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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rhodesbe" data-source="post: 1745822" data-attributes="member: 2415">The 'lunar retroreflector experiment' of bouncing a beam off the moon was something I did as part of a physics lab in college.If I remember, there are three of those reflectors up there. The distance the beam travels can be verified by the loss of intensity of the beam.  The lab calculated the loss to be like 34^-8 watts. The environmental loss was calculated to be a much smaller amount - by comparasion, lots of light gets 'lost' over that distance.  This is important because there is no way that any experiment on earth can replicate light loss over such an extreme distance.  It was cool, to actually 'see' a beam that had traveled to the moon and back right in front of your face.  It didn't even smell funny or anything.</blockquote>