At the end of the last Apollo 15 moon walk, Commander David Scott (pictured above) performed a live demonstration for the television cameras. He held out a geologic hammer and a feather and dropped them at the same time. Because they were essentially in a vacuum, there was no air resistance and the feather fell at the same rate as the hammer, as Galileo had concluded hundreds of years before - all objects released together fall at the same rate regardless of mass. Mission Controller Joe Allen described the demonstration in the "Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report":

During the final minutes of the third extravehicular activity, a short demonstration experiment was conducted. A heavy object (a 1.32-kg aluminum geological hammer) and a light object (a 0.03-kg falcon feather) were released simultaneously from approximately the same height (approximately 1.6 m) and were allowed to fall to the surface. Within the accuracy of the simultaneous release, the objects were observed to undergo the same acceleration and strike the lunar surface simultaneously, which was a result predicted by well-established theory, but a result nonetheless reassuring considering both the number of viewers that witnessed the experiment and the fact that the homeward journey was based critically on the validity of the particular theory being tested.
Joe Allen, NASA SP-289, Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report, Summary of Scientific Results, p. 2-11

take that conspiracy theorists

My granddad believed that Pro Wrestling (RAS-LEN how he pronounced it) was real, and the moon landing was faked. Go figure.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I've never seen that before. Thanks.

More of those rare footages. I hope the original lost tapes are found soon.

Great find and post, Silvercord. Sometimes I love the Sift!

take that conspiracy theorists

Can easily be reproduced in a large vacuum room!

funny how americans were the only ones ever to 'land' on the moon ... more specifically, were able to land SIX times in a span of THREE years, but haven't been able to get back in the last 34 years, even when technology has obviously advanced ... but ... ok

To show how old I am, I remember seeing this live. The biggest thing I remember was right after he dropped them with his "how 'bout that!" remark.

i honestly find that difficult to understand - like, it goes against my intuitive sense of things: heavy things fall quicker.

If I remember my physics, pipp, it's the action of gravity on the object that is the factor; not the weight of the object being acted upon.

I'll try and post up something that will really blow your mind if I can find it. Hang tight.

Tags changed from "gravity, moon, experiment, galileo" to "gravity,moon,experiment,galileo,nasa" by gold star member lucky760.

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