Sure, the landings were, but what about those that didn’t land? I’m thinking namely of Apollo 13 - didn’t they travel through the moon’s shadow then they orbited the moon to use its gravity and slingshot back to Earth? They’d have encountered these temperatures.
In his book Minus 148 Degrees, Art Davidson recounts the events of the first winter ascent of Mt. McKinley. This was an ill-advised trek that lasted and unplanned 42 days at wind-chill temperatures that reached -148F. Trapped in a whiteout, the climbers endured extreme privation in a tent where the temperature never rose above -35F. They all survived.
For sheer endurance (heh), there’s Shackleton’s account of the survival of his entire crew (except for the dogs and the ship’s cat) for five months, floating around on the Antarctic icepack in 1914.
The difference with Apollo 13 is that they never actually left the ship so that wouldn’t count as being outside.
On one of the Apollo lunar missions (16 or 17, I believe) they did do a spacewalk to recover some equipment from outside the CSM.
Stranger
Weren’t they up there for more than 12 hours? The moon rotates just as fast as the Earth does and any point on the surface has has night and day of the same approximate period as Earth. I’m not well versed ont he lunar landings but had they been up theremore than 12 hours then they owuld certainly have experienced a lunar night.
I think the question loses some value if you allow space suits or other special gear specifically designed to resist the extreme temperatures encountered.
For example, a firefighter in a special aluminized suit with onboard oxygen and all the rest might be able to wade through puddles of burning jet fuel, but that’s just a testament to the equipment, not the limitations of the human being. By the same token I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to design an insulated suit that would let you survive immersion in liquid nitrogen but that doesn’t mean that you personally survived exposure to -170C.
So perhaps you should only count situations where the person is directly exposed to the elements (if you are in a bunker you can only count air temp, not wind chill) and doesn’t have some external heat source.
No, the moon doesn’t rotate as fast as the earth does. The moon is tidally locked to the Earth and rotates at the same rate it orbits us, about once a month. So a lunar day is 2 weeks of daytime, 2 weeks of night.
Some of the later Apollo landers did spend a few (Earth) days on the moon, but they all took place in continuous lunar daytime.
My bad.
28 posts and we are just starting to get towards a well defined question, it’s slow but steady going.
I think two things are needed to fully specify the question, what clothing is/isn’t allowed and how long the person/people have to be exposed to this temperature for it to count.
Valgard suggested only allowing situations where the person was directly exposed to the elements but even that is open to interpretation, does it simply imply some area of skin must be open to the elements? If so, how much skin qualifies?
As for the period of exposure I would proffer 12 hours as a suitable timeframe for true survival.
Well that bunch of maniacs would certainly qualify in the clothing department but the length of the exposure was only a few minutes at a guess so I think that would rule them out of really having “survived” in those temperatures.
A friend of mine has done several stints in Antarctica doing research, he’s done the 300 Club routine IIRC. He also gotten frostbite on the INSIDE of his mouth walking his bags into the station one time (he arrived during a warm spell - record high temperature for that day. A blistering -30 degrees).
Back to the question…I think you’d kinda have to have at least two groups, one are the folks wearing heavy insulation (8000m mountaineering suit), all bundled up for the cold, the second group would be those who are simply not dressed for the temperature - 300 Club, Polar Bear club or more likely the unlucky soul who survives a plane crash and walks twenty miles through a howling blizzard wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt.
Obviously still open to more fidgeting about…you could start measuring how much exposed skin or weight of down being worn but frankly that’s too much work.
People in good cold-weather gear can sustain frighteningly low temps for a very long time so long as they have food and keep moving (look at those few hardy individuals who have gone to the South Pole on foot, for example). The last time I was snowcamping I did three days on the rim of the Yosemite valley, moderately cold temps (say 20s during the day, colder at night) and decent cold-weather gear, no problems at all. One of my friends is a mountain guide and has spent lots of time outdoors at -40 and she loves it. “No problem” in her words.
Your real survival stories are going to be the folks who are not dressed for the weather, like my plane-crash example. Let’s start with Mittu’s 12 hour period (although you can be in severe trouble in far less time).
Wow, thanks for all the answers. And I would never have been able to specify exactly what I was trying to get across when I asked the question in the first place, so now you’ve voiced what I meant. 
12 hours sounds like a good criteria, and I’ve no idea what amount of clothing would be substantial for survival.