What happened to the flags Apollo astronauts left on the moon?

Aug 30, 2024
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Interesting! Also don't forget that both Buzz and Neil have said a few times over the years that their flag was blasted over when the acent engine was lit.
 
May 27, 2024
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Organic matter will be reduced to a graphitic dust, at most, over 55 years of direct solar UV. Any oxygen from the surroundings that strays into the carbon might, with the help of UV, see the carbon off-gas as CO.
If the flags were woven of mineral-colored glass or ceramic, different story.
 
Jan 14, 2025
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Amazing achievement. I dreamt of future endeavors, imagining how much farther mankind would progress. How sad that humans have devolved instead.
 
Jul 6, 2024
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Any oxygen from the surroundings that strays into the carbon might, with the help of UV, see the carbon off-gas as CO.
But there is not much oxygen there.

There are less than 500 atoms per cubic centimetre in the Moon's "atmosphere". Using the room temperature thermal velocity of oxygen atoms (a little over 600 m/s) for a veeeery rough over-estimate, that's less than 6*10^7 potential oxygen absorptions per second on both sides of a surface of one square centimetre.

If you assume a flag with a thickness of 210 grams per m^2, of a material that is at least 60% carbon (like polyester), then that's 6*10^20 carbon atoms each cm^2. With the upper bound for potential oxygen flow derived above, even assuming a 100% efficiency, it would take at least 10^13 seconds for all the carbon in the flag material to turn into CO. That's about 317,000 years.
 
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