When the sun is low in the moon's sky, vertical objects on the moon's surface, such as alleged standing astronauts and LM spacecraft walls, would have been nearly perpendicular to the sun's rays and would have been receiving nearly the full brunt of these rays. The altitude of the sun above the local lunar horizon at landing for the Apollo program varied between about 5 degrees and 24 degrees, with the sun between 12 and 15 degrees above the horizon for most of the flights. After one earth day of sunrise on the moon, the sun is at an altitude of 13 degrees above the lunar horizon. For the longer missions, such as Apollo 17, by the time the LM would have ascended from the moon's surface, several days of nearly perpendicular constant sunlight bombardment to moon surface equipment would have already occurred. Electrical items do not work as well.
Batteries produce less current.
The extreme temperature variations from shadow to sunlight would cause significant material contraction and expansion and would make equipment breakdown and failure very likely. The astronauts were not hopping any farther than what the typical person could hop here on Earth. There a number of times in Apollo footage when the astronauts were landing pretty hard on their knees. After an Apollo 14 astronaut sets up and lets go of the flag, the flag flutters, is still, and then flutters again. This may be viewed on the Apollo Interactive CD-ROM by Simitar Entertainment.