Was the moon landing faked? Poll

What you’ve “been hearing” illustrates the problems that can arise from explaining complex topics to a lay audience through oversimplification—then repeating the oversimplification ad nauseum because it’s pithy.

First, the LEM only held a third of an atmosphere (of 100% oxygen), and it was only rated for a small number of pressurization cycles. For comparison, an ordinary soda can holds six times that pressure.

But the whole question is misleading, because the LM was not an aluminium can. Yes in some spots, its skin was as thin as 0.006 inches (1.524 mm). That’s 1.5 times the thickness of a modern soda can, or about the thickness of contemporary cans. However, the LM was not merely a paper-thin aluminium sheet.

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The LM was made of grid-like trusses of metal skin with welded-on ribs to create strong, rigid bulkheads. The panels were also chemically etched so that the skin between the ribs tapered toward the middle (the space between ribs) so as not to contain more material than needed mechanically. This is where the thin stuff was—just a few strips and patches equidistant between ribs. This is the only place the skin was thin enough to puncture with a screwdriver, though even doing that by mistake would have taken a feat of bad luck.

And for the record, I’ve only ever seen documentation for parts of the descent stage being only 0.006 inches thick. The ascent stage bulkhead might well have been thicker, though I do know they were thin enough to “oil can” or pop as temperatures changed while the astronauts slept.

Regardless, that’s all misleading. The LM wasn’t made of the cheap, soft 3000-series aluminium alloy we are familiar with from our kitchens. The LM was made mostly from heat-treated 2219 and 7075 aluminium alloys. 2219 was used in areas where high strength and fracture resistance were required. 7075 (which was developed during WWII by Japan and used in naval aviation toward the end of the war), was used for its exceptional tensile strength—comparable to steel. Both were (and are) expensive and difficult to fabricate.

After the bulkheads were welded together, the LM was surrounded by a system of struts that further increased rigidity (much like the stiffening wires in a biplane) and provided attachments for the micrometeorite shields

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Those shields were also aluminium (mostly), along with multi-layer blankets of aluminized plastic, and of course, certain high temperature or high strength components were made of magnesium alloy or titanium.

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Wall of copy-pasted text without clear meaning. Important one sentence explaining radiation shielding mechanism is missing.
:lolzer: