Why are there no stars visible in cislunar space? It’s very puzzling that the moon landing had no stars in the background, the ISS clips have no stars in the background. I listened to multiple astronaut interviews speak on what it looks like up in space and about half of them speak of the “darkest black space”. I’m sure there is a very good explanation for this. 

Is star light only visible through the medium of earth atmosphere? But once in the vacuum of space where there is no medium they disappear? What’s the explanation? 











Minute 47-49 stars, press conference all three Apollo 11 astronauts 

BBC interview with Neil Armstrong only
It is a matter of exposure and dynamic range. A sensor like a camera can only handle inputs in a certain range of intensities, and much of photographic skill (or smart presets) is about mapping the outside light onto this range so the details you care about show up rather than turn into white or black.

If you take a picture of a brightly lit scene, in order to make out the details of the bright parts (such as a lunar landscape, the Earth, the ISS etc) you will have to adjust the exposure making faint objects like the stars too dim to see against a dark sky background. You could try to set the exposure to show the stars instead, but now the landscape and Earth would be too bright (and likely also mess up the picture by causing flaring). 

One can try to work around it by taking several pictures at different exposure levels and later digitally compositing them together. But this requires a lot of extra work.