the astronauts are literally sitting on the engine”, why don’t we hear any sounds from the engine during lift-off?

The only way for sound to be transmitted into the cabin, given the vacuum outside, would be by making the interior of the cabin vibrate. The ascent engine did not contain fuel pumps, as it was pressure-fed, so there would not have been any vibrations from pump motors. Audible vibration could only have come from fluctuations in the amount of thrust from the engine. Therefore the absence of sound simply implies that the thrust was constant and did not cause vibrations inside the LEM.

This rocket has 500lbs more thrust than the lunar ascent engine, but does not visibly vibrate during operation, so it's reasonable to assume the LEM ascent engine would also have not vibrated. Also, Tom Jones, a shuttle astronaut, says in this article that after booster separation during a shuttle launch he felt "almost no vibration", even though the shuttle's three main engines were still firing and delivering over a million pounds of thrust, "pushing us upward with a comfortable 1G acceleration". As long as the thrust is constant, there needn't be any significant vibration when a rocket fires. Absence of vibration would have meant absence of sound in the LEM.

In fact, the noise during the ascent was described by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott as being "like the wind was blowing through a window." Scott also said "This was very quiet. Very quiet. You heard a swishing sound". Source (entry at 171:38:05).

12. Given that during the Apollo 15 lift-off we are even able to hear the music from the tape recorder in the cabin, why don’t we hear the sound of the engine as well?

The reason the music can be heard clearly is that astronaut Al Worden played it into his microphone specifically so that it would be heard in mission control. He said "I thought I was playing it only for Houston." Source (Entry at 171:37:25). The reason the engine was not also heard is that, as mentioned in the answer to question 11, it did not make a loud noise in the cabin.

13. The lift-off from the moon is possibly the most delicate moment of the entire mission. The astronauts must keep their total concentration, and they must be able to communicate with one another instantly, in case something were to go wrong. Why then put their safety at risk by playing loud music inside the cabin, which could have distracted them from the operations and could have kept them from communicating clearly in a moment of distress? (Audio/Video 1:30:00)

Arguably, landing on the moon is a lot more delicate than lifting off, because during landing it might be necessary for the LEM pilot to take manual control to avoid an unsuitable landing site, as Neil Armstrong was forced to during Apollo 11. During liftoff it was less likely that the astronauts would have to intervene and take manual control. The main danger related to liftoff was that the ascent engine would not fire, stranding the astronauts on the moon. After the ascent engine fired the astronauts would have probably felt relief and elation that the moon landing itself had been a success and that they were on their way home, hence the playing of the music.

Also, it wasn't the intention of Al Worden, who played the tape, that the music would be heard by the other two astronauts. He intended the music only to be heard in mission control in Houston. He said "I thought I was playing it only for Houston. But then I found out that someone had turned on the switch that relayed my voice to the Lunar Module." Source (Entry at 171:37:25). It had also been the intention that the music should not be played immediately after liftoff, but a minute later. Source (Entry at 171:37:25).

?? Instead we are asked to believe that all this documentation has been turned into trash just because there wasn't enough space to store it.

The narrator says this at 1:31:39, referring to the claim made in 1997 by James M. Collier that NASA contractor Grumman Corporation had thrown away all of its paperwork relating to the Apollo missions. But Grumman did not throw away all of its paperwork. You can still find 130 boxes of their Apollo-related technical documents, dating from 1961-1972, at the National Archives in Forth Worth, Texas. The documents include "technical and management proposals, technical reports, end item specifications and specification amendments, functional requirements, mission planning studies, failure analysis reports, equipment status lists" and more.

?? What was so important in those tapes that NASA had to come up with such a preposterous excuse just to ensure they would no longer be available to scientists and researchers from modern times?

This question is asked at 1:35:21. The filmmakers imply that the non-availability of the tapes is somehow part of the fake moon-landing conspiracy. But if the landings really were faked, it seems incredibly unlikely that NASA would arrange a news conference to announce that it had lost some of the data that could prove they happened. It’s far more likely it would simply not mention the tapes, or if asked about them would say they were too fragile to be examined.

The reason the tapes were reused is that in the early 1980s NASA was unable to get hold of new high-quality tapes. The original tapes had been manufactured using whale oil, which was now banned, and new tapes made with synthetic oil were not as durable. By that time NASA’s satellite imaging surveys were generating so much data that it was forced to reuse 200,000 old tapes. The Apollo tapes were among those reused. The reason the Apollo tapes were not preserved is that there was nothing that could be done with the data on them which hadn’t already been done. The television pictures on the tapes had to be converted before being viewable on standard television equipment and this conversion had already taken place and the results were safely stored. The telemetry recorded on the tapes had already been reviewed and anything notable or unexpected had been written up in detail in the reports which NASA produced after each mission. Large sections of telemetry data were even included in the reports. We can assume that the portions of telemetry which have been lost were unremarkable, since if they had showed anything interesting, they would have been included in the reports.

