We need to use Moon to slingshot spacecraft

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By using the slingshot effect to pick up addtional speed of spacecraft it does two things,

1) adds speed to craft reducing need for as much fuel

2) will suck some of the inertia out of the Moon, so the fact that it is slipping away from the Earth [1 inch per year] can be slowed or halted.

We need the Moon.
Its gravity to keep us pulled to the Sun
Tidal effects which help to add energy to the Earth's core keeping it warm, magnetic and thereby protecting us from radiation from space.
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[edit on 9-4-2005 by slank]

Isnt that from the movie Armagedon?

Ok, but we already DO that using the Earth, which has a huge gravitational field, thus reducing the fuel needed six times that of what you would save by using the moon.

And yes, it does protect us from radiation, but even without the moon our atmosphere wouldn't have any troubles with that tiny little extra bit of radiation.

are you kidding? your looking for ways to have our moon stay at its exact distance forever.....Why?

1 inch every year is nothing to worry about. Every century the moon goes 8.3 feet further from us...so what, thats 83.3 every thousand years...83.3 feet is virtually nothing when you look at the bigger picture. The moon is 239,000 miles from the earth, which is 1,261,920,000 feet, So with it moving away from us a little over 83 feet every millenium.....Like I said, dont worry about it.

or perhaps a visualization wil help.

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Murcielago,

You are treating the loss of the moon as a purely linear function. Gravity is a quadratic function.
That small loss will accellerate as time passes.

If we lose the Mass of the Moon, which is part of our gravitational pull towards the Sun, the Earth-moon system becomes light -> The Earth will then start slipping away from the Sun -> Earth eventually flying off into DEEP DARK COLD SPACE!

The vacuum of space is only slightly above absolute zero.

Imagine eternal night, blizzards of -700 degrees F.

We are so delicately balanced by inertia and gravity it has less substance than a single strand of a spider's web.
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2) will suck some of the inertia out of the Moon, so the fact that it is slipping away from the Earth [1 inch per year] can be slowed or halted.

I think you need to do some research on what exactly inertia is.. it's just a consequence of 2-dimensional gravity on the 3rd dimension, and has nothing to do with the fact that the Moon is slowly slipping away.
Slingshotting craft around it (which btw, as pointed out, is nothing new and has been the way to do things for half a century) would have no impact on the inertia, or the distance.

And when we lose the Moon, besides the high likelihood that humans will no longer even exist, the last thing we would need to worry about is the Earth plowing off into space. The Moon stabilizes our rotation. Lose the Moon, and Earth wobbles all over the place. The Northern hemisphere gets baked under perpetual daylight for a few eons until it sinks back down to the darkness of space and ices over for another few eons, and repeats.

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apc,

maybe we would have to pick when to Use the Moon's inertia.

Use when it is ahead of us in orbit that would cause it to fall towards us slightly wouldn't it? It would [sort of] pause it for a moment, allowing the Earth to catch up to it.
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I think your thread is just rediculous...Even if the earth would lose its moon (in a VERY long time), we (humans) if still around, will be so advanced that there wont be a problem that we cant solve.

so like I said...dont worry about it. Now, if the moon kept getting closer to the earth, then i might agree with you...well a little, but thats not the case.

I still don't see what the Moon's inertia has to do with this... I think you mean momentum when you say inertia. Plus, we're still talking about gravity here... a 500 ton spacecraft wouldn't even phase the Moon.. maybe if you compressed it down to a pinpoint and shot it past so it just barely grazed the surface, then there might be some sort of effect.. otherwise the gravity of the craft would be far too miniscule to make any measurable changes in momentum.

> also the Moon slowly spinning away is because of the very fact that it is a moon. The orbit is inherently unstable. It began with a spiral up from the Earth's surface (going with the generally accepted belief that the Moon was created by something very big striking the Earth), and has been continuing to spiral out and away ever since. It is nothing to be concerned about, and any attempt to alter the progression would probably prove catastrophic.

[edit on 9-4-2005 by apc]

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I realize the amount of effect on the Moon would be negligible.
But i hope people realize the long term problem this highlights.

apc, Yes the orbit is a spiral, but the closer that spiral is to a perfect circle the longer it can last. A little bit of input now [and from time to time in the future] is better than trying to wrestle it back into orbit when it is about to fly off into deep space.

Keep in mind it is life itself that has helped regulate the biosphere of this planet. There is no reason to think we, with what intelligence we have, should not work to sustain the viability of life on this planet.

The fact that Earth depends on the mass of the Moon for it's orbit means it is crucial for stable continuity.

Otherwise the Earth will be 'Lost in Space',
Deep Dark Frozen Cold space.

I believe momentum is just the venacular term for inertia. It implies movement in a friction medium [air, water]. Space has vitually no friction except for minute bits of space dust.
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The effect of a craft would be far less than negligible. There would be no measurable effect.
You would have to have a very large worldship to contain enough mass to make any sort of discernable change. Something with the mass of say, a medium sized asteroid.

Thats a lot of mass.

Even then the best that would probably happen is a high dust-tide.

It is nice thinking yes, but nothing to waste any more energy on thinking about. Assuming that humans are still around when the Moon becomes such an issue, it is safe to say that we would either have the technology to instantly and painlessly fix the problem, or we would be long gone to another planet or even solar system. The Earth would already be uninhabitable due to a swollen red Sun.

> although if by some chance it became a serious concern in the next 10,000yrs or so, we could always just toss a few asteroids on the surface. A small increase in mass should balance out the centrifugal force that is pulling it away. but with our luck we'd screw it up and spend our last days looking at the beautiful, big, moon.

[edit on 10-4-2005 by apc]

peopel people people we already use the moon as a slingshot. we slingshot off earth to the moon and slingshot off it to go deepspace or whatever they are using it for. the only time we dont use the moon is if we are putting a satellite into orbit, or sending nutters to the moon. we have only ever sent sonething outside our sphere of influence a couple of times.

Originally posted by ALLARRGH
the only time we dont use the moon is if we are putting a satellite into orbit, or sending nutters to the moon. we have only ever sent sonething outside our sphere of influence a couple of times.

We don't use the moon when we send nutters to the moon?

My take on this is that we are far too primitive right now to be able to do anything about the moon putting distance between itself and us. We need to wait about 2 or 3 hundred years for that type of technology to come around. And even then, it will have only moved about 16.6 feet (according to Murcielago ) so it's not really a big deal.

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diehard_democrat,

Murcielago was treating it as a linear function,

Gravity is a quadratic function (32 feet per second per second)

That one inch will become two, two will become four, four will become eight, . . .

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192=0.13 miles, 0.259mi, 0.517mi, 1.034 miles, . . . Deep Space

It will accelerate with time.
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Originally posted by Murcielago
are you kidding? your looking for ways to have our moon stay at its exact distance forever.....Why?

1 inch every year is nothing to worry about. Every century the moon goes 8.3 feet further from us...so what, thats 83.3 every thousand years...83.3 feet is virtually nothing when you look at the bigger picture. The moon is 239,000 miles from the earth, which is 1,261,920,000 feet, So with it moving away from us a little over 83 feet every millenium.....Like I said, dont worry about it.

or perhaps a visualization wil help.

Wow thats something very new to me. Ive always thought the moon was very close to earth but according to that picture its very very very far!