Tinkering

I'm at this point just tinkering with Java. I would like to do some interesting things with it like connect to some lunar distance measuring link and update the lunar distance frequently. To Me it looks like the Moon is getting closer a lot closer but no one is saying anything. In 1977 at the Rail Road I was told it was 28,000 miles and I looked it up it was average 278,000 miles. Now I find it is 220,000 to 252,000 miles average being 238,000 miles. I have found the Apollo site but does anyone know if a link to get raw data for Myself ?:o

You'd probably find better information at a physics forum, such as Physics Stack Exchange.

My understanding of lunar orbits is that the moon's orbit is elliptical, so there's a point where the moon is close to the earth and one when it's further away.

A quick look at Wikipedia seems to back this, and even claims the moon is getting slowly further away from the Earth at a rate of 3.8cm/year.

A little more link clicking turns up the website for the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (incidentally abbreviated APOLLO) which has some data measured by the program as well as a wealth of other data.