The only reason anyone realised the tapes had been wiped is that some ex-NASA employees wanted to see if they could re-convert the video at a higher quality than had been achieved in the 1960s. There was no clamour from researchers for access to the raw telemetry. People interested in Apollo had all the data they could wish for in the mission reports, flight evaluation reports and other technical material released by NASA. There are over 7,000 contemporary technical reports and documents relating

Audio delay - Question 14

14. Given that we have examined the original videos from Spacecraft films, and that the debunkers themselves acknowledge that these videos are unedited and uncut, can you explain why in several instances the delay between the question (from the Earth) and the answer (from the Moon) is far shorter than it should be if the conversation had truly taken place between the Earth and the Moon?

On the Spacecraft Films Apollo 15 DVDs there are several audio-only sections, where mission audio is accompanied by stills rather than by video images. It's clear that the DVD producers decided to trim some of the gaps in these sections, to make them shorter overall. So while the video portions of the DVDs are unedited, the audio-only sections are not unedited.

As proof that the audio delays are shorter in the Spacecraft Films version than the original version, have a look at this NASA transcript, which archive.org saved in June 1997 (five years before the Spacecraft Films Apollo 15 DVD set was released). The transcript includes timings for everything said, which correspond with the audio mp3s which were later uploaded, but not with the timings on the DVDs. For example, the time between Houston starting to say "Roger, Jim. Copy. And are you progressing towards Dune Crater now?" and James Irwin replying is seven seconds, according to the timings on the transcript from 1997. But in the audio on the Spacecraft Films DVD, released in 2002, the time is only 4½ seconds. Since the transcript predates the DVDs, it must be the DVDs which introduced the alteration.

Rover TV - Questions 15-16

15. On Earth, transmitting vehicles are normally equipped with stabilizing pods in order to keep them from shaking during the broadcast. Why didn’t NASA think of placing something similar on the Rover, since it was supposed to broadcast from a distance dozens of times higher than a simple earth satellite?

Firstly, not all transmitting vehicles have stabilizing legs. (For those using old.reddit.com, please note each word there is a different link). In fact most of the pictures returned by a Google image search for "satellite truck" show vehicles without legs.

Secondly, it's true the signal from the moon had further to travel than a signal from Earth to a satellite, but the Apollo signal was also being picked up by a larger dish than would be found on a satellite. The dish at Honeysuckle Creek, the prime station for Apollo 15, was 26 metres across. By comparison, the largest communications satellite, the Terrestar 1, only has an 18 metre dish, while NASA's TDRS communications satellites only have 4.57 metre dishes.

If NASA considered stabilizing legs for the Rover, they probably decided they weren't necessary.

16. Given that, according to NASA’s manual, “The HGA pointing must remain within 2.5° of Earth” and that “the video signal will degrade extremely rapidly beyond that point,” how was it possible to broadcast images with such violent oscillations without the signal breaking nor degrading during the live feeds from the Moon?

The oscillations only appear to be violent because the camera had a 6x optical zoom. All of the clips with apparently large oscillations were taken while the camera was zoomed in, magnifying the movement. Also, the camera could be operated remotely and it appears that in some of the clips, the camera has been panned up or down during the oscillation. This movement would not have affected the antenna.

If we look at the clips when the camera was zoomed out, the oscillations don't look that large. We can determine the actual degree of movement using some trigonometry and some facts about the camera. The TV camera on the Rover had a 16mm sensor, giving a picture height of 7.49mm. The lens had a focal length of 12.5mm - 75mm. It’s not possible for us to know the exact focal length of the camera during each bounce, so let’s look at a bounce where the camera had a wide angle, and assume that at that point it was fully zoomed out and that the focal length was 12.5mm. Note that if the camera was not fully zoomed out at the point we choose, our calculations would give us an angle larger than the actual angle of the bounce, so by assuming 12.5mm we guarantee that, while the bounce could have been smaller than our result, it could not have been larger. Since we are trying to prove that the bounce was not large enough to cause signal loss, assuming the camera was fully zoomed out cannot work in our favour, it can only work against us.

This image shows the largest bounce seen when the camera is zoomed out as far as it gets during the sequence. The bounce is about 10% of the image height, which would make it .75mm high on the camera's sensor. This means the camera angle changed by 3.4° during this bounce. We now have to determine how much signal loss would result from moving the high-gain antenna 3.4° from its optimal direction.

