Page 118 - The Appollo Story

The Apollo Story

Did Apollo Really Land On The Moon?
Liquid Water on the Moon
The Claim: To leave a footprint requires moisture in the soil, doesn't it?
The Science: Not always. If you take some dry fine-grained dust such as talcum powder and dump it out,
it's easy to make tracks in it that hold their shape. The particles hold their positions due to the friction be-
tween them.
Death by Meteor
The Claim: Space is filled with super-fast micrometeors that would punch through the ship and kill the
astronauts.
The Science: Space is really amazingly big. While there are indeed an uncountable number of tiny pieces
of debris travelling through the solar system at speeds in the neighbourhood of 120,000 MPH, the volume
of space keeps the density low. The chance of any given cubic yard of space having a micrometeor pass-
ing through it is incredibly close to zero. Additionally, the astronauts suits included a layer of Kevlar to
protect them from any tiny fragment they might encounter.
No Crater at Landing Site
The Claim: When the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) landed, its powerful engine didn't burrow a deep
crater in the "dusty surface."
The Science: Beneath the layer of dust, the moon is made of fairly densely-packed rock. What dust and
loose dirt there was, though, was "kicked up" as referenced by the astronauts and captured in their landing
films.
Big Rover
The Claim: There's no way that big moon buggy they were driving could have fit into that little landing
module!
The Science: The rover was very cleverly constructed to be made out of very light materials, and de-
signed to fold up compactly, a real-life "Transformer."
It's Full of Stars!
The Claim: Space is littered with little points of lights (stars). Why then are they missing from the photo-
graphs?
The Science: If you've ever taken a photograph outside at night, you'll notice that faint distant objects
don't show up. That's not because the air blocks them - it's because the brightness of the nearby objects
washes out the film. In fact if you were standing on the day side of the moon, you'd have to somehow
block the landscape out in order for your eyes to adapt enough to pick out the stars.
Fried Film
The Claim: In the sun's rays, the Moon's temperature is a toasty 280 degrees F. The film (among other
things) would have melted.
The Science: No one was leaving bare film out on the hot lunar surface. All material was contained in
protective canisters. In addition, at the time the Apollo missions landed, they were either at lunar dawn or
dusk. As a result, the temperature was more easily manageable.