That's the nature of engineering. You spend your whole life studying stuff that no one in his right mind would be interested in, and then in one shining moment it all pays off when that obscure bit of knowledge suddenly becomes useful for something.

I think everyone's seen the difference between freshly laid asphalt, which is a deep black, and asphalt that's been around for several years. Obviously the color changes. The change in albedo isn't all that apparent to the naked eye, but can be inferred. We know that the color brightens, and that bright colors have a higher albedo than dark colors.

Not only do you get the effect from car tires which rub the bitumin film off the top layer of aggregate, but you get dust and grit ground into the upper layer of bitumin between the aggregate, the same way dirt works its way into the calk around your bathroom fixtures.

Perhaps, but I don't know the albedo of a blackboard. Asphalt is appropriate, so long as you clarify that it's weathered asphalt and not the freshly laid variety.

I live in Utah where we have a great deal of sun and lots of asphalt roadways. Which brings me to your comment...

True, but asphalt is. I wasn't trying to describe the moon as much as I was trying to point out that geometric albedo is a poor quantification of the total lighting properties of a surface. Something like asphalt with a "low" albedo can actually reflect enough light in the specular sense (not measured by albedo) to impair vision. The glare off the asphalt roadways here in Utah is quite striking.

You mention the moon's emphasis on zero-phase lighting. That's correct, visually verifiable from earth, and quite evident in the Apollo lunar surface photographs. Again, geometric albedo does not account for these "special" lighting effects, hence it is a poor quantification for the lighting properties of the lunar surface.

No, that's the antithesis of my point. The moon is not black. It's equivalent to a weathered gray asphalt roadway, not a freshly laid black asphalt roadway.

The skill of cutting metal to a pattern given to you by someone else is not equivalent to the skill of determining those patterns. That happens to be my busines. When you cut tailcones or wing spars or what have you, you're simply following the instructions given to you by people like me who work out the designs for you.

The arguments you offer in favor of your assertions demonstrate that you don't understand thermodynamics. A proper understanding of thermodynamics is necessary to the claims you're making. Not only do you seem rather ignorant on the subject of thermodynamics, you seem especially antagonistic to those who are trying to educate you.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm claiming the moon is as white as asphalt, the kind that's been around for several years.

What do you mean by "legitimately supported"? The thermodynamics numbers others have posted seem correct to me. The only quantitative arguments you have made don't constitute valid thermodynamics.

The cooling of the command module has been explained to you as plainly as it can be. The primary source of heat on the Apollo spacecraft was the electronic equipment. The heat production of the astronauts and that absorbed from the sun is very small in comparison. If you run the electronic equipment you must also run the cooling units. If you turn off the electronic equipment you do not need the cooling units. You must either run both or neither.

Without that electronic equipment, the only sources of heat are the astronauts themselves and the radiant heat absorbed from the sun. You've been shown the black-body figures for an object in that situation, which you have sidestepped.
Machinists often have intuitive knowledge of a material's properties because to cut it efficiently, correctly, and without damage one must adjust "feed" and "speed" values on the machine and arrange for the appropriate coolant during machining.

But these are typically given in tables. A good machinist can set the feed/speed values for various aluminum alloys and such from experience. But that's not the same level of experience as the person who originally specified that material for use in the project under construction.

A machinist knows not to let the material get too hot. But he doesn't necessarily have to know how or why it gets hot, or compute transfers and steady states for the thermal situation. And he doesn't necessarily have to know why he's cutting it 0.256 inch thick instead of 0.248 inch. And he doesn't know why that particular alloy was chosen for that particular component. That's the job of the design engineer upstairs.

Needless to say one doesn't become a design engineer without understanding the general problem of thermal effects -- what causes them, how to quantify them, and how to make them work to his advantage.