Lovell has stated that the temperature in the LM (I stand corrected) quickly dropped to 34 f. This is hypothermia time and sorry but a spacesuit and some sweating would be better than hypothermia (or death, according to my EMS friend).
34 degrees Fahrenheit is survivable for extended periods. Air isn't a great heat sink. On the other hand, there wasn't room in the LM for three men in spacesuits, and if they took off the suits to gain some mobility or avoid overheating (which they would without an active colling system inside the suit, even with their helmets and gloves off) and tried floating around in that temperature is sweaty wet garments they would very quickly suffer the effects of cold.
I also found it incredible that Bean didn't know he went through the Van Allen Belt. (You all here should have seen by now his embarrassing interview on this subject.) I compare it to running into someone who claims he climbed Everest and when asked how he handled the thin air answers, 'What thin air?'
The comparison is not remotely valid. As air gets thinner you find it colder and harder to breathe and exert yourself. There is no way for a human in a spacecraft to tell he is passing through the van Allen belt. The trajectory of the Apollo flights was designed to avoid them mostly anyway. It is not a requirement of a flight to the moon to pass through the van Allen belt. It's a belt, and spaceflight is a 3D problem...
I doubt that there are any 'technical' explanations for this one.
I doubt you'd accept them anyway, if that is going to be your attitude going in.
I also find it incredible that the Apollo 11 crew claimed they could see no stars from the moon's service and in a BBC interview Armstrong said you cannot see stars from sislunar (sp?) space either
Why do you find it incredible that on a sunlit surface surrounded by brightly lit things they could not see stars? As to Armstrong's response, he was being asked about a very specific point in the mission. He did not say 'stars are invisible in cislunar space under any and all conditions'. That's just your interpretation.
frankly, you could tell he was lying in this one.
No, he wasn't. You just decided he must be.
You can then go to NASA's 'Pictures of the Day' and see what the day time sky would look like from the earth with no atmosphere (or the moon, same thing). It would be breathtaking.
Would it? How well do you think your eyes could make out all those stars with the Sun above the horizon and the ground and everything around you brightly lit? Try going outside at night and shining a torch in your face while you try and look at the stars and see how breathtaking the view is then.
That an astronaut (all three of the Apollo crew) would lie about this is damning, no?
If they were lying it would be damning, but they're not. Their statements don't match your expectations, and you admit to being out of your depth on the technical side. That's the problem.
Also, that they 'lost' 10,000 reel to reel telemetry tapes -- the scientific history of the missions -- makes 'the dog ate my homework' look like gospel.
They did not lose anything. They reused the original telemetry tape because they needed it for other missions. By that time they had copied the historically significant details such as the TV broadcast onto other media.
>>Ditto with the specs to the LM and the Saturn.<<
Which specs are lost? We hear this one a lot, and yet no-one seems to be able to tell what's missing. I have a number of cooks that contain a lot of technical detail about the LM and the Saturn rockets. Full detailed construction blueprints would be a vast storage problem for something no lnoger being made, but that doesn't mean you can;t find them in an archive somewhere on microfilm. Have you actually tried to find out where such information might be?