# Taking a Leak on the Moon **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 11, 2010, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133 "2010-03-11T18:05:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/41 "2010-03-11T23:29:44Z")
> [@wolfman](#): > > I thought those had to do with the rotating blades, not anything to do with air pressure. If you’re sticking it into a hose and reaching all the way to the turbine I’m guessing you don’t need the vacuum cleaner in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/42 "2010-03-12T02:51:40Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > one more small piece… This is a cheap & scurrilous attack on heroic Buzz Aldrin! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/43 "2010-03-12T03:26:24Z")
> [@](#): > > Couple other ideas I’ve had, a newton’s cradle or a grandfather clock might make a good demo. Am I right in thinking the newtons cradle would work in slow motion (compared to on earth), and that the clock would run slowly (assuming the pendulum generated enough force to overcome the internal friction of the mechanism)? To demonstrate the film wasn’t slowed down, Buzz could do the dance moves to ‘YMCA’ in the same shot. What would Buzz dancing prove? Every sort of motion that depends on gravity would also appear to be slowed down relative to Earth-normal, and by the same factor. In other words, if you took a video of almost any activity at all in a vacuum chamber on Earth, and slowed it down by the appropriate amount, it would look just like the same activity on the Moon. In principle, the astronauts should be able to jump higher, propel objects further, etc. on the Moon than human muscles would allow on the Earth, but that’s ruled out by the fact that, a, they were hauling around a lot of mass in their suits that would bring their weight up close to their Earth-normal weight, and b, that spacesuits are too bulky and awkward for decent athletics. Which is not to say that the deniers are right, of course. They’re wrong. It’s just that this is not a good way of proving that they’re wrong. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/44 "2010-03-12T03:35:06Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] What would Buzz dancing prove? Every sort of motion that depends on gravity would also appear to be slowed down relative to Earth-normal, and by the same factor. In other words, if you took a video of almost any activity at all in a vacuum chamber on Earth, and slowed it down by the appropriate amount, it would look just like the same activity on the Moon. [/QUOTE] I don’t think so. Though far from ‘proof’, the Mythbusters tried to reproduce the various moon walking shots using slow motion of the video, a harness that took off weight and some other stuff, and basically concluded that you really couldn’t reproduce the way the astronauts just sort of floated while walking across the moon. Of course, I was biased, and already knew the moon walking shots were real, so that probably slanted the way I saw the show… -XT ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/45 "2010-03-12T03:41:54Z")
perhaps you could do special effects in any gravity by having a yellowish liquid flow through a transparent tube? Maybe this would require some splicing of the footage to show the changing trajectory as the flow speed changes during the act. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/46 "2010-03-12T04:41:43Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t think so. Though far from ‘proof’, the Mythbusters tried to reproduce the various moon walking shots using slow motion of the video, a harness that took off weight and some other stuff, and basically concluded that you really couldn’t reproduce the way the astronauts just sort of floated while walking across the moon. If they used both the harness and the slow-mo at the same time, it wouldn’t have worked, but the slow-mo by itself is sufficient. Just put the actors in spacesuits with all of the “heavy equipment” made out of styrofoam, or whatever, so it doesn’t actually add weight. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/47 "2010-03-12T05:01:09Z")
You should watch the episode. They actually tried slow motion and a harness separately, and it looked pretty unconvincing with both because of the way the suit moved. It just LOOKED wrong in both cases…while when they got on one of those parabolic flying air planes and tried it, you could tell the difference right off. It was a pretty good episode, IMHO…though, as I said, it didn’t really take all that much to convince me, since I was already a ‘believer’. 😉 -XT ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/48 "2010-03-12T05:07:48Z")
Shoot…missed the edit window. I meant to add that Adam was wearing a fake space suit that was lighter than the real thing, though it wasn’t made of styrofoam. He did put on additional weight for the shots in the air plane though, which was set for a course that would simulate the moons 1/6th g, instead of total weightlessness. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/49 "2010-03-12T05:47:04Z")