The Rover had an 8 watt (39dBm) TV transmitter. The high-gain antenna provided a gain of 20.5db over a 10° cone, meaning if the antenna was misaligned by 5°, it would still provide gain of 20.5db. The receiving station at Honeysuckle Creek had a downlink gain of 53db and could receive S-Band signals (including TV pictures) as weak as -150db. Using the method outlined here, the strength of the signal received on Earth when the Rover's antenna was misaligned by 5° can be calculated as -98.7db using the following sum:

+39dbm transmitter power +20.5db antenna gain -211.2db path loss +53db receiver gain.

Seeing as this is much stronger than the -150db signal Honeysuckle Creek could receive, it's reasonable to conclude that the video picture would have survived intact at this signal strength. And seeing as the large bounce we calculated above resulted in a smaller misalignment than in this example, there is no mystery as to why the TV picture didn't break up during the bounce.

Dust sticking on the Moon - Questions 17-20

17. Given that there is no moisture on the moon, and that the solar wind dissipates electrostatic charges almost instantly, can you explain why the lunar dust sticks to all kinds of materials, from the astronauts’ suits to the photo cameras, from the Rover’s surfaces to the TV camera lenses?

The solar wind does not dissipate all electrostatic charges. The film-makers have either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented the research in the document they refer to. The document, titled The Electrostatic Environments of the Moon and Mars appears to be a slide presentation dating from 2016, based on a paper of the same name from 2011. The slide highlighted in the documentary is about triboelectric charging, which is electrostatic buildup caused by rubbing different materials together. The quote used in the documentary, that "the charge dissipates almost instantly in all cases", is specifically referring to a triboelectric charge, such as would build up through contact between the wheels of a lunar rover and the lunar regolith. The phrase does not refer to all electrostatic charges on the moon. This is clear from slide three of the presentation, which states that the daylight side of the moon would be charged to around 5 to 10 volts by the solar wind, and that the night side would be charged to around -50 to -200 volts.

In fact, the 2011 paper on which the slide presentation is based states in its abstract that "Dust covering the surface of the moon is expected to be electrostatically charged due to the solar wind, cosmic rays, and the solar radiation itself through the photoelectric effect. Electrostatically charged dust has a large tendency to adhere to surfaces."

As to why the dust sticks to "all kinds of materials", this is how electrostatically charged dust behaves.

18. Can you explain how the Rover’s wheels can gather so much thick dirt on them as to look like they’re covered in mud?

Probably a combination of the fact that the lunar dust is electrostatically charged, making it adhesive, and that the grains are sharp and irregularly shaped, increasing its adhesiveness. According to NASA scientists David McKay, "It's like Velcro."

19. Can you explain how the Lunar dust can stick together to such an extent, even preserving the shape of the numbers after they were moved from the engravings in which they had formed?

Because it's adhesive (see last answer).

20. Given that Mythbusters have replicated the lunar conditions, under vacuum and with the sand simulant can you explain why they weren’t able to reproduce the astronauts’ footprints from the original photos?

They didn't replicate the electrostatic conditions on the moon's surface, which increase the stickiness of the dust there. Also, lunar regolith simulants are, at best, approximations. Different simulants have different properties, but no single simulant has all of the properties of lunar dust. According to this paper (SciHub link), they are "extremely difficult to make in bulk and with uniform properties. The products have not been satisfactory, in many cases. A simulant made for one purpose may be entirely unsatisfactory for another..."

This paper looked at the "flowability" of NASA's currently-used simulant, JSC-1A. The flowability gives an indication of how likely the material is to flow rather than cohere in a solid shape. It found that "flowability measurements show marked differences dependent on the material preparation – or history". The researchers could not say with any confidence that the simulant had the same flow properties as lunar dust, due to the fact that "it is impossible to know the precise compaction history of lunar regolith".

Steel cables - Questions 21-22

21. Given that these are not artefacts from video conversion, nor are they glares inside the lens, can you explain what these flashes of light sometimes appearing over the head of the astronauts actually are?

The first flash of light appears to be a lens flare. The narrator says it can't be a lens flare because it doesn't appear simultaneously with the light glinting on the astronaut's aerial. But some lens flares only appear when the light which causes them reaches a certain level of brightness. This can be seen in this video of the sun rising, where some lens flares are visible when the sun first appears, and others only appear when it becomes brighter. The same effect is visible in video clip of the astronaut on the moon. The lens flare above his aerial appears as the reflection from his aerial reaches a certain brightness, and disappears when as it becomes dimmer. In fact, this happens twice, in a perfectly synchronized manner highly suggestive of a lens flare.

The second flash of light could easily be a video artifact. The narrator claims it can't be an artifact, because the video clip comes from a Spacecraft Films DVD. It doesn't occur to him that the artifact could have occurred before the clip was put onto the DVD. For example, it could have been caused by the sensor in the camera used to film the clip, or it could have been introduced when the picture was beamed back to Earth and converted to NTSC format. In fact, by claiming that the flash could not be a video artifact, the film-makers are really insulting the intelligence of their viewers, because a second before the flash in question, we see several clearly visible video artifacts, circled in red in this picture. It's not really convincing to claim that video with defects like that could not have other defects.

