The First Men On The Moon

[AHMETxRock]

Demanding accountability is a political taboo. Even if they're not lying to you, it just does them more harm then good. The more they address these issues, the more critical of the topic critics will be. They are critics, after all.

[Oldrac the Chitinous]

To take an extremly sceptical viewpoint about the lunar reflectors, reading into the article it seems as though they are effective as a particularly shiny rock in reflecting light at such a distance, such a small intensity of reflected light is hard to consider unusual enough to confirm they come off man-made reflectors rather than just off the moon's surface. If the moon landing was faked, it would require an incredible amount of effort to stage such such a con and hoodwink the entire world, but we're comparing it to the effort required to fix a struggling space program in a space race it was losing, and produce the first manned-trip to moon in the space after only a few years to barely keep a President's promise.

They're using a laser, which means the light is (close to) monochromatic. Sunlight is decidedly not. So, it's easy enough to tell the two apart if you're paying attention to what wavelengths of light are coming in.
And the neat thing about the reflector is that it sends all the light that hits it back in the direction it came from. So if you can hit the target, you're guaranteed to get a signal back. Even if you could find a suitably reflective surface on the moon (of which I am doubtful), it's highly unlikely that the reflected beam would come anywhere close to the earth, let alone your detector.

[Sahan]

Hey, I said I was taking an extremely sceptical viewpoint, not a plausible one!

I understand the physics of it, but seriously, to hit something that small with (what becomes) a 4m wide, very faint light beam is pretty hard, and when you are getting such a weak signal back, couldn't it just be the reflected light coming off the moon's surface at a directly normal angle? How could you tell the reflected beam is coming from a special reflector? Is there a significant difference in intensity?

[AHMETxRock]

Well, the only reason we see the moon in that night sky is because it reflects the light of the sun (and perhaps the light of the other stars as well, although this is minor)

[mountainmage]

I always thought that the moon wizards just turned on the moon every night.

[Oldrac the Chitinous]

Hey, I said I was taking an extremely sceptical viewpoint, not a plausible one!

I understand the physics of it, but seriously, to hit something that small with (what becomes) a 4m wide, very faint light beam is pretty hard, and when you are getting such a weak signal back, couldn't it just be the reflected light coming off the moon's surface at a directly normal angle? How could you tell the reflected beam is coming from a special reflector? Is there a significant difference in intensity?

They solve this problem by using a really big laser.