# Moon Landings: why is there no dust in the lander pads? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 9, 2008, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812 "2008-07-09T08:44:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![where\_s\_the\_subscription\_info](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8e8cbc/32.png) [@where\_s\_the\_subscription\_info](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/where_s_the_subscription_info)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/1 "2008-07-09T08:44:28Z")
Hi I tried to search for this ‘debate’ as it must be as old as the wallpaper in here… but anyway, here goes. It’s a Q that I’ve always needed to itch. On photographs of the moon landers’ feet, you can see inside the pads (they are covered in what looks like a gold foil) and they are spotlessly clean. How so if that lander was flown and landed under rocket power? Surely there would be just a hint of dust in those pads? That would not have blown away in the windless atmosphere and any dust raised by that rocket would have settled right back down, i.e back on top of the said lander. There’s also a supplemental and that is how do you explain away the photos that contain black ‘+’ crosses that are somehow behind the subjects of the photograph? [I know that these ‘+’ etchings in the lens can be ‘T’ shaped as well… sometimes the ‘T’ being horizontal… but that doesn’t explain why some of the arms of these etchings are shorter than they should be and look behind a subject. I came here with this as only ‘odd’ people can answer ‘od’ questions. [for the admin: why is is so hard to search these fora? I’ve spent 10 minutes going round and around and still can’t ‘search’ the fora… only search the FAQ! What am I doing wrong? And why is the subscription amount in $ only available once you’ve registered as a quest?] ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/2 "2008-07-09T08:51:32Z")
[QUOTE=where’s the subscription info?] There’s also a supplemental and that is how do you explain away the photos that contain black ‘+’ crosses that are somehow behind the subjects of the photograph? [I know that these ‘+’ etchings in the lens can be ‘T’ shaped as well… sometimes the ‘T’ being horizontal… but that doesn’t explain why some of the arms of these etchings are shorter than they should be and look behind a subject. [/quote] Lost detail due to overexposure, halation (local light scatter on the actual film surface during exposure) or both. > [@](#): > > [for the admin: why is is so hard to search these fora? I’ve spent 10 minutes going round and around and still can’t ‘search’ the fora.. only search the FAQ! What am I doing wrong? Searching is something only paid-up members can do. Welcome to the boards ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/3 "2008-07-09T08:52:50Z")
[QUOTE=where’s the subscription info?] …how do you explain away… [/QUOTE] Just wanted to pick up on this. You haven’t actually bought into that moon landing conspiracy bullshit, have you? If so, you might find this site interesting: > **[Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Bad TV](http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html)** > > Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy (one of the links on that page addresses your crosshairs concern) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/4 "2008-07-09T09:37:10Z")
[QUOTE=where’s the subscription info?] **Moon Landings: why is there no dust in the lander pads?** [/QUOTE] The Moon Lizards licked it off. More seriously, besides what the others have said, it occurs to me that quite possibly not much dust **would** settle on it. The rocket exhaust would blast it away sideways or in a “V” shape as the lander got lower, and there’s no air to slow it down. The dust motes would fly away ballistically like a thrown stone, not rapidly slow and settle like a dust cloud on Earth. Or so I’d think; I’m not a physicist.. Add that to the photography problems. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/5 "2008-07-09T09:47:26Z")
And skimming the Bad Astronomy article on this, I noticed this additional point I hadn’t thought of : > [@](#): > > Once again, the weird alien environment of the Moon comes to play. Imagine taking a bag of flour and dumping it onto your kitchen floor (kids: ask your folks first!). Now bend over the pile, take a deep breath, and blow into it as hard as you can. Poof! Flour goes everywhere. Why? Because the momentum of your breath goes into the flour, which makes it move. But note that the flour goes up, and sideways, and aloft into the air. If you blow hard enough, you might see little curlicues of air lifting the flour farther than your breath alone could have, and doing so to dust well outside of where your breath actually blew. > > That’s the heart of this problem. We are used to air helping us blow things around. The air itself is displaced by your breath, which pushed on more air, and so on. On the Earth, your breath might blow flour that was dozens of centimeters away, even though your actual breath didn’t reach that far. On the Moon, there is no air. The only dust that gets blown around by the exhaust of the rocket (which, remember, isn’t nearly as strong as the HBs claim) is the dust physically touched by the exhaust, or dust hit by other bits of flying dust. In the end, only the dust directly under or a bit around the rocket was blown out by the exhaust. The rest was left where it was. So, not as much dust as you think is going to be moved in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/6 "2008-07-09T10:14:05Z")
As Phil Plait points out, the crosshairs thing is a pretty absurd argument anyway - the crosshairs appear to pass behind some of the objects in the photo. If that’s what really happened, then it would mean that NASA decided to fake the crosshairs by _painting them on the backdrop of the set on which it was all staged._ - that just doesn’t make any sense at all. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/7 "2008-07-09T10:16:45Z")
Where is the guy from BA getting all his information from? It’s not as if he or anyone else has been up there, and carried out the experiments needed to replicate and disprove all the anomalies he covers on that web-site, is it? How do we KNOW that is how things appear and act on the moon, if the only evidence we have, is that which is being contested? ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/8 "2008-07-09T10:23:01Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] Where is the guy from BA getting all his information from? It’s not as if he or anyone else has been up there, and carried out the experiments needed to replicate and disprove all the anomalies he covers on that web-site, is it? How do we KNOW that is how things appear and act on the moon, if the only evidence we have, is that which is being contested? [/QUOTE] I think it’s entirely possible to perform such experiments on Earth. All you need is a vaccuum chamber. ETA: Opps, I meant the ‘dust-settling’ mystery in the OP, not necessarily any others listed on the Bad Astronomy website. He may well be using proscribed technology from the space lizards for all I know. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/9 "2008-07-09T10:25:59Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] I think it’s entirely possible to perform such experiments on Earth. All you need is a vaccuum chamber. [/QUOTE] Could they make them in the 60’s? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/10 "2008-07-09T10:29:18Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] How do we KNOW that is how things appear and act on the moon, if the only evidence we have, is that which is being contested? [/QUOTE] How do you know people do not stand on their heads in Australia if you’ve never been there? How do you know the Earth is round, and not flat or donut shaped or resting on the back of four elephants that stand on the shell of a giant turtle? A bit more seriously, of course there have been people up there to carry out those experiments, but even besides that, most of it is just simple physics and basic logic – the moon has no atmosphere because it is too light to hold one, and the behaviour of dust in a near-vacuum can easily be modelled, and so on; most arguments in favour of a conspiracy, on the other hand, can be easily dismissed as simple misunderstandings of basic physics. If you look at things fairly, the hypothesis that people actually went to the moon is by far more credible than that of faking the whole thing and creating a giant conspiracy, with no one ever so much as dropping a hint in the four decades since, and somehow getting Russia to play along at the height of the cold war, and things like that. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/11 "2008-07-09T10:30:00Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] Where is the guy from BA getting all his information from? It’s not as if he or anyone else has been up there, and carried out the experiments needed to replicate and disprove all the anomalies he covers on that web-site, is it? How do we KNOW that is how things appear and act on the moon, if the only evidence we have, is that which is being contested? [/QUOTE] Because the laws of physics are the same everywhere. And because there’s plenty of data to support such claims, from everything from other space exploration to lab experiments on Earth. And because there was a lot of data taken at the time; this isn’t some obscure experiment done in a basement. And because we aren’t talking about anything that from a known-laws-of-physics perspective is all that extreme; it’s mineral dust in a vacuum, not neutronium or the core of a star or something else we might expect really unexpected behavior out of. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/12 "2008-07-09T10:31:25Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] Could they make them in the 60’s? [/QUOTE] I’m pretty sure they could make them in the 1760s. I think all you really need is an airtight chamber and a pump to suck the air out. There are probably some tricks to get the residual air molecules out that were known to 1960s scientists, though I don’t have a cite for that. Personally, I abhor a vaccuum. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/13 "2008-07-09T10:37:49Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] Personally, I abhor a vaccuum. [/QUOTE] That’s perfectly natural. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/14 "2008-07-09T10:39:25Z")
[QUOTE=Half Man Half Wit] How do you know people do not stand on their heads in Australia if you’ve never been there? How do you know the Earth is round, and not flat or donut shaped or resting on the back of four elephants that stand on the shell of a giant turtle? A bit more seriously, of course there have been people up there to carry out those experiments, but even besides that, most of it is just simple physics and basic logic – the moon has no atmosphere because it is too light to hold one, and the behaviour of dust in a near-vacuum can easily be modelled, and so on; most arguments in favour of a conspiracy, on the other hand, can be easily dismissed as simple misunderstandings of basic physics. If you look at things fairly, the hypothesis that people actually went to the moon is by far more credible than that of faking the whole thing and creating a giant conspiracy, with no one ever so much as dropping a hint in the four decades since, and somehow getting Russia to play along at the height of the cold war, and things like that. [/QUOTE] If you are looking for a reason why major governments would fake a ‘space race’, how about the recovery of an alien space craft, 20 years previously? Do you think that would/could be justification( from a governments POV.) for attempting such an elaborate hoax? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/15 "2008-07-09T10:45:16Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] If you are looking for a reason why major governments would fake a ‘space race’, how about the recovery of an alien space craft, 20 years previously? Do you think that would/could be justification( from a governments POV.) for attempting such an elaborate hoax? [/QUOTE] Once you start wildly speculating, anything may appear possible. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/16 "2008-07-09T10:51:32Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] Once you start wildly speculating, anything may appear possible. [/QUOTE] Going to the moon was wild speculation at one point! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/17 "2008-07-09T10:52:21Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] If you are looking for a reason why major governments would fake a ‘space race’, how about the recovery of an alien space craft, 20 years previously? Do you think that would/could be justification( from a governments POV.) for attempting such an elaborate hoax? [/QUOTE] I’m afraid I don’t follow your reasoning – what bearing would this supposed alien space craft have on the legitimacy of the space race? Besides, I just don’t think it’s possible to pull off such a massive hoax. It would necessitate the collaboration of thousands of people across multiple, and, at the time at least, mutually opposed governments, without any of those people ever making a deathbed confession, having a drunken slip-up or a sudden change of opinion, while, in reality, the White House couldn’t even keep Billy’s fling with an intern a secret… I find that far less credible than a successful moon mission. Actually, I think conspiracy theories are just circulated by governments in order to make them seem more able and in control than they actually are. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/18 "2008-07-09T10:55:04Z")
[QUOTE=where’s the subscription info?] why is is so hard to search these fora? I’ve spent 10 minutes going round and around and still can’t ‘search’ the fora.. only search the FAQ! What am I doing wrong? [/QUOTE] You’re not doing anything wrong. Guests can’t use the search option here. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/19 "2008-07-09T10:59:12Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] Going to the moon was wild speculation at one point! 😛 [/QUOTE] Yes, as were a far larger number of other things that turned out to be nonsense. Wild speculation may well be a productive tool in creating potential innovation, but as a means of examining historical fact, it performs very poorly indeed. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812/20 "2008-07-09T11:07:25Z")
Okay, I agree. The ‘fake space race’ idea is utter bollocks! _leaves thread, shamefaced_ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moon-landings-why-is-there-no-dust-in-the-lander-pads/455812.md?page=2)