> [@Alka\_Seltzer](#): > > I’m not talking about people who obsess over it, I’m talking about people who causually entertain the idea that the landings were faked. I think you underestimate the power of ignorance, there is always a lot of mileage to be had in explaining things in the simplest terms possible. I really don’t understand this. Why do you think there is one simple “gotcha” piece of evidence which would prove things to this group? There’s already a mountain of documentary evidence for the moon landings. If people “casually entertain” conspiracy theories, they will entertain them despite one extra cute little video showing lunar gravity at work. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/50 "2010-03-12T09:37:26Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > I really don’t understand this. Why do you think there is one simple “gotcha” piece of evidence which would prove things to this group? There’s already a mountain of documentary evidence for the moon landings. If people “casually entertain” conspiracy theories, they will entertain them despite one extra cute little video showing lunar gravity at work. I don’t understand your confusion. It’s not some sort of dichotomy. It’s a spectrum. It’s just people who have been given plausible reasons and manipulated “evidence” so they believe it was a hoax. By showing them something else, they finally have something to challenge that evidence. Now that they are at least open to the idea that it was real, they’re more likely to pay attention when you tell them all the other stuff. Or it could go the other way, with you almost convinced that the moonlanding was real, and all you need is a little extra proof. A personal example: for me, I was fairly well convinced that there was some sort of conspiracy in the shooting of JFK. I read Case Closed, and was almost convinced that I had been wrong. But it was not until I saw a History Channel documentary that showed how the “magic bullet” wasn’t so magical that I finally cemented the idea that Oswald acted alone. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/51 "2010-03-12T10:21:15Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What would Buzz dancing prove? Every sort of motion that depends on gravity would also appear to be slowed down relative to Earth-normal, and by the same factor. The speed at which Buzz could move his arms would only be constrained by his suit, and not affected by the gravity. That’s why I suggested YMCA, although maybe that was a bit ambitious. Might be better if Buzz would just ‘mash potato’, less chance of rupturing his suit and mitigates against the risk that the universe might be destroyed in a time paradox. Like I say, the ideal demo would be something within the layman’s experience behaving in a very different way. Another idea, how about opening and trying to pour a bottle of coke, and a bottle of water? > [@BigT](#): > > A personal example: for me, I was fairly well convinced that there was some sort of conspiracy in the shooting of JFK. I read Case Closed, and was almost convinced that I had been wrong. But it was not until I saw a History Channel documentary that showed how the “magic bullet” wasn’t so magical that I finally cemented the idea that Oswald acted alone. Yeah, I had a similar experience with this. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/52 "2010-03-12T16:04:39Z")
[QUOTE=Alka Seltzer] The speed at which Buzz could move his arms would only be constrained by his suit, and not affected by the gravity. That’s why I suggested YMCA, although maybe that was a bit ambitious. Might be better if Buzz would just ‘mash potato’, less chance of rupturing his suit and mitigates against the risk that the universe might be destroyed in a time paradox. [/QUOTE] [Here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT2k3gdo8gM) is a video of one of the astronauts falling (in several hundred pounds of space suit) on the moon. It’s pretty obvious, even to a layman, that you couldn’t move like this unless you were somewhere that gravity is different than it is here on earth. There are tons of things like this, and yet the CTers remain militantly unconvinced. I don’t believe that a dancing demo would be any more convincing than the one I linked too, nor do I think that your suggestion of the coke bottle or water bottle demo would be convincing…not to the faithful. There was a show on NatGeo (or SCI, not sure) where they took 2 hours to look at the moon landing hoax myths. They invited a bunch of moon hoax CT types to present their best ‘evidence’ that the moon landing were a hoax, then had real experts address their points. It was almost exactly the same response to a similar show about 9/11 CTs…the CT types just hand-waved away every piece of evidence presented to them and stubbornly stuck to their beliefs, regardless of how much explanation or evidence was presented against their pet idea. I remember one part where some old guy was convinced that he had real proof that the moon landings were a hoax. He built a vacuum chamber and put a rubber glove in it so that you could insert your hand into it. Then he pumped out all the air, stuck his hand in and then proceeded to demonstrate how he couldn’t move his hand anymore (I was having OJ glove flashbacks at this point)…Q.E.D. the moon landings were a hoax since the astronauts wouldn’t be able to move in their suits! They asked one of the NASA experts about this