Why is the flag flapping in the 1969 Moon Landing Footage?
Try this. Take a flag on a short pole and wave it back and forth vigorously. You’ll see that it stands out and ripples, but the moment you stop waving, it settles down. This is because of Newton’s laws and gravity. The flag stops waving because of the friction from our atmosphere and settles down because of our gravity. If you tried the same experiment in space, the flag would continue to wave. Well, there is no atmosphere on the moon and the gravity is 1/6 that of Earth. So, when the astronauts had to twist the flag pole back and forth to get it to go into the lunar surface, it caused a ripple affect to be seen on the flag for quite a while. Thanks to the moon’s gravity, the flag did eventually settle, as much as the second, horizontal pole would allow. In fact it dropped even further eventually. As the Lunar Module launched to rejoin the Command Module, the blast knocked the flag over.
