As for the feather and hammer, David Percy proved he could fake that easily without the use of a vacuum. But, that is a minor issue compared to the blunders made by NASA during Apollo.

All will be revealed in time. For those who are curious about the facts behind Apollo, visit MOONHOAX.US and view the film series by Jarrah White – MoonFaker. And, there’s a MarsFaker as well.

Cheers.

If the sole purpose was to silence doubters, then there is no reasonable basis for NASA to have included it in the mission. As Irishman already pointed out, there were numerous people outside of NASA already tracking the missions.

Let’s think of it this way. You are part of a group in North America designing a mission to send people for the first time to the southern American continent. You have generally reliable means of communication, but, like in your scenario, something could go wrong. The plan calls for the explorers to go there, document and transmit their activities back home (for the sake of argument, let’s assume they have the means to do so), and return back. It is generally known, or at least assumed, that there are no good sources of clean water or food there, and that something in the air requires the explorers to take along air tanks. The need to bring air, food and water limits the amount of time they have down there, as well as how much space is available. They are going to have a number of scientific experiments to conduct, as well as sample some of the local soil, among other tasks.

Now, as part of the planning crew, are you going to have them also erect a structure that can be seen from the Northern Hemisphere with telescopes or other line-of-sight devices of the necessary resolution, accounting for the curvature of the Earth, just to silence anyone that might doubt the explorers went to that continent? Assuming that there are means to build such a structure, would you have the 2-4 man crew spend time on that? In order to do so, significant amounts of food, water and air supplies would need to be sent with them or ahead of them. Keep in mind, also, that pre-staging the supplies would have an equivalent cost to the manned mission.

My scenario may seem absurd, but the principles involved are somewhat similar. Likewise, when you go on a cruise and account for the possibility that your cell phone may not work, do you have some sort of mile-high sign that you are going to erect so that people will not doubt that you actually are out in the middle of the ocean? NASA may have thought of the possibility of loss of communication or doubters, but the costs associated with a “flag on the moon” activity outweigh any benefit that may be derived from it. Not to mention that the doubters will just claim that it was unmanned vehicles unfurling the flag or laying out the placards.