Could the signal bounce off airplanes as well, or is that effect not relevant in practice? (I think I've heard such stories before from radio amateurs...)
All of this has really nothing to do with LoRa and everything to do with physical properties of the emissions (frequency, power, polarization) and physical properties of whatever happens to exist in the world at the time.
As an aside, would radio via the moon ever be practical? Without pumping out so much transmit power that you pick up the signal anyway, without pointing a receiver at the moon. I think it would be neat, if only for the sake of novelty.
Here's a C program with the correct equation.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
double d, f, lambda, loss;
if (argc != 3) {
fprintf(stderr, "usage: moon <km> <frequency(MHz)>\n");
exit(-1);
}
d = atof(argv[1]) * 1000.0;
f = atof(argv[2]);
lambda = 299792458.0 / (f * 1000000.0);
loss = (0.065 * (1.738e6 * 1.738e6) * (lambda * lambda)) / (631.65468167 * (d * d * d * d));
printf("EME path loss = %f dB\n", 10 * log10(loss));
return 0;
}
Satellites make moonbounce impracticable.