How could I go about building a telescope such that it would be able
to clearly view the US landing sites on the moon?

Hello!

Although I highly doubt the resolution necessary to view the actual
landing site complete with detail such as shuttle impact craters and
flag can be had by an amateur built telescope, I have probably misread
your question and instead you are looking to build a telescope that's
able to give you a closeup view of the landing sites in relationship
to natural land formations on the moon. Here are plans for a couple
telescopes that will accomplish that goal, but I suggest buying,
"Build Your Own Telescope" by Richard Berry (link below). It is a
beginner level telescope which will be able to discern land
formations. He has written another book for large aperature telescopes
(link below) but that requires you to find special curved mirrors in
excess of 8" in diameter or have access to a shop where you can grind
your own mirror. These large aperature telescopes may be what you're
looking for in terms of resolution but are costly to make. Here are
links to a couple plans of build-it-yourself telescopes.


Additional Links:

"Build Your Own Telescope" by Richard Berry:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0943396425/moonlightsystems

"The Dobsonian Telescope : A Practical Manual for Building Large
Aperture Telescopes" by Richard Berry:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0943396557/moonlightsystems/002-1505541-6804800

Amateur built telescope with walkthrough:
http://www.moonlightsys.com/atm/tour.html

Another amateur built telescope with walkthrough:
http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~victorp/mtelescope.htm

Two separate amateur built telescopes with walkthrough:
http://www.hickorytech.net/~landsg/

Website devoted to tools and diagnostic skills necessary to build a
working telescope:
http://telescopemaking.org/


Search Strategy:

"build your own telescope" on google:
://www.google.com/search?q=%22build+your+own+telescope%22


Hope this information helps, clarify your question if you need more
info or feel free to rate this answer if you find it satisfactory!
Thanks!

skermit-ga

Thanks.

Your question could be interpreted in various ways.  I think Skermit
has done a good job pointing you in useful directions if you are
interested in building your own telescope.

Without considering non-optical sensing methods, I anticipate the
possibility of at least two other possible questions here:

1. "DOES a telescope exist that can (from the Earth or near Earth) see
the artifacts left at the landing sites?" - It is my understanding
that the answer is "no".  The moon is roughly a quarter of a million
miles away and the objects left behind are too small to be resolved by
the largest aperture telescopes now extant.  The Hubble telescope in
orbit over the Earth could be considered "closer" to the moon, but
only marginally.  It does have the advantage of not having to contend
with the Earth's atmosphere like ground based telescopes do (a
considerable advantage), but is much smaller in aperture.

2. "COULD a telescope exist that could (from the Earth or near Earth)
see the artifacts left at the landing sites?" - I think we'd have to
give this a "yes" answer.  I'm not an expert on optics nor on all the
things that happen to the light bouncing off the Moon and eventually
reaching our eyes or telescopes.  Someone more expert might point out
possibly intractible problems in the latter area.  There would
certainly be some cost and engineering issues to deal with, but I'd
say it is otherwise possible.  After all, one of the lessons of
science is that we keep surprising ourselves at what can actually be
done that once seemed absurdly impossible.  That there even are such
human artifacts on the moon is sound testament to that lesson!

Have a look at this website to give you an idea of the problem.  The
Picture of "Mir" was taken from the ground with a 90 inch (Diameter of
aperture) telescope !!!!!! and is very blurred.  Consider the distance
from the surface of the Earth to Mir and then from Earth to the Moon
!!!!!
http://satobs.org/telescope.html

Mir is (sorry was) about 500 kilometers above the Earth. 
The Moon is about 384,000 kilometers from Earth.

The pictures of Mir were taken by a 90 inch telescope from earth, so
to see something on the Moon of similar size (and Mir was considerably
larger than any items left on the Moon) 384,000/500=768   768*9=6912
inches divide by 12= 576 FEET.
A telescope with an aperture of 576 feet is not feasable. The largest
ground based telescopes are about 32 Feet.

It would be great though !
THX1138

Even if you´ve got $500 million to spend you could still only see
objects of 3 meters on the moon, the largest item left on the moon
being the Lunar Buggy is less than 3 meters.  Have a look at this CNN
story
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9602/chile_telescope/

For interest, the US flag planted on the Moon is probably not there
now as it was made of Nylon and Nylon disintegrates over time because
of Ultra Violet rays.  Here on Earth the Ozone layer filters out much
of the UV but as the moon has no atmosphere (to speak of) it´s
probably disinteragrated.

THX1138

One thing to remember when dealing with telescope aperture sizes is:
The physical telescope does not need to be that big.

I recent watched a television program in the UK (Tomorrows World [
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tw/ ]) that referred to this problem, and
explained how they were using amateur telescopes from all across the
UK to take photographs of space - in theory, if you work them together
with the right software you can get a much higher aperture size than
the parts.

More good feedback on the variables involved, even some calculations
of cost and telescope size!

Thx1138 offered some interesting insight on the nature of the problem,
both from the perspective of telescope size and the problem of  the
“blurred” images of Mir as seen from Earth.

The purpose of Hubble was to address the latter issue since the single
biggest problem for ground based astronomers is having to see through
the atmosphere.  It is a very unstable medium and substantially
affects the light traveling through it.  One of the reasons large
telescopes are typically situated on high mountains is to get above
some of this distorting atmosphere.

