Possibly it’s time for a recap.
There are five ways that I know off that single private individuals or groups can use to measure the distance to the moon:
Parallax
Using a lunar eclipse
Radio bounce
Meridian crossing
Occultations
Institutions with appropriate tech can also use:
Radar
Lasers
None of these methods have been verified independently and shown to accurately show said distance is correct.
Really? Try again!
Just look at the history of the "Distance to the Moon".
The distance to the moon has been known to a reasonable accuracy for millennia.
Aristarchus around 270 BC derived the Moon's distance from the duration of a lunar eclipse (Hipparchus later found an independent method).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From this Aristarchus obtained
Rmoon's orbit/rearth ~ 60
which fits the average distance of the Moon accepted today, 60 Earth radii or about 382,260 km..
From The Moon's Distance--1
That 60 Earth radii is about 382,300 km.
Hipparchus (probably in 129 BC), whose calculations produced a result of 59-67 R⊕. This method later found its way into the work of Ptolemy, who produced a result of 64 1/6 R⊕ at its farthest point.
Note that R
⊕ is the radius of the earth.
And the result of 59-67 R
⊕ ranges from 375,900 km to 426,900 km straddles the current value.
But it should be noted that the distance to the moon varies from 356,500 km at the perigee to 406,700 km at apogee - maybe Hipparchus wasn't so far out.
An expedition by French astronomer A.C.D Crommelin observed meridional transits of the Moon (the moment when the Moon crosses an imaginary great circle that passes directly overhead and through the poles) on the same night from two different locations. Careful measurements from 1905 through 1910 measured the angle of elevation at the moment when a specific lunar crater (Mösting A) crossed the meridian, from stations at Greenwich and at Cape of Good Hope, which share nearly the same longitude. A distance was calculated with an uncertainty of ± 30 km, and remained the definitive lunar distance value for the next half century.
Astronomers O'Keefe and Anderson calculated the lunar distance by observing 4 occultations from 9 locations in 1952. They calculated a mean distance of 384407.6±4.7 km, however the value was refined by in 1962 by Irene Fischer, who incorporated updated geodetic data to produce a value of 384403.7±2 km.
Now, of course, we have radar and laser measurements to greater precision.
That indirect measurements dating back 2290 years put your flat Earth guesses to shame!