URGENT - please save our friendship with Apollo science!

[PetersCreek]

...then have him put a cheap aluminum pan (or even thin aluminum foil) in his oven at 250°F for as long as he likes and record how long it took to melt.  Heck, make it 500°F.

[Sus_pilot]

...then have him put a cheap aluminum pan (or even thin aluminum foil) in his oven at 250°F for as long as he likes and record how long it took to melt.  Heck, make it 500°F.

Wow - I hope it doesn't melt, else I've eaten a lot of frozen pizza contaminated with aluminum! 

[nomuse]

Bah.  He'll just move the goalposts and claim he meant to say the FILM would melt.

Err...reviewing, he isn't described as mentioning the cameras yet (a typical H.B. target), but given his bio background he could endlessly waffle about how hot it would need to be inside the suits/LM to be "impossibly uncomfortable/dangerous" to the astronauts. 

[Dababa]

Guys thank you all VERY much for these repsonses, particularly Count Zero.
I will now present this info to him.

You all might appreciate this bit... he's also become a mild Dec 21 Mayan prophecy believer (oh dear), so I'm planning to bring this Apollo data up on Friday.

I've been sending him double-egded text messages... a massive change will come on December 21, 2012... you will become an Apollo believer!

thanks again.

[Glom]

If it is indeed the case that he has a soft spot for being a crazed nut bag, then that is quite useful.

Make sure you press that point whenever this comes up. He will clearly fall for any old sexy rubbish.

[gillianren]

Ask him Saturday why he believed you wouldn't be able to ask him anything Saturday, and then suggest that he learn something from that.

[chrisbobson]

Hi all, my best friend and I are in urgent need of some hard Apollo science to save our friendship.
Over the past year he's become a fervent HB and it drives me crazy... I worry it's his gateway into UFOs, pseudoscience and all sorts of messy thinking. he has a biomedical science degree but has recently slipped into this vortex of uncritical thinking.
 
I need from you guys responses to two of his final hoax claims (the rest I've dealt with). I'm very sorry to put this burden on you guys, but it's getting serious!

Claim one: He's sure the Apollo flagpoles would have melted (and/or destroyed the flag) due to the acknowledge high temperatures of the lunar surface. Can someone please hit back hard with an explanation. I'm worried though, that if someone just says the poles were 'electrolytically plated', that won't be enough. He will laugh it off... i need a thorough, referenced rundown of the poles' composition and heat resistance etc.

Claim two: he's also sure the LM and EVA suits couldn't possibly be cooled sufficiently, given the surface temperature of the moon. Again, is there HARD DATA than can prove the LM and EVA could be cooled... to win this one we need an explanation of the systems' cooling capacities.

also, any information about heat transference in a vacuum would be useful to bolster the above two responses.

Again, I'm sorry to ask for this 'service' but it's all for a very good cause! Thank you very much in advance.

SAM.

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

[Andromeda]

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

That is exactly the discussion this thread has been about, and the answer is clearly NO.

[chrisbobson]

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

That is exactly the discussion this thread has been about, and the answer is clearly NO.

Why not?  Seems pretty hot.  Answers so far strike me as inadequate.

[Andromeda]

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

That is exactly the discussion this thread has been about, and the answer is clearly NO.

Why not?  Seems pretty hot.  Answers so far strike me as inadequate.

Please define "pretty hot" with specific numbers, and compare those to the melting point of the metal used to make the flagpole.

[chrisbobson]

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

That is exactly the discussion this thread has been about, and the answer is clearly NO.

Why not?  Seems pretty hot.  Answers so far strike me as inadequate.

Please define "pretty hot" with specific numbers, and compare those to the melting point of the metal used to make the flagpole.

But the flag is not made of metal.

[Valis]

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

That is exactly the discussion this thread has been about, and the answer is clearly NO.

Why not?  Seems pretty hot.  Answers so far strike me as inadequate.

Do your aluminum pans regularly melt when you are cooking?

[Valis]

But the flag is not made of metal.

Yes, and what does that have to do with the flagpole?

[Mag40]

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

That is exactly the discussion this thread has been about, and the answer is clearly NO.

Why not?  Seems pretty hot.  Answers so far strike me as inadequate.

Temperature on the moon is subject to one heat source...the Sun. The sun angles were ranging....over the missions...between 10 and 45 degrees, so the surface would not get to its maximum temperature. The letter Neil Armstrong wrote about this, is a kind of acknowledgement about the challenges to be faced on the Moon. To get around this, they landed early morning on every mission. Objects upright, such as rocks would get quite hot, but not the surface itself. The Lunar Module, the spacesuits, cameras, lunar rover etc. were all prepared with this in mind.

How is that an inadequate response to why an aluminium flag pole would not melt? The same heating issues exist on things orbiting the Earth and Moon, traveling to Venus, Mars and other planets. I have yet to see any CTer present any figures...... to back up any claim that lunar temperatures would be a problem. Are you going to? As for the flag itself, it is made of nylon.....melts rather than burns and at temperatures between 190–350 °C.

[Andromeda]

Neil Armstrong said the temp was hotter than boiling water.  Wouldn't that melt or least mess up the flagpole?

That is exactly the discussion this thread has been about, and the answer is clearly NO.

Why not?  Seems pretty hot.  Answers so far strike me as inadequate.

Please define "pretty hot" with specific numbers, and compare those to the melting point of the metal used to make the flagpole.

But the flag is not made of metal.

You made your original statement about the flagpole (bolded).

Besides, the flag was made of nylon, which also has a very high melting point.  The colours have probably been bleached out by now but the LRO photos show that they are still there.