[K Exchange Editor in Chief Neil Schulman here. As Craig has detailed in his posts before, he's not only a rocket scientist, he's also a grad student. Craig has been a little pressed for time lately, so he simply provided us with some answers to follow up questions. No fluff, no exposition, just straight answers. Enjoy Everyone!]

Q1: What about the issue regarding whether or not the flag could fly?
Craig: This is actually a pretty easy one, though I could never do as good a job explaining it as was done on Phil Plait’s BadAstronomy.com

The answer is, it isn’t waving. It looks like that because of the way the flag was deployed. The flag hangs from a horizontal rod which telescopes out from the vertical one. In Apollo 11, they couldn’t get the rod to extend completely, so the flag didn’t get stretched fully. It has a ripple in it, like a curtain that is not fully closed. In later flights, the astronauts didn’t fully deploy it on purpose because they liked the way it looked.

Q2: Why would NASA claim to have achieved one of the greatest feats of all time, then stop suddenly?
Craig: Money, or the lack thereof. Congress yanked NASA’s budget and, as I mentioned earlier, ‘No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Q3: Where are the clear pictures of the moon? Are those images the best NASA could do?
Craig: Yes, actually these are the best NASA can do. They have adapted a policy of not dignifying moon landing hoax theories, and the only way to get better pictures of the site would be to commission a mission for the sole purpose of disproving the hoax. Being VERY generous which how much this would cost, It seems like the absolute cheapest this could be done for is still over $75 million. Even if they were so inclined, NASA simply doesn’t have the budget.

Q5: NASA didn’t know at the time if there were atmospheric conditions on the moon, so they wouldn’t have known ahead of time if it would be possible for the astronauts to lift off.
Craig: Actually, all 7 Surveyor missions occured before the Apollo 11 moon landing. While 2 of the Surveyor probes lost control during descent and impacted the surface, the other 5 probes landed, took pictures and analyzed regolith composition and mechanics. The telemetry from these probes could easily show that there was no atmosphere (i.e. no drag effects when making course corrections)

Q6: At 1/6 the gravity at the very least it would take 1/6 the energy to blast off of the moon, the craft was too small to hold that kind of energy on board.
Craig: The answer to this one is pure rocket science, and in fact, equations like this are done commonly in Aerospace Engineering undergrad programs. [Ed note, I excused Craig from having to dig up the actual equations right now, sorry readers, but he's dealing with a few exams at the moment.] I can tell you that the rocket they used was a hypergolic mix of Aerozine and Notrogen Tetraoxide which was throttle-able, and had PLENTY of power.

Q6: Even folded up there wouldn’t have been enough room in the landing module for both astronauts, one would have had to have remained standing the whole time, standing where the door opened to the inside!
Craig: Actually, one of the MAJOR design victories of the lander was when they discovered that they could cut down on the size and weight of the craft by having BOTH astronauts stand the entire time in the capsule. As far as arguing about whether or not there would have been room to exit, there’s nothing we could do short of getting in their ourselves to prove it one way or the other.

Q7: What about Neil Armstrong’s first footprint on the moon, remember how the craft landed? A rocket booster positioned beneath and dead center of the craft would have cleared any and all dust, debris and small rocks in a pretty sizable radius around the craft. How could he have made a footprint if all the dust had been blasted away?
Craig: Actually the lunar dust surrounding the capsule has been widely talked about! There was even a FOX special that included this theory several years ago. The reason is the lack of atmosphere on the moon: conservation of momentum (particulates of the rocket exhaust impacting the dust which causes it to move) is responsible for clouds of dust being moved around on earth. Because of the lack of atmosphere to transfer the particles (there’s no air on the moon to help carry the stuff) only the dust directly under or a bit around the rocket was blown out by the exhaust. The rest was left where it was. Ironically, the dust around the landing site was probably a bit thicker than before, since the dust blown out would have piled up there.

Remember: It’s intuitive to transfer our knowledge of what happens hear on earth to what would happen up on the moon, it’s just not accurate. Without atmosphere some things can be exaggerated, some things can be diminished, and some others just won’t happen. Thanks for the questions everybody.