How can the flag wave on the moon?

One assertion of hoax believers is that the American flag, shown here, would not be able to wave on the surface of the moon because there is no atmosphere on the moon, and the fluttering of the flag may be an indication that the landings were filmed on a movie set.

What is not understood in this case is that a flag does not need air to "wave" in the manner we see here. On Earth, we explain the movement of flags according to the Bernoulli principle, where the back and forth movement corresponds to lower or higher pressure on either side of the flag. These pressure waves then give us a wave pattern traveling through the flag, but this movement is not solely caused by our atmosphere.

In the picture at left, we notice that the flag is supported by a rod perpendicular to the flag pole at the top. (Hoax believers are right in their assumption that the flag would need air to prop it upright.) Now let's consider the actual placement of the flag into the lunar surface: we know that it is covered with a thin layer of dust, which covers a much harder layer of material. So in order to firmly fix the flag into the ground, the astronauts had to apply some torque to the flag pole. This is consistent with the scenes of the astronaut twisting the pole back and forth on the Fox program, too ("Moon Hoax").

We also know that Newton's laws do not require the presence of air. Newton's first law states that an object in motion will remain in motion in the absence of other forces (and an object at rest will remain at rest). Thus, the torque applied to the pole put the pole in motion and because the moon is in a vacuum, air did not dampen the motion and it kept moving for some time. As a result, the flag appears to wave because the astronauts moved it, not because a wind is present.