Putting a Flag on the Moon Was Not Easy

Putting a flag on the moon was not easy and it took much planning. For example, because there is no atmosphere on the moon, the flag had to include a special crossbar to hold it out to give the illusion of a flag flying in the breeze. The flag and the pieces that would hold it up also had to be very light and could not take up much room. A team designed the entire thing to be as light as possible -- it weighed only 9 pounds and 7 ounces. They made it smaller by building a two-part telescoping pole with a telescoping crossbar. The flagpole also had to be easy to assemble and to set up by astronauts wearing space suits. The space suits limited the amount of force that the astronauts could apply with their gloved hands and the suits limited their range of movement. Fig. 6.- Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin deploy the first U.S. flag on the moon. NASA JSC Photograph S69-40308) A 3 x 5 ft. nylon flag had a hem sewn along the top. The crossbar was hinged to the pole. The croosbar went through the hem, and a loop was sewn around the bottom of the flag to fasten to the pole. An astronaut put the flag and pole together and drove the pole into the ground using a special hammer. A red ring was painted 18 inches from the bottom of the pole to show astronauts how far to pound it into the ground. To save room in the space ship and to make it easier to get to the flag when it was time to put it up, the flag and pole were fastened to the side of the ladder on the Lunar Lander. This reduced the amount of equipment that had to be carried inside the crowded vehicle. Since the ladder would heat up to 2,000 degrees during the landing, the flag and the pole had to be protected from the heat because they would be destroyed if they reached 300 degrees. A protective cover made of several layers of thermal blanketing was designed so that the flag's temperature would not go above 180 degrees. Edward H. White II displays the U.S. flag on his space suit during his spacewalk (NASA Photo S65-30431). "Return to Utopia," by Pat Rawlings, shows the arrival of humans at the Viking 2 landing site. Flags will most likely accompany humans as they explore the planets (NASA photograph S91-52337).