- #1
ohwilleke
Gold Member
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without having devistating consequences for Earth?
My kids (6 and 4) came up with the question last night at bedtime and it is an interesting one.
Clearly, none of the moon can contact the roughly 65 miles above Earth that includes the atmosphere, and given its size that puts a bare minimum at about 700 miles, but I suspect that it would still be a huge problem that close, and it has to be stable. But, a fairly close orbit could be stable with the right momentum.
With just 1.2% of Earth's mass, I'd think you could get fairly close. Of course, the lunar cycle would get shorter, and the tides would get stronger since the gravitational effect as a shorter distance would be greater. The Moon would also look huge in the sky.
Right now the Moon is at 225 to 252 thousand miles at any given time, and is about 1,080 miles in radius. Could it have a stable orbit that would wreck total havoc on Earth at 22-25 thousand miles, for example?
My kids (6 and 4) came up with the question last night at bedtime and it is an interesting one.
Clearly, none of the moon can contact the roughly 65 miles above Earth that includes the atmosphere, and given its size that puts a bare minimum at about 700 miles, but I suspect that it would still be a huge problem that close, and it has to be stable. But, a fairly close orbit could be stable with the right momentum.
With just 1.2% of Earth's mass, I'd think you could get fairly close. Of course, the lunar cycle would get shorter, and the tides would get stronger since the gravitational effect as a shorter distance would be greater. The Moon would also look huge in the sky.
Right now the Moon is at 225 to 252 thousand miles at any given time, and is about 1,080 miles in radius. Could it have a stable orbit that would wreck total havoc on Earth at 22-25 thousand miles, for example?