Lasers spread just like a flash light with distance, the ones shined at the mirrors left on the moon by the Apollo missions for example were 6.5 kilometers wide

Lasers spread just like a flash light with distance, the ones shined at the mirrors left on the moon by the Apollo missions for example were 6.5 kilometers wide by the time they reached the moon. Personally I've seen cheap lasers without a good focussing mechanism get house sized at even a few hundred yars, I bought a 1w laser diodes years ago that had no optics to focus it and at a foot it was roughly the size of a dime and absurdly bright and at a few hundred yards the diameter was taller than a door and incredibly dim -we tested it by shining it across a pond at the apartments we were living at one night aiming where there were no windows and immediately turned it off due to the massive size of the dot. I imagine they were just using what they had on hand to attempt to make a collimating lens/focusing Lens. If you have a pair of binoculars, go shine a flashlight into them (from both ends) tonight and you'll see that even a cheap optic can drastically change a light source. It's actually a fun little hack for making a searchlight when you're camping, you'll get a considerably brighter spot of light.