NASA: AS16-113-18340

Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke added a twist to the standard Apollo practice of planting the United States flag and saluting it for the camera. While Duke stood some distance away with the camera, John Young jumped up in the diminished gravity. He did this twice with Duke catching him at the apex of his jump each time.

The astronaut in this picture isn't casting a shadow.

Many people don't realize that Young is at the top of his leap in this shot. His shadow is not directly adjacent to his feet as it would be if he were standing directly on the lunar surface. Instead it is below him and to the right in the picture.

The flag shouldn't be waving without an atmosphere.

NASA: AS16-113-18342

The wrinkles and folds in the flag are from its tight packing during the voyage, not because the air is blowing it. Below is the flag from the picture Young took of Charlie Duke's salute a few seconds later. You can see that it's almost identical to the one in the photo above, but photographed from a slightly different angle.

If the flag were waving in the breeze we'd expect it to billow differently in photographs taken seconds or minutes apart. Instead the folds don't change between photographs. The flag is obviously stationary, but wrinkled.

The object behind the astronaut is in shadow, yet we see it clearly lit.

The object behind John Young's right leg is the Schmidt camera (essentially an all-reflector telescope using photographic film instead of an eyepiece) used for ultraviolet astronomy photographs. The lunar surface is the ideal place from which to make ultraviolet observations because the lack of atmosphere affords an unfiltered view of the universe. The slow lunar rotation allows long exposures without requiring tracking equipment.

A backup camera is on display at the Johnson Space Flight Center.

NASA: AS16-114-18436

NASA: KSC-71P-628

The photo above on the left was taken on the lunar surface and shows the UV camera's legs and part of its body. You can indeed see that it is sited in the shadow of the lunar module to shield it from the glare of the sun. But it was only a foot or two inside the shadow; the brightly sunlit portions of the lunar surface are not too far away.

The photo on the right answers the question. It shows astronaut John Young training with the UV camera prior to departure. If you examine the aperture barrel where it joins the camera body and the diagonal structural stiffener that runs from the inclinometer to the base, you can see that the camera body is very reflective. In fact, it's only slightly less reflective than the lunar module's insulation.

The camera body reflects fuzzy and distorted images of the brightly lit surrounding lunar surface, even though the lunar module is casting a shadow over the camera.

The triangular object above John Young's head is the dangerously unfastened cloth flap from his PLSS. As shown in the photo below, taken from the same instant of the live television coverage, the flap is not visible. This proves the still photo and the live television coverage did not photograph the same event; one must have been prepared at a different time. [David Percy]

NASA: AS16 GET 120:26:17 (ANNOTATION BY DAVID PERCY)

Here and elsewhere David Percy bases his arguments on suppositions such as blind, rigid, and almost religious adherence to pre-established procedure. He conveys his impression of space travel as an almost magical undertaking that falls apart when the least detail is disturbed.

In fact, the astronauts were frequently qualified engineers and in many cases developed the procedures they themselves would follow. They are not, as Percy might characterize them, simply acting out a script written for them by someone else. They are following their notes worked out during practice runs.

Apollo 16 was given an abbreviated suit donning procedure in order to make up for their late landing. Some checks were likely omitted or done hastily. The astronauts themselves would know which steps were strictly crucial and related to life-threatening systems, and which were redundant or relatively unimportant.

With the nits out of the way we can concentrate on the meat of the issue. The flap Percy identifies in the Hasselblad still photo and whose absence is noted in the video record is not the PLSS flap he claims it is.

NASA: AS16-113-18340 (ANNOTATIONS BY CLAVIUS)

NASA: KSC-69H-1586

In the illustration above left the yellow arrow identifies the object in question in the area enlarged in the original photo. Above right shows Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad donning his PLSS backpack during training. We can clearly see the three snaps that hold it in place. Those snaps are not visible in enlargements of the object in the jump-salute photo.

Further, we notice that the PLSS flap is centered left-to-right on the OPS case. But the object in the jump-salute photo is not centered. It's off center to the astronaut's right.

NASA: AS16-114-18388 (ANNOTATIONS BY CLAVIUS)

If we examine the remainder of the photographs in the first EVA, we find several that show John Young sporting a rigid triangular object on his OPS. The object is clearly visible in the photo at left. If we enlarge the section in question and note how the shadow falls behind and to the left in the photo, corresponding to the sunlight angle, we conclude that the object is indeed attached to the front of the OPS. If it had been the protective cloth flap with the snaps unfastened, it would be sticking up from the back of the OPS where it folds over from the back panel. The same object with confirming shadows can be found clearly in photos AS16-109-17795 and AS16-109-17797.

Percy expects to see a PLSS flap and so looks only at the rear of the OPS in the video coverage. If we replay the video and instead look at the front of the OPS, where the object is really attached, we can distinctly see a semi-rigid object flapping back and forth as Young jumps and salutes.

It's disappointing to make this discovery. David Percy argues from the basis of a claim to have extensively if not exhaustively examined the Apollo record. If this were true he could have hardly missed something like this, which required Clavius researchers only about half an hour to locate. Cleary Percy is either lying about the depth of his research, or else he is deliberately withholding information that he knows contradicts his conclusion.

Since cloth is too flimsy to remain in the upright position, it must have been fastened there by a whistle-blower. [David Percy]

A good example of piling baseless conjecture upon baseless conjecture. Percy correctly notes that the object in question appears too rigid to be made of glass fiber cloth. But instead of considering that it might be another object or substance, he instead tries to force the data to fit his predetermined conclusion by hypothesizing an unsupported chain of events.

The parsimonious conclusion does not involve phantom whistle-blowers, but simply that the object isn't what Percy claims it is.

Two cameras recording the same scene must record the same details. [David Percy]

Not when the cameras record the action from completely different angles, and one is a still camera and the other a motion picture camera.