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Comment by burningion | Hacker News Reader

I realize we're all trying to make fun of a strawman who doesn't believe in the purity of science, but that's an unfair characterization of the arguments made against the manned lunar landing.

Just taking a look at the Wikipedia page for the arguments gives you a good idea for the arguments made:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori...

If you read through a bit, you'll see a few arguments that people propose, that don't refute laser reflectors being on the surface.

Again, I realize we're supposed to be piling on a strawman here, but I hope we can all maintain open minds.

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I would like more clarifications on the sort of arguments that allow for retroreflectors to legitimately be on the moon without the moon landing. I was not making fun of anyone; at most, I have frustration and confusion about how the belief of a hoax can exist in the face of repeatable verifiable proof that we put something on the moon.

The section on that wikipedia page on retroreflectors does not mention any theories that allows for it to be there, and glossing over the page a bit, it states that "the foremost idea is that the whole manned landing program was a hoax from start to end."

I would appreciate a discussion of any argument you have found that allows for retroreflectors.

The argument about retroreflectors is right there on the page, although it's buried if you don't have the arguments raised previously in the Wikipedia article.

The main argument is that the lunar landings weren't manned for one or more of the landings. And indeed, right there on the page, it says:

> Smaller retroreflectors were also put on the Moon by the Russians; they were attached to the unmanned lunar rovers Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.

The existence of the Russian retroreflectors shows reflectors could be deployed without human intervention.

And further:

> Lick Observatory attempted to detect from Apollo 11's retroreflector while Armstrong and Aldrin were still on the Moon but did not succeed until August 1, 1969.[197] The Apollo 14 astronauts deployed a retroreflector on February 5, 1971, and McDonald Observatory detected it the same day.

The argument here is that if the retroreflectors were deployed by Apollo 11, they should have been detectable within the day, not 10 days after their supposed human caused deployment.

Again, this is just the argument presented, not an endorsement.

Maintain open minds about the conspiracy theorists?

What do I gain by entertaining crazy wrong ideas? Other than practise in refuting crazy ideas.

Refuting crazy ideas is something extremely important, imo, especially if they are widely held. But you have to refute the best possible version of the argument (if there is one), not a straw man weakened version.

The "strongest" version is that we have landed many spacecraft on the moon (placing mirrors, artifacts, etc), but the human part was staged. I think a Chinese photo of clear and obvious _human_ presense on the moon actually would be a big deal as far as putting all the craziness to bed.

That's my point though, we only ever give these ideas serious thought when refuting them.

Otherwise they are not worthy of consideration. So why keep an open mind towards moon hoax ideas?

The retroreflectors were placed by manned lunar landings.

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