D: Yael, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I must admit that      those photographs of the moon landing make me suspicious. I mean,      the flag in those pictures of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong is rippling      in the wind, and everyone knows that there is no atmosphere on the      moon. And no atmosphere means no breeze.

Y: Well, as you can imagine, the folks who came up with the idea of taking an American      flag to the moon were aware that unless they rigged something up, the flag would just      hang there. So they built a special flagpole expressly for the purpose of making the      flag appear to fly.

D: So our tax dollars went to work reinventing the flag pole?

Y: Actually, Its not a trivial problem. The astronauts would be wearing bulky space      suits, so they needed a flagpole that was easy to assemble and to plant in the ground.      Plus, the pole had to be portable, and not use up a lot of precious cargo space. So      scientists rigged a telescoping pole with a telescoping horizontal crossbar that was      supposed to make the flag look as if it were blowing in the wind. The flag itself was      standard issue, although the top was hemmed so that the astronauts would be able to      slide it over the crossbar. And the entire assembly weighed less than ten pounds.      Even so, the astronauts reported having some trouble setting the flag up. They      weren't able to stick the pole far enough into the ground, and they weren't able to      fully extend the horizontal crossbar.

D: And that explains the rippling effect.

Y: And takes the air out of your conspiracy theory.  

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