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If you see this photograph you will note the position of the top of young's helmet in relation to the flag. Critics might claim that he wasn't really trying. If you were on the moon and you had a chance to make a record jump AND you KNEW that you were being viewed on television by billions of people around the world…
Are you trying to tell me that you wouldn't really try? Really? Is that what you're trying to say? Do you expect the public to believe such blithering nonsense? Because I don't believe it for one second.
I think Young was trying the very best that he possibly could.
You might claim that he purposely kept his jumping efforts to a minimum,
but if this were the case, a similar earth effort without a backpack and suit
would have lifted him only five inches or so and this was probably young's last chance to demonstrate that the moon had a low surface gravity. Why on earth wouldn't he make a reasonable effort to impress the world by jumping at least three or four feet? Especially when the figures say he could have easily reached six feet off the ground in one-sixth of Earth’s gravity.
You see, a reasonable jump would have been conclusive proof that the moon had a low gravity and the risk of injury would have been minimal in low gravity
conditions even with the backpack and suit. With the knowledge that the astronauts could only jump about 18 inches on the moon, and assuming that the gear weighed what NASA claimed, and assuming that they were really on the moon when they made this jump (which is quite an assumption based upon all the evidence that we've been able to gather here) the jumps are not any higher than you could perform yourself on Earth.
