If Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, were the first two men on the moon?

Question

Who worked the camera when they both were in the shot?

Answer 1

a small metal wire in the top of the flag moved back and forth

Answer 2

No-one. A TV camera will work whether there's someone standing behind it or not. Notice how when they are both in shot the camera does not move? That's because it's on a tripod with a cable running to it, merrily working away. Who works speed cameras or CCTV cameras? Do you think there's a little man in the ceiling of that store working the camera?

Answer 3

..whoa..a lie....

Answer 4

my favorite answer to questions like these:

If i put YOU in charge of the Moon Landing... and i wanted YOU to design a flag that will look good on camera, and come up with some way to get Neil and Buzz in the same shot... COULD YOU DO IT?

Of course you could!  I believe in you!

(but none of those highly trained and paid engineers at NASA could?)

Answer 5

Ever heard of remote control? When the Russian Leonov did the first EVA, who did shoot the video? It was nobody else out there. The solution for the Russians to get good propaganda shots of their work: The astronaut deployed and activated a small camera which operated automatically.

And the flag was not blowing in the wind. If you look at all the pictures, you will actually see that it was not moving much at all. It was held in place by a small rod in the top of the flag (which you can easily spot in the photos), because nothing would look more depressing as a limb flag.

Again, I can only repeat the argument: You know that in a few months, an astronaut will set his foot on the moon and your employer wants good pictures of this moment. How can you do that? What would be the cheapest possible solution? Of course you would just put a camera on a long boom on the side of the LM to have a good perspective. And you would give it remote control, because you know that the astronauts have no TV monitor - it would be heavier as a small remote control channel.

I attached also a small picture of the open equipment bay with the TV camera which recorded Neills first step on the moon.

Third I added a reference to the Surface operations plan, which shows the location of the MESA camera in a drawing and also it's planned field of view.

Fourth, I added a page which has further drawings of the MESA and the camera on it.

Any questions? It is no reason to be ashamed, if you don't know how the first TV images of a man on the moon got shot. But you should be pretty embarrassed if you say "I don't know how this was possible, so I say it must be impossible." It would be smarter to just ask how this was done.

Answer 6

It's fair enough to ask questions. I think the answers to  your questions are on this site, below. It's a great site nd sets a high standard in facts and evidence regarding the moon photos.

Answer 7

The technology of running a cord to the camera a good 10 or so feet in order to get a good portrait shot has remained unchanged in the last century.

Answer 8

There were 2 cameras in use at the time during the first moonwalk. The first one was a 16mm DAT camera in the LM window that Aldrin mounted in a bracket in his window and turned on just before the they opened the hatch to descend the ladder. That's the same camera that filmed the landing. It ran at 1 frame per second.  It showed Armstrong and Aldrin's first steps and the moving of the TV camera and the deployment of the flag. That one ran out of film after about 40 minutes.  The TV camera was stowed in the equipment bay of the descent stage.  When Armstrong was on the porch of the LM he pulled a string that opened the equipment bay and turned on the TV camera.  After Aldrin descended the ladder, he moved the TV camera to a position west northwest of the LM. It stayed stationary the entire time. The camera was attached to a 30' cable that sent the TV image to the LM which then sent it back to earth. It wasn't until the Apollo 15 mission that they had a remote TV camera mounted on the Lunar Rover that the camera actually moved.  That camera was controlled by Ed Fendell, a technician seated in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

There is absolutely nowhere in any of the landings where the flag "blows in the wind". If you'd take the time to look at the pictures or the video, you could plainly see that there is a small rod on top of the flag that makes it stand out as if it were blowing in the wind.  There was no reason to put up a flag that just hung down and no one could see.  The good folks at NASA thought of everything long before the astronauts ever landed.

Instead of trying to diecredit a great achievement by some rather brave men, why not give them credit for what they accomplished? As an American, it's your accomplishment too.