Kicking rock downhill on the Moon

hmmm...just found this vid on you tube from searching something else, I don't know what it was I was searching for but this title caught my eye.

I think I've seen this before.. but, after looking at 3x, it...just....looks...'off' somehow.. but, also, Jack says.. 'A tire can roll down this hill, why don't you....5 6 gravity that's miss'n"

Not entirely sure what he's saying there.. or trying to say.

Also, at a couple of points, it looks like he should have fell over after kicking the rock .. @ 0.34/0.55 it's like he's got 1 knee bent and I swear he should have it on the ground but he remains upright.. reguardless of lesser amount of gravity, he still s/h had 1 knee it the ground.. what's holding him up??

Also, the rock look about maybe 100lbs, but it rolls on the moon as if it's 100lbs, meaning it's charactics of rolls are pretty much exact as if it is on the earth...IMO I dunno .. but.. just doesn't seem right when you compare the weight of the Jack vs his bounciness going on .. ??

anyone else see anything strange with this video?? just watch it 7 times and you tell me .. ...

You seem to have a point, it almost looks like he is dangling from a wire ( like they use in movies and theatre... ) Good find !

reply to post by Komodo


It would seem the slope is greater than what the camera is letting showing us.

As for their comments, maybe due to the low gravity, the rock can't build momentum.

fake or real, im impressed... i never knew their were any "lunar" videos of people larking about...

i think i see what you mean, when he is kind of trying to run back up the hill .. which itself is hard to see due to the place of the camera... it just looks like he is far away and not really up a hill.

when he was shimmying up that hill, he was kicking up dust as he went, it might juist be like when running up a sand dune..the sand catches the feet and slows us down, well that but on low grav conditions.

looks funny whatever their doing!

Would you kick a rock that size and in such an awkward fashion knowing that the slightest tear in you suit would mean the end of you ?

reply to post by Did you see them


on the moon,,, and if the rock was some sort of celuar lightweight rock, then ye, i would ...things dont weigh as much as their and the suits not that weak. their made to take a small bit of abuse...

Originally posted by Did you see them
Would you kick a rock that size and in such an awkward fashion knowing that the slightest tear in you suit would mean the end of you ?

wow.. I never thought of that~!! NICE catch~!

keep up the good observations!!!

Originally posted by Did you see them
Would you kick a rock that size and in such an awkward fashion knowing that the slightest tear in you suit would mean the end of you ?

Would you go into space knowing that if you stubbed your toe then your suit could be comprimised?

Originally posted by Did you see them
Would you kick a rock that size and in such an awkward fashion knowing that the slightest tear in you suit would mean the end of you ?

Would you fly experimental planes -- often on the first flight those planes ever took -- and push the planes past the limits envisioned by the engineers who designed them?

Many of the astronauts were test pilots. Test pilots regularly risked their lives as part of their everyday profession. There was a time in the late 1950s that test pilots were getting killed at a rate of one per week -- although the rate dropped considerably in the 1960s. However, even though the death rate dropped, this is quite telling of the mentality of a typical test pilot -- and that is why NASA picked test pilots to be among the first astronauts.

Kicking a rock while wearing a space suit is probably among the least dangerous things that astronaut did during his professional career as a test pilot then astronaut.

Besides, as someone above said, their spacesuits were designed to take some abuse (especially the shoes and gloves).

[edit on 11/9/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

Weight is relative to gravity. It may look like it weighs 100 lbs. but with the lower gravity it would not.

The suits they wore were a lot tougher than you could imagine. Particularly the boots and gloves.

I am pretty sure that he considered the risk before attempting the kick.

We didn't send morons into space.

They were and are very bright people.

Maybe that is why you don't find them posting on ATS.

The movie was filmed at Station 8.

166:56:36 Schmitt: Are you ready? Are you ready for this?

166:56:39 Cernan: I'm not sure I am, but go ahead. (Pause)

[Jack flips the rock over with his right foot. It starts to roll toward the Rover, but veers toward the right. Jack follows and kicks it again to keep it going. After a short while, it lands in a shallow depression and stops.]

166:56:50 Schmitt: (To the rock) Go! Roll! Look, I would roll on this slope, why don't you?

166:56:56 Cernan: Five-sixths gravity that's missing. (Pause)

166:57:02 Schmitt: Hey, I'll bet you they would like, if I didn't step on it, a sample out of the bottom of that thing. (Pause) Yup. (Pause)

[Jack climbs back up to the place where he'd found the boulder, intending to sample the soil which it had been covering. Gene comes into view briefly, going away from the Rover and hopping uphill.]

history.nasa.gov...

Geology Station 8 was a the foot of the Sculptured Hills. A fairly steep location.



Here's the rock.



As has been pointed out, the astronauts weren't exactly wearing bedroom slippers:

LUNAR OVERSHOE This fits over both the thermal meteoroid garment boot and the suit boot and is used for extravehicular activity. It consists of an insulation and liner, and an outer shell. The liner is Teflon-coated Beta cloth and the insulation is 13 layers of aluminized Kapton film separated by 12 layers of Beta Marquisette. The sole portion contains two additional layers of Beta felt interspaced between the uppermost film and spacer layers. The outer shell features a silicone rubber sole sewn to a laminated structure made up of four layers of two-ply Beta Marquisette. Chromel-R is used as the outer layer of the shell, except for the tongue, which is Teflon-coated Beta cloth.

www.apollosaturn.com...

ok.. well.. the thread is going sideways a bit as expected...so, i'll attempt to bring it back to center...

what I'm talking about is NOT the suit they are wearing...

it's about the oddity of the WHOLE video...

My points are:

~Jack weighs MORE than the rock; therefore, the rock, after being kicked s/b PRACTICALLY rolling non-stop!

~in the screenshot below, we see Jack kicking the rock; however, to me, it DEFINATELY looks like he's is about to fall backwards but doesn't, esp. with that pack on his back which weighed 85lbs alone!

source for backpack

here's the snapshot...



~Also, the dust flying up from the rock reacts as it would on earth, why is that??

It seems to me that they for some reason filmed that event with the camera slightly tilted making the slope seem less steep than it really is, which Phage also commented (steepness that is....)

Try to remember the funhouse where you could climb some stairs but they would seem unresonably steep. It's all trick of the angle.