22. Can you explain how it is possible to make a movement such as this one, this one, or this one, without some kind of external force pulling you upwards?

All of the clips shown of the astronauts apparently defying gravity are the result of the fact that on the moon there is less gravity than on Earth. The narrator himself has mentioned the fact that the moon's gravity is one sixth of the Earth, but takes no account of this fact when expressing his great perplexity at the astronaut's unnatural movements. The movements only seem unnatural if you imagine them taking place in full gravity. If you take account of the fact that they're on the moon, there is no mystery. But for the sake of completeness, yes, I can explain the movements.

2:01:14 "This astronaut is leaning on the ground and then he suddenly gets up with no apparent effort".

He clearly lifts himself using his legs and his left hand, which is holding the pole embedded in the ground.

2:01:23 "Here the astronaut is suddenly pulled upwards and then remains dangling while rotating on himself".

He lifts himself with his left arm, which is holding the implement embedded in the ground. It's possible for him to do this because he's on the moon where gravity is lower than on Earth. He then transfers his weight onto his right leg and turns around, maintaining balance by placing first his left and then his right hand on the embedded implement.

2:01:35 "Here the astronaut is first pulled up and then seems to remain floating in midair".

He gets up using his legs and both of his hands, which are holding implements embedded in the ground which are clearly sturdy enough to support the weight he puts on them. Once standing, he is obviously not correctly balanced and has to make at least one backwards jump to correct this. Because he overbalances more slowly than he would under normal gravity, it looks like he is floating, but this is just an illusion caused by our expectation that he should fall more quickly. The astronaut makes the backwards jump at exactly the time when it's necessary to stop himself from falling over. The clip is cut off before we can see whether he had to make any additional backwards jumps or steps.

2:01:45 "Here, the fallen astronaut gets up from the ground as if a mysterious force were pulling him up through his backpack".

He clearly lifts himself up using his left arm, which is being held by the right arm of the astronaut helping him.

2:01:58 "Here the astronaut is working with some tools when suddenly a mysterious force yanks him upwards and to his right".

The astronaut is clearly about to overbalance to his right and is forced to jump rightwards, primarily using his right leg, which had been slightly bent, to regain his balance.

2:02:14 "There is even a situation where the astronaut complains that he cannot get up and he almost seems to wait for someone or something to pull him up. The astronaut waits until a mysterious force helps him up".

It's obvious that he is momentarily unable to get up due to the weight of his backpack. He makes three visible attempts to lift himself by straightening his legs, moving up slightly on the first two attempts, and manages to stand on the third attempt.

2:02:31 "In this case the astronaut falls forward but somehow remains suspended in mid-air".

He's clearly not suspended in mid-air. Both of his hands and both of his feet make contact with the ground. How is this "suspended in midair"?

2:02:46 "Here we have a case of apparent levitation. The astronaut on the left takes a leap forward and then remains floating in midair while a strange force pulls him upwards".

He's obviously climbing on the LEM. In the low gravity he's able to climb using only his hands.

2:03:10 "Look at the movement the astronaut manages to make... It's as if his feet were free to slide... He is not just lifting himself on his toes. The entire lower part of the leg from the knee down is sliding forwards and then backwards".

He seems to be lifting himself on his toes, but his feet are hidden by a rock. I'm not even sure what mystery is supposed to be here, unless the film-makers just didn't realise that the astronaut's feet were hidden by a rock and thought that they were visible.

Air on the Moon? - Questions 23-26

23. Given that there is no atmosphere on the moon, can you explain what slows down and suspends the sand particle in mid-air, forming small dust clouds before the fall to the ground?

Firstly, the animation in American Moon which shows how the producers believe wheel-thrown dust would behave in a vacuum is completely unrealistic. No wheel could ever throw multiple dust particles in an exactly identical trajectory, as suggested by the animation. Random factors would give each particle a different trajectory, causing cloud-like dispersion.

Secondly, it is very obvious from the lunar footage that these "clouds" actually dissipate very quickly, before the rover has moved more than about a metre. This could not be more different to the picture the producers show of a rally car on Earth with dust clouds hundreds of metres behind it. The dust particles on the moon clearly begin to fall as soon as they have reached the highest point of their trajectory, failing to linger or drift as they would on Earth.

It's interesting to note that every single time the producers of American Moon freeze-frame the lunar footage and circle a dust cloud, they select dust which was still on an upward trajectory, or had only just reached the top of its trajectory, at the point when the footage was frozen. They never circle a cloud which has remained at the same height for any amount of time, because there aren't any. And they never explain why they have to freeze the footage to highlight the clouds. If their theory was correct, and the dust clouds were lingering, they shouldn't have had to freeze the footage to highlight them. They should have been able to highlight clouds in moving footage.

