how is it when Armstrong put the flag on the moon, the flag was fluttering but there is no air in space????

Answer 1

This is one of the most common questions about the Apollo landings and is often used as evidence of a hoax. Fortunately there is nothing peculiar about what we can see here at all. Not if we remember this is happening on the moon.

Firstly the flag had a horizontal bar attached to it at the top. This was done so that the flag would stand out from the flagpole. NASA appreciated that there would be no wind on the moon, so any normal flag would just hang limply and unattractively down the pole. To make things look better they added a bar that stood out at 90 degrees from the pole. The flag was really hanging from this, rather than from the pole. The bar was also not quite the full width of the flag, so that it was slightly furled to give a 'wave look' to it.

The moon's surface, once you get past the thin layer of dust, is very hard. So getting the flagpole to stick in was a tough job. The footage shows the astronaut twisting the pole back and forth in order to try and get it further into the ground. This movement made the attached bar and flag flutter.

The flagpole itself was light aluminium that is quite springy. Even once the astronaut let go the pole would continue to vibrate. This in turn would shake the bar and flap the flag. Without any air to dampen this it would continue to do so for longer than you might expect.

Answer 2

No air on the moon, that is true, so the flag had a horizontal bar that held the flag out, otherwise it would have hung limply, and would have looked rather pathetic. The flag was crumpled from being packed in the leg of the lunar lander for the outward journey, further adding to the illusion of the flag waving. When the astronauts were erecting the flag, they twisted the flagpole to try and drive it in to the surface, this caused the flag to swing back and forth. The movement of the flag here actually proves beyond any doubt that they were in a vacuum environment because an atmosphere would have damped the flag's movement The flag on the moon acts more like a pendulum, the swinging movement taking quite a long time to decay.

Answer 3

Boilerfan. There is in fact gravity on the moon and in space. Notice the pics of the astronauts standing on the moon not floating away from it. The earth orbits the sun based on the gravitational pull of the sun.

There is no atmosphere on the moon. No air. No wind. The flag was not fluttering in a lunar breeze.

follow this link and look at pic (#16) and you will notice the horizontal metal bar and rings on the flag.

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/FirstLunarLanding/ch-3.html

it was designed to look like a flag in the wind. simple as that

Answer 4

It was not "fluttering", it was wrinkled because it was tighly rolled in a cannisted.
It has to be remembered that those claiming to see a weaving flag are doing this from looking at a STILL PHOTOGRAPH, not a motion picture. The fuzzy black and white only TV images (fuzzier than the high quality full color still camera images, that is) shows a flag that does not budge after the astronauts finished touching it.

Answer 5

the flag wasnt fluttering... it was kept rolled up until the time it was unfolded as a result of which you can see the flag opened up like in ripples which gives a feeling of it fluttering

Answer 6

The flag wasn't fluttering. That was an optical illusion. It was made of rigid material & shaped to look like it was fluttering.

Answer 7

Boilerfan... there is definitely gravity in space and on the moon. First, the moon's gravity holds the astronauts down to it when they land, second gravity keeps the moon in orbit around the earth.

Answer 8

There is also no gravity in space so nothing acting on the flag to make it hang down. It was floating within the confines of being mounted to a pole.

Answer 9

The flag was NOT fluttering, it was embedded with wires to make it LOOK like there was a breeze

Answer 10

Poor earthling. Fancy thinking that someone actually landed on the moon.