And Laserfx offered a good observation about the possibility of using
an array of smaller scopes to mimic a huge one.  There are analogues
of a similar nature in the radio telescope arena.

Again, I’m not an expert, but I think the biggest constraint in
building large telescopes is in the construction of the main mirror. 
Huge chunks of glass aren’t easy to make and then cool without
breaking, nor is it a trivial matter to shape them to the precise
curve needed to collect and accurately focus the light they gather. 
On the other hand, physically reflective and refractive surfaces
aren’t the only ways to collect and focus light.  As Einstein
theorized and as has been subsequently proven, light is bent by
gravitational influences.  In time, I’d expect someone to come up with
a method for capturing and focusing light that works off of a
principal like this, or similar properties of others of the basic
forces the universe is built from.  Perhaps something like this is
well known already, but hasn’t yet been applied to astronomical
purposes.

The problem with casting and polishing the mirrors exactly, is
actually not really a problem as the VLT (very large telescope)
project shows.  The mirrors are actually flexible, and have several
small jacks at the back of the mirror, this enable the mirrors shape
to be altered slightly to account for any distortions etc.  The VLT
project is interesting as it is a combination of 4 large optical
telescopes (each one is 8.2meters) the results are then combined as
mentioned above.
Have a look at their website here:
http://www.eso.org/outreach/info-events/ut1fl/

I presuming the question is related to recent stories by a few people
proposing that the moon landing was faked.  Are you wondering if a
person could verify it for themselves?

This comment comes to the same general conclusion, no... for now.

The moon is visually, roughly .5 degrees or 1800 arcseconds.  Its
diameter is 3474km so 1 arcsecond is about 2km on the moon.  The
Hubble can see about .1 arcseconds or 200m.  You would need a
resolving power of .0015 arcseconds to have the 3m rover appear (as a
pixel or two).  Even a proposed 30m space telescope would only get you
to .01 arcseconds.  It was suggested, if you looked at the moon during
its sunrise/sunset the shadow would be longer.
http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/noluncon.htm
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html
http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/Sept01/DE0102.html

This site mentions that a typical 6" could resolve 1.5 mile objects
while the Hubble could resolve 100 meters.
This also lists the locations on the moon where the Apollo missions
landed.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part2/section-22.html

Also mentioned, was the possibility to bounce a laser off the
reflectors.  One site states they were using a billion watt pulsed
laser to get results.  Most common laser pointers are at most 5
milliwatts.  Perhaps a sensitive telescope/instrument near the
transmitting telescope could pick up the "flash".  Data continues to
be gathered from these 30+ year old mirrors.
http://spacelink.nasa.gov/NASA.News/NASA.News.Releases/Previous.News.Releases/94.News.Releases/94-07.News.Releases/94-07-21
http://www.guardian.co.uk/spacedocumentary/story/0,2763,634136,00.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_37.html

Amateur astronomy has changed greatly over the past 10 years through
the use of CCD/CMOS imagers, video cameras, computers and some smart
people.  Perhaps it will be possible within the next 10 to see it for
yourself.
http://skyandtelescope.com/

Maybe driving a vehicle remotely on the moon will be the way to see
it.
http://www.beyond2000.com/news/story_167.html
http://www.lunacorp.com/home.html

I still hoping to visit the sites, personally.

"The 100m OWL telescope proposed a few years ago by the European
Southern Observatory group (ESO) may actually be built. Currently, the
largest aperture for a telescope is the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at
a 'very tiny' 16.4m by comparison. This monster is predicted to have a
light gathering resolution of about 40 times the Hubble Space
Telescope and a sensitivity several thousand times greater. Among many
other things, it should be powerful enough to detect and gather
spectroscopic data of extra-solar planets in order to determine the
atmospheric composition and any signatures for life, like oxygen."
http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/07/09/0119210.shtml?tid=160

It just might be possible...

Here's a Hubble picture of the landing site:

http://hubble.nasa.gov/art/faq/moon_apollo17.jpg

Maybe that thing in the center is the lower part of the LEM & its
shadow.  The site mentions that one problem is the motion of the Moon
during the 0.1 seconds Hubble needs to make a picture.  As you look
with bigger telescopes, that effect is magnified.

Even if the 100m telescope is built, I'd be surprised if they point it
at the moon.  This thing could gather 1600x as much light as the
Hubble (it depends on area).  The sun is covering the Earth (& Moon)
with about 1400 watts of power/square meter.  The moon is
exceptionally dark & only reflects about 7% of that.  If we do the
math for 1400 watts/meter^2 * 0.07 * pi * (50 m)^2, that's an awful
lot of power to concentrate down onto an expensive CCD.  It would suck
if it caught fire!  (This assumes the Sun's spectrum looks the same as
the Moon's - not a good assumption, probably).

It turns out that that photo is really taken by Ronald E. Evans in the
Apollo 17 Command Module while he was orbiting the moon.
NASA photograph AS17-2309[P]
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020628.html
http://hubble.nasa.gov/art/faq/moon_apollo17.jpg
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo17/A17_Lsite.HRenlarged.gif
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo17/A17_LandingSite_viewsof.html

Here you can see other landing sites and also see Clementine's recent
view of Apollo 15's landing site.
http://www.tass-survey.org/richmond/answers/lunar_lander.html
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/Apollo/ls_15e.html
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/Apollo/landing_sites.html

Hubble Shoots the Moon
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/1999/14/index.html