A final consideration is that the moon is a low-gravity environment, and the low gravity would cause dust particles thrown by the Rover's wheels to take longer than expected to fall. The slower rate of fall gives an impression that the dust is floating as it might in an atmosphere, but this impression is false.

??Movement of the thermal cover on the front of the Rover.

At 2:07:00, footage is shown of an astronaut brushing dust from the lunar rover. While he is brushing the dust, the thermal cover visible on the front of the rover moves and changes shape. The narrator suggests this is caused by air. Another perfectly plausible explanation, consistent with the footage being filmed in a vacuum, is that the astronaut moved forward and pushed a part of the cover which was offscreen (the whole cover is not shown in the footage so there's no way to rule out that an offscreen part of it was touched). The astronaut-movement theory is backed up by the timing of the cover movement. In the footage, the astronaut can be seen brushing parts of the rover which are progressively further away from him. He starts brushing an area on the right of the picture, then proceeds to brush an area in the middle of the picture, and finally starts brushing an area which is offscreen to the left. The movement of the rover's cover happens after he has finished brushing the middle section, but before he begins brushing the offscreen section — exactly at the time when you might expect him to reposition himself in order to be able to reach further. By moving further towards the rover to reach further over it, he must have pushed the front cover.

??Dust moving when Rover battery cover is closed.

At 2:07:17 the narrator describes dust on the lunar rover being blown up by air pressure when a battery dust cover is closed by an astronaut, and a video clip is shown of the dust moving. The narrator says the movement of the dust could not have been caused by a vibration, because the dust only moves in a specific area. He says the entire rover is covered with dust, and if a vibration was the cause of the movement, all the dust would have moved.

In fact there is no reason to think all the dust would have moved. The batteries on the lunar rover were surrounded by thermal insulating blankets, as shown in figure 1-17 in the Lunar Rover Operations Handbook. The blankets were made of aluminized mylar and nylon. Being flexible, it's likely the blankets would have been much better at absorbing vibrations than a solid material would have been. It's also the case that both mylar and nylon are polymers, and polymers are known to have vibration-damping properties. Given these facts we would not expect all the dust on the rover to move.

24. Given that the flag begins to move even before the astronaut reaches it – which excludes both static discharge and a physical contact – can you suggest anything different from the displacement of air to explain the flag’s movement?

This question refers to the moment captured on video during the Apollo 15 moon landing when the astronaut David Scott bounced past a flag and the flag started to move. It has been suggested that Scott touched the flag with his elbow (see the entry at 148:57:15). However, this 3d recreation indicates that he was too far from the flag to touch it. It is possible, however, that the movement was caused by a static charge that Scott was carrying on the surface of his suit.

According to this slideshow by a NASA scientist (slides 7 and 8), static charges dissipate on the moon in milliseconds, which would make it hard to see how Scott could have been carrying a charge when he passed the flag. The reason for the fast dissipation is the solar wind, which bombards the moon with electrons and protons and creates a "plasma sheath" of electrons around the moon. These ambient electrons act as a ground to any positive charge and dissipate it. Interestingly, though, a negative charge takes slightly longer to dissipate, because it is dissipated by the ions in the solar wind, which are less numerous than the electrons in the moon's plasma sheath. I found an interesting paper, "Concerning the dissipation of electrically charged objects in the shadowed lunar polar regions", which gives a formula for the amount of time it takes for a static charge to dissipate on the moon.

The most interesting fact is that the time taken for the charge to dissipate is inversely proportional to the area that the charge covers. This is because the larger the area, the more ions will come into contact with the charged surface, and the quicker the charge will be dissipated. So if the charge is concentrated in a small area, it takes longer to dissipate. The example given in the paper is of an astronaut's spacesuit, with an area of 10 square metres. They say a negative charge would dissipate from a spacesuit in 0.003 seconds. But for an astronaut's boot, which is only 1m², the charge would take ten times longer (0.03 seconds) to dissipate. Using the formula given we can calculate that a negative charge that covered only 80cm² would take 3.5 seconds to dissipate, which would have given Scott time to receive the charge off-camera and to move past the flag while still charged, making the flag move.

Using the Quickfield electric field simulation software I set up a 3D scene where an astronaut is one metre from a flag, and set an 80cm² area on the astronaut's arm to be charged to -10,000 volts. The result showed that the presence of the charge on the astronaut produced a force of 0.000002 Newtons on a selected 9.3cm² area in the corner of the flag. Using the procedure outlined here I tried to calculate the effect this force would have on the flag. Assume that the force was applied for 1 second, which is about the amount of time it took the astronaut to pass. 0.000002 Newtons for one second is an impulse of 0.000002 Newton-seconds. Since impulse/mass = final velocity - initial velocity, and since the initial velocity is zero, it's just necessary to divide this impulse by the mass of the small flag section to find the velocity in meters per second that the flag section would end up with.

