Mark the moon
Posted by erisod@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 47 comments
We should put a macroscopic object or mark on the moon, something that can be seen with at least a basic telescope.
This would provide proof to the moon landing deniers and maybe flat earth nuts that they can verify themselves.
Vivid_Huckleberry814@reddit
Literally every moon landing denier I've ever listened to suggested the same thing.
VIP_NAIL_SPA@reddit
No it wouldn't. Effectively 0 of these people would bother to look, and the very few who do are extremely unlikely to change their minds. We've already seen flerfs do experiments to prove their idiocy, have the experiment prove a globe, and they double down anyways.
realityinflux@reddit
If I'm a moon landing denier and NASA says, hey, look up at the moon and you'll see something that we put there--be it a giant football field sized rectangle or a sequence of flashing lasers or, say, a reflector--I'm saying since we never got to the moon, it's got to be artifacts from aliens, which NASA saw and is now making up fake stories that claim that they, NASA, put them there, so we won't all panic and have riots over the fact that we can't handle the knowledge of aliens.
erisod@reddit (OP)
What if it is morse code flashing out "nasa was here" ?
realityinflux@reddit
The aliens have been monitoring our radio signals for decades now.
Watpotfaa@reddit
There are already mirrors/panels up there that they use(d) to bounce lasers off of. Any panel visible by a consumer telescope would have to be ridiculously huge.
Responsible-Chest-26@reddit
The problem with that is you could BS the software to say it reflected. Putting a macro object up there visible with a basic telescope or thr naked eye is infallible. Im probably off but I recall hearing that even some of the best ground based telescopes have trouble with details smaller than around 12ft. So you would need something at least the size of a football field to even get close to amateur observation
Trentsteel52@reddit
I think you’re underestimating the stupidity of the flat earth, moon hoax, space is fake, but also aliens are real, but also aliens are actually demons that come from under the ground, community You could fly those fuckers to the moon and show them the flag and theyd come up with a way to deny it
erisod@reddit (OP)
Hmm good point. Maybe moon football would be the better route to get this done.
Responsible-Chest-26@reddit
Being in the tech industry is could write code to turn on a light and say a sensor "received" a reflection without having a functioning light or sensor. Ignoring all of the math and angles and other high tech shit I dont even want to think about
KoalaDeluxe@reddit
Yup, there are a bunch of them up there: Lunar Laser Ranging experiments - Wikipedia
deck_hand@reddit
We did. It’s some reflectors that can be hit with a laser. I’ve seen it in action.
erisod@reddit (OP)
I under the requirements to test this are challenging, you would need a high powered laser with precise tracking and very sensitive sensor to pick up the reflection. Granted this is crazy ideas but the point was so that novice lookers at the moon who are suspicious of humanity's ability to land on the moon could self verify. The reflectors there, afaik, aren't suited to this.
getdownheavy@reddit
draw a giant dong
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Puzzled-Tradition362@reddit
You could fly each flerfer to the moon and let them walk on it and they still wouldn’t believe it.
erisod@reddit (OP)
Oh I like that, even crazier
Sorry-Climate-7982@reddit
I know. How about a great big mysterious black monolith?
DumpoTheClown@reddit
I'm sorry Dave, we can't do that.
ShoddyRelief6657@reddit
Hi sorry Dave, why can’t we?
ldr97266@reddit
This idea goes back at least as far as 194, mentioned in Robert Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon." An entrepreneur trying to convince investors to support his moonshot suggested marking the moon's surface with advertising logos.
FWIW, Apollo deniers wouldn't be conviced. Reflectors placed on the lunar surface decades ago can still throw laser reflections back that are visible from Earthe with the right instruments, but those are "obviously fake" and flat-earthers don't believe it.
SomethingMoreToSay@reddit
That's what immediately came to my mind too. IIRC, he walks into a meeting with potential sponsors, wearing a badge of their competitor's logo. When they object, he points out that the size of the badge, when they first saw it, was the same size as the moon in the sky, and wouldn't it be a shame if their competitor's logo was plastered all over the moon for everyone on the planet to see.....
Marquar234@reddit
"A crummy commercial?"
herejusttoannoyyou@reddit
I’m down. Let’s get together and make it happen. I don’t really care about convincing people I just think I’d be cool to say “I did that”
erisod@reddit (OP)
Great! I'll get a whole bunch of highly reflecrive tarps and you sort out the spaceship part.
herejusttoannoyyou@reddit
Ok. But can we go halfsies on the cost?
ApprehensivePanic757@reddit
I think there is a RAH story where there was some discussion about marking the moon with an advertisement. I think it was either 7 up or Coke.
TakeOff_YourPants@reddit
Make the moon into a giant QR code and make companies pay billions to advertise
QuestNetworkFish@reddit
It would probably be the largest, most complex and most expensive engineering project ever undertaken by humanity. For what benefit, to convince a few idiots of something when they'll immediately find something else to be idiotic about? Seems like a waste when we already have the perfectly effective option of just ignoring them.
That said, the US did once consider detonating a nuclear explosion on the moon large enough to be visible from earth, as a show of force and a demonstration of the effectiveness of their space and nuclear weapons programs. Ultimately they decided against it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
OldEquation@reddit
It’s borderline-feasible, according to my mental arithmetic.
The resolving power of the eye is such that we could see something on the order of 100 miles across on the moon. An inexpensive amateur telescope should do about two orders of magnitude better, say 1 mile.
How much paint or other material we’d need depends on many factors; what we use, how thick the paint needs to be etc. but if we assume, say, 0.1mm paint thickness over our 1 mile diameter circle (roughly 2,000,000 m2) we’d need about 200m3 of paint.
Given the crudeness of our estimates here it will be adequate to assume that this paint would weigh around 200 tons. The Apollo missions delivered around 40 tons on a TLI trajectory, so we’d need five such missions (a bit more actually because the paint would need to be in some sort of container, and we’d need something like a small explosive charge to spread the paint at the appropriate altitude.
Obviously this as an order-of-magnitude only estimate but making a mark visible through a small amateur telescope is do-able, though expensive.
Making a mark visible to the naked eye would be much harder.
Gold333@reddit
The amount of wrong assumptions in this comment is staggering
Gold333@reddit
You are aware that flat Earthers and people who deny reality don’t actually matter right? No one is going to spend money on the intellectual sludge of humanity.
DrawingOverall4306@reddit
Even crazier idea: stop worrying about moon landing deniers and flat earthers.
cpt_ugh@reddit
I love that you think people who believe we didn't go to the moon or who believe the earth is flat would be at all convinceable otherwise.
cpt_ugh@reddit
Chairface has joined the chat.
DisastrousCanary3073@reddit
You could drag these people to the actual moon and hit them over the head with a moon rock and they would still say it's fake.
Pleasant_Pen8744@reddit
Didn't they take one to the South Pole so he could see 24+ hours of sun in the sky and the best he could do "was, I'll have to think about it"
YossiTheWizard@reddit
They took two I believe. One changed his mind, the other didn’t.
its_just_fine@reddit
Hypnosis, psychedelics, and a soundstage.
SignalDifficult5061@reddit
Some people say you can't fix crazy. There are medications and therapy that can help these days.
I don't think marking the moon in a way visible from Earth is going to fix a significant amount more of crazy than spending 1/1000th of that on better mental health screening and treatment, probably much less.
Leading_Study_876@reddit
Some old SF story did suggest the possibility of putting a big advertising logo up there.
I believe it was Coca Cola.
I forget the mechanism suggested, but do remember that when I read it I was very dubious that it would actually work.
As I recall, it was meant to be visible from earth with the naked eye, and possibly nearly the whole size of the visible moon.
Skoobax@reddit
They already put a flag up there the first time
Leucurus@reddit
Waste of time and money to put something there to appease a tiny minority of fools who would only find some way to work it into their conspiracy theory anyway
erisod@reddit (OP)
I mean yeah. But it is crazy ideas.
APuticulahInduhvidul@reddit
Why go to all that trouble when you could just climb up the wall at the edge of the world and paint some smiley faces on the roof.
Mechman0124@reddit
Meh.. Let 'em wallow in their ignorance. The willfully ignorant aren't worth the energy.