Bounce it off, sure. Are you going to get the return back at the angle you need for proper measurements without a known flat angle to bounce back against? Doubtful. The moon is kinda big, if you haven’t looked at it. Hitting the mirror precisely is hard enough, adding in hitting the exact same patch of rock time and time again adds needless complexity.
Other sources included earlier proposals to use the Moon as a radio wave reflector, which date back to 1928. The first proof of this concept was the Project Diana program of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1946, which detected radar waves bounced off the Moon.
Four years ago (1962), a ruby laser considerably smaller than those now available shot a series of pulses at the moon, 240,000 miles away. The beams illuminated a spot less than two miles in diameter and were reflected back to earth with enough strength to be measured by ultrasensitive electronic equipment.
Awesome. So they can do a thing, which proves their concept but doesn’t have any immediate use. They add a mirror to the laser bouncing to make the results more focused and useful. How is this a bad thing?
Just because they can bounce a signal off it and see it again doesn’t mean it’s giving them useful data. We had fuel injection technology in World War Two, it wasn’t made widespread into every car until there was a need and a profit for doing so.
The moon holds little value as far as profit goes. The cost of making a permanent base there and cycling out personnel to avoid permanent muscle atrophy is huge and for what? Some rocks and maybe some helium3? That require more money to bring back safely. It would be different if there was some kind of super uranium that would enable fission reactors cheaply, or for a staging base for sending material to Mars, but given the history of every colony ever rebelling and fighting for independence, anyone who looks at mars being both a colony and friendly for long needs to look at history a lot closer.
A moon base beyond military use doesn’t justify the cost to most beancounters, nor does repeated trips there and back.
The point about useful data is mine. Just because you can bounce the light off it and show you can see it again is an interesting thing indeed, but it’s not useful. You can turn your porch light on and off and send Morse code to your neighbour 2 miles away, but it’s more useful to send that light down a fibre optic cable and send an easy to read post on the internet. Both are doable but one is infinitely more useful than the other.
Bounce it off, sure. Are you going to get the return back at the angle you need for proper measurements without a known flat angle to bounce back against? Doubtful. The moon is kinda big, if you haven’t looked at it. Hitting the mirror precisely is hard enough, adding in hitting the exact same patch of rock time and time again adds needless complexity.
Even so, they claim to have done it.
Other sources included earlier proposals to use the Moon as a radio wave reflector, which date back to 1928. The first proof of this concept was the Project Diana program of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1946, which detected radar waves bounced off the Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_Moon_Relay
Four years ago (1962), a ruby laser considerably smaller than those now available shot a series of pulses at the moon, 240,000 miles away. The beams illuminated a spot less than two miles in diameter and were reflected back to earth with enough strength to be measured by ultrasensitive electronic equipment.
https://www.checktheevidence.com/wordpress/2019/01/03/national-geographic-magazine-december-1966-the-lasers-bright-magic/
1962, that is before the alleged Moon landing.
We shot v1 missiles at it too
Awesome. So they can do a thing, which proves their concept but doesn’t have any immediate use. They add a mirror to the laser bouncing to make the results more focused and useful. How is this a bad thing? Just because they can bounce a signal off it and see it again doesn’t mean it’s giving them useful data. We had fuel injection technology in World War Two, it wasn’t made widespread into every car until there was a need and a profit for doing so. The moon holds little value as far as profit goes. The cost of making a permanent base there and cycling out personnel to avoid permanent muscle atrophy is huge and for what? Some rocks and maybe some helium3? That require more money to bring back safely. It would be different if there was some kind of super uranium that would enable fission reactors cheaply, or for a staging base for sending material to Mars, but given the history of every colony ever rebelling and fighting for independence, anyone who looks at mars being both a colony and friendly for long needs to look at history a lot closer. A moon base beyond military use doesn’t justify the cost to most beancounters, nor does repeated trips there and back.
I never made any point about useful data. The point is, you do not need a reflector to bounce a laser off the moon, according to their own claim.
The point about useful data is mine. Just because you can bounce the light off it and show you can see it again is an interesting thing indeed, but it’s not useful. You can turn your porch light on and off and send Morse code to your neighbour 2 miles away, but it’s more useful to send that light down a fibre optic cable and send an easy to read post on the internet. Both are doable but one is infinitely more useful than the other.