This flag is the same size as the one used on the moon (3' by 5') and according to the linked web page it weighs .55 lbs, which is 249 grams. 9.3cm² is 0.00067 times smaller than the full flag, so reduce the weight by the same factor to find the weight of the piece of flag we are looking at. This works out as 0.167 grams, or 0.000167 kilograms. 0.000002Ns / 0.000167kg = 0.01 metres per second, or 1cm per second. So according to this, the 9.3cm² area of flag would have been moving at 1cm per second after the astronaut passed.

This is the speed the flag piece would be moving if the electrostatic force was applied in the opposite direction to the Moon's gravity. It's possible the piece would move faster in a direction perpendicular to the direction of gravity. If the astronaut had a static charge on his arm, it would not stay constant during the one second it took him to pass the flag. We can suppose that the charge was higher when the astronaut initially received it, and decreased as he passed the flag, but was still high enough to produce the movement observed in the flag.

There is also the complicating factor that the piece of flag we are doing calculations for was not floating freely, but was attached to the surrounding flag material, which would have created drag. However, the surrounding material would also have had a force acting on it from the static charge, pushing it in a similar direction to the piece of flag we are looking at, reducing the drag.

These calculations prove that it's possible for a static charge to have caused the flag to move, despite the solar wind and its tendency to dissipate static charges. The astronauts' suits were coated with Teflon, which is notable for being very electronegative, which means it has a high tendency to acquire electrons from other materials, creating a negative static charge. The astronaut must have touched something offscreen to cause this--perhaps a piece of metal equipment.

The narrator says the because the flag in the video starts moving "before the astronaut passes by" that it can't be due to static. This is wrong, a repulsive static charge would cause the flag to move in advance of the astronaut. The narrator also says "the only plausible explanation for the waving of the flag seems to be a displacement of air caused by the astronaut walking by." This explanation is not actually plausible, because the flag starts moving before Scott reaches it. As this video shows, when an object moves through air it causes very little disturbance to the air ahead of it. Almost all disturbance is caused in the wake of a moving object, meaning if Scott had caused the flag to move by air pressure, it would not have started moving before he reached it. Only a repulsive static charge would have caused this.

25. Given that this flag waves not once but twice without anyone touching it, can you explain what caused this flag's movements?

On this occasion the astronauts are moving around quite close to the flag. It's possible that their weight on the ground nearby could have jolted the flagpole and caused the flag to move. They also pass under the flag, meaning exhaust gas from their space suits could have caused the flag to move. The space suits were fitted with "porous plate sublimators", which expelled steam into the vacuum to remove excess heat. The gas leakage rate of the space suits was 200 cubic centimetres per minute. As shown on page 15 of this document, the sublimator was at the top of the astronaut's backpack, meaning gas could have been expelled upwards and moved the flag as the astronauts passed beneath it.

26. Given that the astronauts have been in the LEM for at least 15 minutes, and there is no one else around who could have touched the flag, can you suggest anything different from a displacement of air on the set to explain the flag’s repeated movements?

This question refers to flag movements captured on video during the Apollo 14 mission. The American flag which the astronauts had planted on the moon moved, apparently by itself, while the astronauts were inside the lunar module preparing to lift off.

We can very quickly and easily establish the reason for the flag movements by taking note of when they happened. The first flag movement happens about forty-one seconds after the mission control announcer is heard saying “Okay, Al. We're watching that and it's looking good. Suits are looking good.” According to the Apollo 14 lunar surface journal this is said at mission time 136:19:12, meaning the flag movement happened at 136:19:53. The last flag movement happens two minutes and fifty-six seconds later, putting it at 136:22:49. If we check the journal we can see that the astronauts were depressurising the LEM’s cabin throughout the period when the flag was moving. At 136:19:09, forty-four seconds before the first flag movement, the log shows astronaut Alan Shepard saying, “Houston, Antares. We're depressing the cabin for jettison now.” And it’s not until 136:23:40, fifty-one seconds after the last flag movement, that Shepard says “Okay, Houston. We're going to jettison now,” indicating that the depressurisation was finished. The roughly three-minute period during which the flag moved is entirely contained within the four-and-a-half minutes during which the cabin was depressurising.

The reason the astronauts depressurised the cabin prior to liftoff was so that they could offload weight. The life support systems they carried on the back of their space suits were no longer needed and would be useless baggage during the flight back to Earth. Once the cabin was depressurised the astronauts opened the door and threw the life support systems out onto the moon’s surface. It was the venting of gases from the lunar module prior to doing this which caused the flag movements seen in the video.

