American Moon is a 2017 documentary by Massimo Mazzucco providing "evidence" that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax.
I have seen posts on this sub claiming this film contains "irrefutable proof" that the Moon Landings were faked, but I feel the filmmakers have either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented the research in most of their claims. Some of the questions are very interesting to look into, such as movements made by the American flag at a distance, but the filmmakers seem to overlook and/or misrepresent simple facts in other claims.
For example, American Moon was very, very selective in choosing the pictures that show apparent falloff and completely ignoring the huge number that show the exact opposite. I think the apparent falloff could be explained by slopes on the moon's surface, but there is no way to explain the pictures that don't show falloff unless they were taken on the moon. In my opinion, none of these pictures could have been done with studio lights, as the lighting is too even.
As of now, I'm not convinced that the Moon Landing was a hoax as I haven't seen evidence that can't be explained with basic physics, but if someone has better evidence than what I've watched so far in American Moon, then I'm very interested to hear it.
I understand this is a controversial topic on this sub. I hope this post fosters quality, good-faith discussion of what happened during the Apollo Missions.
Here are many of the questions asked by the filmmakers throughout the film. Please let me know if anything important in his claims seems to be left out and I'll try to go back and take a second look. I didn't finish the last of his claims as it was all starting to smell too much like bullshit for it to be worth my time, and I was running out of characters for my post. Give me a timestamp if you want me to take a look at anything in particular. I had responses to other questions but I had to remove them due to character limits.
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 that introduced the alteration.
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. 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 meters across. By comparison, the largest communications satellite, the Terrestar 1, only has an 18-meter dish, while NASA's TDRS communications satellites only have 4.57-meter 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 favor, 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 a 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.
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 filmmakers 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 an 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 scientist 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.
20. Given that Mythbusters has 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 depending 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".
21. Given that these are not artifacts 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 a 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 filmmakers 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 a 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 backward 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 backward 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 backward jumps or steps.
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 filmmakers just didn't realize that the astronaut's feet were hidden by a rock and thought that they were visible.
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 they 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 such as the shapes of the particles, the amount of compaction, and the shape and texture of the wheel surface would cause different particles to have different trajectories. Some particles could be launched by the movement of other particles, rather than direct contact with the wheels, and these particles would also have different trajectories. Also, every particle is launched from a different position. The fact that the particles have different trajectories leads to the apparent cloud.
Secondly, it is very obvious from the footage that these "clouds" actually dissipate very quickly, before the lunar rover has moved more than about a meter. This could not be more different from the picture the producers show of a rally car on Earth with dust clouds hundreds of meters 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 that 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 in 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, the 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 that 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 vibration, because the dust only moves in a specific area. He says the entire rover is covered with dust, and if the 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 Figures 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 can see why the vibration from the dust cover closing only moved dust in a small area.
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 probable that it was jostled by the vibration of David Scott walking past. 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. As an example, they provide calculations for a position 85 degrees from the subsolar point (the point directly under the sun). But I think the maths actually works anywhere on the dayside surface, for negative charges at least, since the number of incoming ions from the solar wind is the same everywhere on the dayside, at 5 per cubic centimeter.
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 meters. 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 I calculated 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 we can set up a 3D scene where an astronaut is one meter from a flag and set an 80cm² area on the astronaut's arm to be charged to -10,000 volts. The result shows 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 we can try 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 the 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 the flag would have been moving at 1cm per second after the astronaut passed.
This is the speed that 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 the 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 the 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 the 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, or more likely just vibrations 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 spacesuits could have caused the flag to move. The spacesuits were fitted with "porous plate sublimators", which expelled steam into the vacuum to remove excess heat. The gas leakage rate of the spacesuits was 200 cubic centimeters per minute. As shown on page 15 of this document, the sublimation cooler 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 depressurizing 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 depressurization 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 depressurizing.
The reason the astronauts depressurized the cabin prior to liftoff was so that they could offload weight. The life support systems they carried on the back of their spacesuits were no longer needed and would be useless baggage during the flight back to Earth. Once the cabin was depressurized 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 traveled 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 minimal 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.
Hopefully, this puts into perspective all the lengths the filmmakers of American Moon went to misrepresent facts. I really shouldn't be surprised; this is all too common in these YouTube conspiracy documentaries, but I figured I'd give it a go after multiple suggestions to do so.
Edit: Clarity
Archived URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracyNOPOL/comments/mkvqjk/debunking_claims_made_in_american_moon_a_moon/
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