Poor Mitch Pileggi. This must have been his contractually obligated "turkey" that Hollywood makes its "stars" do, just to prove who's in charge.
So you think we faked the moon landing?
So you saw the flag flapping in the "breeze" on the airless moon. No you didn't. The flag had a rod through the top and a weight at the bottom corner so that it would look fully deployed. And the "flapping" you saw was due to the astronaut TWISTING THE FLAGPOLE INTO THE LUNAR SOIL for better placement. As soon as the twisting stopped, guess what? The flapping stopped too!
And try this one on for size, airboy: Ever drop some flour in the kitchen and notice a cloud of dust hovering over the floor? Well if the astronauts were REALLY on a soundstage with a flag that was REALLY flapping in the breeze, you'd see dust flying all around too. But you didn't, because there wasn't, BECAUSE THEY WERE ON THE (AIRLESS) MOON!
So you thought the lighting of the Astronauts was too perfect, as if it was a studio job. Well, the lighting and the shadows would be a little wonky, considering that there are THREE sources of light in the photos: The sun (natch), the Earth (much the same way the full moon illuminates the night sky), and the moon itself. That's right, all that moonlight that we see here on earth was shining right up into the astronauts' faces and giving their spacesuits a nice, soft-light look.
Oh, that's also the reason you don't see any stars in the moon photos. The surrounding moonlight was so bright, the shutter speeds on the cameras were set very fast. It would be like taking a picture out your living room window at night and expecting to see stars in the photo. Ain't gonna happen.
So you think that there should be a great big crater under the LEM. Well I hate to break this to you, but the LEM didn't land at full power. Most of its fuel load was spent in deceleration from orbit, and in hovering over the landing site. They only needed a fraction of its power to make a nice, soft, 1/6th gravity landing. They didn't even "land" under power. Each of the landing "feet" had a thin rod that would signal the astronauts that they were just over the surface. They would then cut the engine and drop the final 18 inches unpowered. ("Contact light! OK, Engine Stop!" Remember that from the Apollo mission tapes?)
And then there's the matter of the ascent stage, popping off the moon as if it was on a cable. See, once again you're taking what you've seen (launches on earth) and projecting them onto what you THINK you've seen. It takes a ridiculous amount of thrust to start moving up. So when rockets launch from earth, they are held down for a few seconds. It's the same as starting your car when you're parked on a hill. Hold your foot on the brake and give it a little gas so you don't roll back. Well, you don't need to do that on the moon with its one-sixth gravity and when all you're moving is an ascent stage. Throw the switch and ((woosh!)) you're off.
Oh, and the reason you don't see any flame from the ascent rocket is simple: real rocket fuel doesn't burn, it's hypergolic. In a nutshell, 2 chemicals that are otherwise inert come together and expand rapidly. If you focus and channel it the right way, you get thrust. (It's not easy to do, but it can be done. That's why the phrase "Rocket Scientist" has such a mystique in our society.) But it doesn't produce a visible flame. The dramatic, flaming liftoff of the Saturn 5 rocket from Cape Kennedy came from the fuel mixture of the first stage, which used kerosene. And that WILL produce one heckuva flame, unlike the Eagle's ascent rocket.
There's more, but I think I've proved the point. Every so-called "Fact" on the show is easily refuted when you happen to know more than the average X-Phile about real science.