The fact that the flag movements happened at exactly the time the module was venting gas would seem to be very convincing evidence that the gas moved the flag. But the narrator of American Moon refutes this suggestion, stating that “Any ejected gas would immediately disperse its pressure into the vacuum of space and would not be able to create the turbulence needed to move the flag.” The narrator wants viewers to think that as soon as the gas molecules reached the vacuum they would all suddenly fly off in random directions. But there is no reason why this would happen. Since the pressure was equally low in all directions, the vacuum itself would not cause any deviation in the path the molecules followed. They would of course disperse due to emerging from the module’s dump valve at slightly different angles, and from colliding with each other, but since they were all being rapidly forced in the same direction through the small hole, it’s likely they would have travelled some distance before dispersing significantly, creating a jet of gas which, if aimed in the flag’s direction, would easily have caused it to move. The absence of any ambient air molecules for the escaping gas to collide with would also have minimised dispersal.

The narrator also says gas could not have moved the flag because the flag’s initial movement was towards the module rather than away from it. But he has no basis for saying this, since the flag was offscreen when it started moving. It’s entirely possible that the flag initially moved away from the module, and then rebounded towards it.

Where is the radiation damage? - Questions 27-30

27. Given that, according to NASA, “no practical method exists for eliminating cosmic radiation damage”, and that “this degrading factor must be accepted”, where is the degradation, significant but acceptable, that should appear on the lunar pictures?

The report these quotes come from is about photographic film used in experiments on the Skylab space station. In the report’s abstract it says the film will be exposed to the space radiation environment “for up to 230 days”. However bad they are at research, the makers of American Moon must know that the Apollo missions did not last for 230 days. The conclusions of the Skylab report are therefore not necessarily applicable to Apollo.

Another reason the report’s findings do not apply to Apollo is that, as the report states on page 7, “the primary particles of concern are those trapped in the magnetic field of the Earth.” Although Skylab would be hit by cosmic rays, it was particles in the Earth’s magnetosphere (the Van Allen belts) which were more of a concern, since the station would be repeatedly exposed to them during its orbits. The makers of American Moon give the false impression that the report was only talking about cosmic rays when it referred to “severe” damage to photographic film. In fact, cosmic rays were not even the primary concern of the report’s authors.

28. Given that this is the result of cosmic rays’ impact on film within the magnetosphere, where radiation is weaker than in external space, can you explain why on the lunar pictures there are no visible signs of radiation damage?

Contrary to what the producers of American Moon seem to think, and what they mislead their viewers into thinking, not all cosmic ray particles have the same amount of energy. Cosmic rays actually have a spectrum of energies spanning fifteen orders of magnitude (from 10⁶ to approx. 10²⁰ eV). Fortunately for lunar astronauts, the most energetic particles are also the rarest. The makers of American Moon really should have known this, because they quote a passage from Human Safety in the Lunar Environment, and the very next sentence after they one they quote says, “as the energy of the radiation increases from solar wind to cosmic rays, the frequency of encountering that radiation decreases.”

This paper gives details of the energy spectrum of deep-space cosmic rays. Figure 1 shows that the particles with the lowest energy have a flux of around 10⁵/(day cm² sr KeV/µm), whereas for the highest energy particles the flux is around 10⁻¹/(day cm² sr KeV/µm), meaning they are a million times less common. Since there is no indication of the energy of the particle which created the effect on the film shown in American Moon, we can’t say how often we should expect to see the same effect in the Apollo pictures. It’s possible it was a very energetic, and thus very rare particle. Presumably the film used in the experiment was also very sensitive, and the whole experiment was designed specifically to capture cosmic rays. The same cannot be said of the Apollo landings, which predominantly used medium-speed films rated at ASA/ISO 64 and 160 on the lunar surface.

29. Given that this is the result of a simple X-ray scan, which lasts only a few seconds, can you explain why in the Apollo pictures, which have been exposed to cosmic radiation for up to 8 consecutive hours, there is no visible graining whatsoever?

The picture shown was not exposed to a “simple X-ray scan”. It was, according to the Kodak document, put through an L3 Examiner 3DX 6000 full bag scanner, which uses a computed tomography technique to generate 3D images. This technique involves taking up to 720 separate scans and combining them. The amount of radiation the baggage is exposed to by these machines was measured as 156mrem in this CDC paper (Table 6). 156mrem is 1560µSv. The amount of radiation on the Moon’s surface was measured in 2019 as being 1369µSv a day. Since, as mentioned, the majority of cosmic rays are at the low end of the energy spectrum, the Apollo film would probably would have been shielded from them while in the lunar module. The cameras would therefore have needed to be out on the lunar surface for over 27 hours for the film to receive the same amount of radiation as in the X-ray scanner. None of them was on the surface for this long.

