From the ALSJ
Quote:
108:14:35 Armstrong: Okay. You'll find that the area around the ladder is in a complete dark shadow, so we're going to have some problem with TV, but I'm sure you'll get a picture from the lighted horizon (garbled).
108:14:53 McCandless: This is Houston. We copy, and right toward the end of your transmission after you mentioned "lighted horizon", you trailed off down into the noise level, Neil. Over.
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Armstrong, of course, can't see the TV picture and he hasn't yet been outside. The light coming into the cabin is fairly bright. If you look straight out of the LM cabin you'll get a big slap of heiligenschein in your face.
And from later in the ALSJ
Quote:
109:27:13 Armstrong: Okay. It's quite dark here in the shadow and a little hard for me to see that I have good footing. I'll work my way over into the sunlight here without looking directly into the Sun.
[Armstrong, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "It is very easy to see in the shadows after you adapt for a little while. When you first come down the ladder, you're in the shadow. You can see everything perfectly; the LM and things on the ground. When you walk out into the sunlight and then back into the shadow, it takes a while to adapt."]
[Aldrin, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "In the first part of the shadow, when you first move from the sunlight into the shadow, when the Sun is still shining on the helmet as you traverse cross-Sun, you've got this reflection in your face. At this point, it's just about impossible to see anything in the shadow. As soon as you get your helmet into the shadow, you can begin to perceive things and to go through a dark-adaptation process. Continually moving back and forth from sunlight into shadow should be avoided, because it's going to cost you some time in perception ability."]
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109:28:17 Armstrong: Looking up at the LM, I'm standing directly in the shadow now looking up at Buzz in the window. And I can see everything quite clearly. The light is sufficiently bright, backlighted into the front of the LM, that everything is very clearly visible. (Long Pause)
[That is, there is enough sunlight reflecting off the lunar surface onto the LM that Neil can see the shadowed LM surfaces. They will be a bit harder to see clearly once he steps out into the direct sun. These are the "lighting" comments called out on Neil's cuff checklist.]
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109:47:04 Aldrin: (Still near the ladder) Can't say too much for the visibility right here (in the LM shadow) without the visor up. (Garbled) pretty dark. It looks like there is a surface of a flat, mounded rock. (Pause) And incidentally, these rocks (garbled) very powdery surface (garbled).
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You all say that the reflective ability of the lunar surface lit up Armstrong, but what I'm asking is how could it have when Armstrong claims that he can hardly see where he's standing because the ladder is in complete shadow?
I think you're trying to be a bit too rigid in your interpretation. "Complete shadow" doesn't necessarily mean "total blackness, without light". For example, he could have meant that it's completely contained within the shadow volume of the LM, as opposed part of it being in sun and part of it being in shadow. I really don't know what Armstrong intended by that statement, and so I don't typically try to read too much meaning into it. And I certainly would read into it meanings that appeared to create a dilemma, and then parade that manufactured dilemma around as evidence of fakery.
Now as to being able to see where he's standing, keep in mind that there were very conservative mobility limits set for Apollo 11. The space suits were untried in a lunar environment, so they were told to walk carefully.
But that's not the important point. The important point is the behavior of light off the "reflector". Why can Armstrong's suit be lit while he can't see the ground? Because the ground is on the ground. This is actually easy to understand intuitively.
Pretend, for the sake of argument, that the lunar surface is completely flat and level. Pretend also that it's a perfect Lambertian reflector -- i.e., that light is diffusely reflected in all directions from it. Now imagine yourself in the shadow of something big like the lunar module. From the height of your eyes you can see beyond the shadow to the lit portions of the surface. That's the same as saying that light from the lit portions of the surface reaches your eyes -- and therefore your face. Someone looking at your face would see it illuminated by that light.
Now get down on your hands and knees and put your head as close to the ground as you can. Look to either side. Can you see any of the lighted portions of the surface? Probably not because you'd be seeing them edge-on. This is equivalent to saying that very little of the light from the surface reaches your eyes, so absent any other light source things there will look very dim indeed.
If this is too abstract for you, take a piece of paper and put it on the floor fifteen feet away or so. From a standing position you can see it just fine. Now put your head close to the floor without moving closer to the paper. If you can see the paper at all, you can see it only as a thin sliver. For a fixed area reflector, the strength of the light reflected from it is proportional to how directly you view it (and other factors). That's a rule that's used very frequently in the computation of radiant heat transfer, which is essentially the illumination problem in different wavelengths.
When Armstrong looks down, he's looking at the shadowed portion of the lunar surface. And it's not being illuminated by the adjacent lit patches. Further, Armstrong's field of view likely includes portions of the lit surface and that's what his eyes are adjusted to.
Also could I ask if the radio system used in the Apollo missions was two way at the same time or could just either Houston or the Astronauts speak at one time? In other words could both be heard speaking over comms as the same time?
The radios were two-way.