and the guy nearly burst into uncontrolled laughter. After getting himself under control he calmly explained that the suits were pressurized…to which the old CT hoaxer just rolled his eyes and said something like ‘yeah, right’. What’s funny to me is that nearly everything that the hoaxers go on about, if the evidence actually showed what they THINK it should, it WOULD be indications of a hoax. If you could see the stars in the video footage, that would have been an indication of a hoax. If the flag didn’t continue to move after the astronauts smacked it, or if it moved but slowed rapidly, that would be an indication of a hoax. If when the astronauts were in shadow coming down a ladder you couldn’t see them with the camera, that would be an indication of a hoax. And so on. The trouble here is just like the trouble with the 9/11 CT nutters…they don’t actually understand the science of the physics of the thing, but they THINK they do. Couple that with the basic psychology of a CTer who wants to be one of the elite people ‘in the know’, and the persecution complex that everyone else is part of the CT and is ‘out to get them’ and you have a recipe for people who aren’t going to be convinced, regardless of what evidence you come up with. -XT ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/53 "2010-03-12T16:17:49Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > But don’t forget, we have the documentary on how the Mars landing was faked. Watch > Capricorn One" if you’re not afraid of the truth. Yeah, OJ says it’s all a fake, so you believe him? OJ wouldn’t lie… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/54 "2010-03-12T18:32:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Couple that with the basic psychology of a CTer who wants to be one of the elite people ‘in the know’, and the persecution complex that everyone else is part of the CT and is ‘out to get them’ and you have a recipe for people who aren’t going to be convinced, regardless of what evidence you come up with. Exactly. I find it mind-boggling that anyone can go to the Smithsonian and touch a moon rock, but somehow a video of pee is somehow going to be more convincing than actual rocks from the moon verified by the world’s experts. Funny how powerful the US government is. It even made the USSR obey the conspiracy! Regardless, moon denying is old hat. 9/11 conspiracy theories and 2012 apocalypse are the current hot CTs. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/55 "2010-03-12T18:43:41Z")
> [@joebuck20](#): > > One giant leak for mankind. > > What? Somebody had to say it. Great. Now I hear Sting in my head singing. “Giant leaks are what you take, walking on the moon. I hope my dick won’t break, walking on the moon.” Thanks for the earworm, **joebuck.** ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/56 "2010-03-12T20:07:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Guys have suffered serious injuries here on Earth by sticking their penes into vacuum cleaners. No vacuum cleaner can create anywhere near the underpressure of a true vacuum, like the lunar environment. So a penis exposed to the vacuum of the Moon, even if the suit is well-sealed around it, would surely suffer serious injuries, and would probably be destroyed as a functional organ. Some relevant Straight Dope columns: [What’s up with vacuum cleaner wounds to the penis?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/914/whats-up-with-vacuum-cleaner-wounds-to-the-penis) - the injuries seem to be from rotating brushes or fans, not from the low pressure. [If you were thrown into the vacuum of space with no space suit, would you explode?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/711/if-you-were-thrown-into-the-vacuum-of-space-with-no-space-suit-would-you-explode) - no reason to think that there would be severe injuries if the exposure was not prolonged. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/57 "2010-03-12T20:25:49Z")
> [@AWB](#): > > OJ Simpson was in that, as an astronaut of that mission that had to be silenced when then returning Capricorn I capsule burned up on re-entry to Earth. There’s the proof that it’s real. If it was fake, OJ Simpson would have had to simulate his reactions with acting talent. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/58 "2010-03-12T20:37:33Z")
OK, then, think the mother of all hickies. ---
**Author:** ![Recliner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a88e57/32.png) [@Recliner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recliner)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/59 "2010-03-12T23:36:19Z")
> [@Alka\_Seltzer](#): > > Seems a shame that so much nonsense could have been avoided simply is Buzz had runk a few more coffees on the descent. Yeah, but then they would have called him “Wizz”. ---
**Author:** ![may\_be\_ignorant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c5a1d2/32.png) [@may\_be\_ignorant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/may_be_ignorant)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2010, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133/60 "2010-03-13T00:12:31Z")
I think you just want to see Buzz’s penis. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-a-leak-on-the-moon/532133.md?page=4)