Replies

I've read them and other discussions. I still have a problem, because while building up the non-issues, they trivialize the real ones.

Such as "...only two modes of heat transfer are possible: radiant transfer from the inner surface of the magazine to the film itself (the amount of which would be small in this scenario), and conductive transfer from the magazine case through the winding mechanism to the film itself. This is a very limited path of conduction.

But see, "limited" is a variable defined by application - in this case, the actual amount of heat actually transferred under the extremes of lunar temperatures, and the delicacy of the film substrate and emulsion. For example, I could heat up a pin to lunar temps - even far less then lunar temps - and wreck any film I rolled around it. So it's a matter of how hot, for how long - not a mere claim that the conduction path is "limited."

Yet all anyone would have to do is get one of the lunar cameras, put it in a heated/chilled vacuum environmental chamber, and see what happens. Yet no one will do this. Hell, Hassleblad and NASA should have done it to test the cameras - and you can't tell me they didn't. The specs for government work are ridiculous anyway, and you're not going to send people all the way to the moon to check if your theories about the cameras work. So they WERE tested - so, show the test results, and let people duplicate them, and put this issue to rest.

But no dice.

Again, for example, the other link you gave says, "Conventional lubricants had to be eliminated as they would boil off in the vacuum of space. " Great, fine... WHAT lubricants? I'm sure something can be said about them. Were they dry? How did they keep them in place then. Were they wet? How did they keep them from boiling off, then? And notice, the temperatures were so high and vacuum so low that they would boil camera lubricants. So then claiming there was no effect on the film or its emulsion simply doesn't follow. And if technical developments defeated these problems, why not say what those developments were? Industry especially could make use of them.

But no dice.