These reflectors are tiny little things. Hitting one with a laser from Earth should be almost impossible. Furthermore, any backyard astronomer knows that the Moon is a moving target. The closer that you zoom in with your telescope, the faster the Moon zips away under high magnification. You have to calibrate your telescope with the Earth's axis perfectly in order to minimize that movement. Even with perfectly (and I really mean perfectly calibrated instruments), hitting a small target the size of a few books on the Moon should still be impossible. Imagine for a moment that I gave you a gun that could shoot targets over 250,000 miles away. How long would it take you to hit a target the size of a few books 230,000 miles away? It's not going to happen!
Right, right, we have those things called telescopes; but, NASA claims that even the Hubble Space Telescope can't get us a good look at the lunar landing sites - let alone get us a shot of the tiny laser reflectors. Even the recent LRO probe (there's an article here about it) can't give us a real picture of the landing sites. The alleged photos of the landing sites, taken by the LRO, look like globs of indistinct, white light.
Despite everything I just said about inadequate telescopes, NASA claims that their telescopes can find the laser reflectors and bounce light off of them. In NASA's words, "only the largest telescopes can be used" to bounce light off of the laser reflectors on the Lunar surface. How convenient for NASA! Or, is this just a bit of icing on the cake that "proves" that the Apollo manned Lunar landings were successful?
Are thousands of NASA astronomers "in on" the conspiracy? No, they aren't. Most of these telescopes are guided by computer systems these days, so coordinating the telescopes with the position of the alleged Laser reflectors is a snap. The astronomers believe they are bouncing lasers of of reflectors on the Moon. Are they really? Not necessarily.
Surely it isn't a huge surprise that the Moon is highly reflective. Just wait till the next full Moon and take a good look. It lights up the sky like a giant spotlight. You can bounce a laser off of the surface of the Moon without the need of any reflective equipment.
The US first bounced a laser off of the Moon's surface in 1962, and the Soviet union followed with the same experiment in 1963. The Moon's approximate distance from the Earth was calculated using this data. This is the data which would help the Soviets and Americans send probes into lunar orbit, with the hope of a soft-landing on the Moon. The hard landing on the Moon achieved by a Luna probe in 1959 (there is an article on this here, as well) was more of a "shoot directly at it" approach to landing on the Moon. To achieve a stable orbit, you have to aim just a bit to the side of the Moon.
Anyway, all of this talk of "Lunar reflectors" seems to be hype. If you are science minded, then you are probably thinking, "but... the reflectors allow us to calculate the distance to the Moon more precisely than just bouncing lasers off of the Moon's surface does..." Yes, perhaps. Or, perhaps improved laser technology (or improved computer algorithms) allow for that precision. Both are possible in this matter. The fact remains - NASA has already explained that Earth telescopes cannot be used to find the Lunar landing sites. They have no way of locating these reflectors with any sort of precision. Yet, they claim to be able to locate them with ease during their laser exercises. Something is amiss here, and it's not the logic presented in this article.
3 comments:
If I recall, it was the Mythbusters show where they examined the moon landing hoax theories, they visited one of these places that can bounce a laser off the moon at the spot where one of these reflectors is located. While the moon itself is very reflective, there is a marked increase in the reflectivity when the laser hits one of these reflectors. They show on a screen the return signal before they line up with the reflector, as they line up with it, and as they move past it. This itslef proves there is "something" up there, right where NASA says it should be. If it's not one of the laser reflectors, then what is it?
The laser used on the reflector spreads out to about a kilometer after traveling the quarter million miles to the moon. This makes it much easier to target the reflector. Comparing the laser beam to a bullet traveling 300,000 times slower and impacting an area over a trillion times smaller is intellectually dishonest. Try again please.
lol at people believing what mythbusters has to say. An on-board computer with the processing power of a modern day pocket calculator could not have made those complex, minute adjustments to land the Eagle. Simply put, we did not have the technology to send man up there.
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