30. Given that the lunar surface gets hit by an average of one to four particles per square centimetre per second, and that the cameras have been out on the surface, unprotected, for up to 8 consecutive hours, can you explain why on the lunar pictures there are no signs of degradation due to the radiation?

There are signs of radiation damage on just about all the Apollo images. I looked at 17 images chosen more or less at random and found small white or blue spots and marks in the dark areas of every single one. I have marked up five pictures, with enlarged areas, showing some of the anomalies I found, and which anyone can find if they look closely at high-resolution scans (such as the ones available here). These spots exactly fit the description of “small bright dots” given by supposed expert David Groves, of which he said he found “no evidence whatsoever.” Admittedly, some of the spots are very small, but there are others which can be seen quite easily, even without zooming in. It’s clear David Groves did not look very closely at the Apollo images before making his assessment.

Many more small white dots become visible on some Apollo images if they are color-corrected to increase the brightness of dark areas. This gallery shows some of the dots I found with this process. Photos from Apollo 11 seem to have been particularly badly affected. Some have dozens of white dots which become visible with the increased brightness. In some pictures they could even be mistaken for stars. The fact that they show up in all dark areas, not just the sky, indicates that they are not.

The fastest film speed used on the Moon was a black-and-white film rated at ASA 278. This film was only used during the second EVAs of both the Apollo 12 (magazines X and Z) and Apollo 14 (magazines LL and MM) missions. These EVAs both lasted less than five hours. If we look at photos from these EVAs, and increase the brightness of the dark areas, they do seem to have extensive graining such as would be caused by radiation.

Thermal contraction - Question 31

31. Given that the Audi technicians fear the complete blockage of the mechanical parts of their rover after only ten minutes spent in the lunar shadow how can a camera keep working after having spent over half an hour in the same shadow, its mechanical parts being far more precise and delicate than those of a lunar rover?

The rover would be in contact with the ground, so it would lose heat through conduction. The camera, not being in contact with the ground, could not lose heat this way. Also, the rover could explore areas that have been in shadow for up to seven days, whereas the ground by the Apollo 11 module had been in shadow for less than six hours when the first EVA started.

The makers of American Moon seem to think the temperature of the lunar surface would somehow drop by hundreds of degrees the very instant a shadow touched it. In fact, it would cool gradually. Figure 8 of this paper shows that surface cooling continues throughout the lunar night, and the ground doesn’t reach its lowest temperature until just before sunrise, after having been in darkness for fourteen days (12 lunar hours).

We can in fact make a reasonable estimate of the temperature of the ground when Neil Armstrong left the lunar module, as the astronauts deployed a device with a thermometer directed at the moon’s surface less than two hours later. This paper derives the brightness temperature of the surface from the thermometer data (the brightness temperature is the minimum temperature the ground could have been to give the observed readings). We can see that when the thermometer started recording, the brightness temperature of the ground was about 268°K, or -5°C. By that time, of course, the ground would have been slightly warmer than when the EVA started, since the sun was rising. If we look at figure 8a in this paper we can calculate that during the lunar morning the moon’s surface heats up at around 4.4°C per hour, and from there we can estimate that it would have been at around -13.8°C when the EVA started. Using a similar method to calculate the rate of cooling of the surface when it becomes shadowed, we can estimate that thirty minutes after the start of the EVA, the ground temperature would have dropped to -15.5°C. This is a long way from the figure of -200°F (-129°C) suggested in American Moon.

Nevertheless, to attempt prove how little heat the Hasselblad camera would have lost through radiative cooling even if the moon’s surface had been extremely cold, I made a simulation using the Energy2D heat simulation software. I placed a 30cm x 30cm square with a temperature of 25°C about a metre above a large object with a temperature of -200°C. I set the background region to have zero thermal conductivity and very low density, to simulate a vacuum, then let program simulate the passage of two hours. As you can see, at the end of that time, the temperature of the box had dropped by only around 5°C. I gave the box an emissivity of 0.3 to simulate the cameras’ silver paint, but even with the emissivity set to 1 the temperature only dropped ten degrees in two hours. The simulation may not be totally accurate but it gives us an idea of the scale of the temperature change we would expect to see.

The reason the camera’s temperature would drop so slowly is that radiative heat loss just isn’t that fast when the temperatures involved are not particularly high. At high temperatures energy is radiated very quickly, but the amount of radiation released is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature. So while a black body at 1000°C will radiate nearly 150,000 watts per square metre, halving the temperature to 500°C reduces the energy released by eighty-six percent.

Question 32-37 responses taken from The Moon & Beyond site and I refer you to the links below to the individual pages responding to the questions.

Hotspots - Questions 32-33

Shadows - Questions 34-36

Soft shadows - Question 37

Backlighting - Questions 38-42 to Apollo directly available on NASA’s website.