De-orbiting the moon

[Mystery]

In the past days it has come more and more apparent to me that i have a rational fear of the moon. I could bore you with the details but instead i will make it simple how does one go abut de-orbiting the the moon into...
A) The earth? (I guess it can take one more for the team)
B) The Sun? (Lets face it no one likes the sun)

My second more important question is how would i de-orbit the moon in a fashion for it to land/crash-and-kill-everything at coordinates (28.587065,-80.65263)?

 

[Izack]

Firstly, how is any fear of the Moon rational?

Secondly, good luck trying to kill a few specific people by dropping the Moon on them. If the Moon hit the Earth, we'd all die. It's REALLY BIG.

Thirdly, the energy required to deorbit the Moon would be so enormous, that it would be a few orders of magnitude easier to blow up the entire habitable surface area of the Earth. Not only is the Moon REALLY BIG, it's also REALLY FAST, as well as REALLY FAR AWAY.

Fourthly, why Cape Canaveral??

 

[Evil_Onyx]

Who in their right mind would want to destroy Cape Canaveral?

As for de-orbiting the moon don't bother its slowly floating away from the earth in the first place, and an impact between Earth and Moon would make most (if not all) of the earth inhospitable for any life.

If you want something easier to use, use one of the near earth objects and adjust its orbit abit.

 

[N_Molson]

How much DeltaV would be needed to prevent the moon from drifting away from Earth ? Would it be possible by firing numerous ionic thrusters for a few hundred years ? Just an idea :lol:

Edit : I was meaning in real life, in Orbiter lunar orbital elements are defined by a .dll file I think, so while being ultra-accurate they are some kind of constant. Even more I think that "vessels" objects can't have any influence on a "planet" object. In Orbiter Deimos will never orbit the Death Star, am I wrong ?

 

[Columbia42]

Just a heads up, I'm almost certain that deorbiting the moon is not possible in Orbiter.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

How much DeltaV would be needed to prevent the moon from drifting away from Earth ? Would it be possible by firing numerous ionic thrusters for a few hundred years ? Just an idea :lol:

The reason the Moon is moving away is related to the reason we have tides look at this [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_acceleration"]Tidal acceleration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[N_Molson]

Yeah, so that's some kind of "inverse orbit decay", you would need to fire the thrusters every X years to correct the orbit, a little like we do with human-made GSO satellites...

 

[T.Neo]

Ok, a few things;

A: There isn't any way of having a rational fear of the Moon. Perhaps you should seek the help of a healthcare professional- it isn't healthy to fear an astronomical body that is very safely in orbit around your home planet.

B: Crash the Moon anywhere on Earth and you'll destroy Cape Canaveral. In fact you'll destroy the entire crust of the Earth. That is when you should fear the Moon...

C: Deorbiting the Moon into the sun would not do too much to the Sun (the Moon is a tiny fraction of that mass). And I quite like the Sun thank you very much, it is what makes life on Earth possible...

D: It should be possible to move the Moon, but not in the major sense you are describing. For example a gravitational tug made out of an NEO and propelled by something like a magnetic or solar sail, to raise or lower its orbit. If you miscalculate and crash into the Earth (or the Moon, if you have anything useful there) then you're in serious trouble...

Please do not troll the forums; if you do so, you will not be well recieved.

 

[jinglesassy]

And dont forget without the moon earth would be a climate-nightmare

 

[insanity]

In the past days it has come more and more apparent to me that i have a rational fear of the moon. I could bore you with the details...

Actually, I'm interested. Please explain why you have a 'rational' fear of the moon and how deorbiting it into the Earth would remedy that.

 

[Ghostrider]

"Rational fear of the Moon"... Hm, don't be alarmed. The ill effects only last a few days and it happens just once per month. Lock yourself in with some water and raw meat, and nobody will be harmed.

 

[Linguofreak]

I assume you want to deorbit the moon quickly? As in, a few days from the start of your deorbit burn to impact?

In that case, you need not even hit the Earth with the moon. The burn, as seen from Earth, would be much brighter than the sun. Any part of the Earth within view of the moon during the burn would be fried.

 

[Lucy]

Or, you could just remove the moon's entry from sol.cfg and say you deorbited it into the sun...

 

[T.Neo]

And dont forget without the moon earth would be a climate-nightmare

That mostly has to do with if the Moon never formed in the first place; our axial tilt would be messed up and our rotation period would be much shorter, not to mention other geological differences.

If the Moon was taken away (assuming that this process in itself did not harm the Earth) the effects might not be too bad; tides would disappear, as would moonlight. If our axis did shift uncontrollably (over tens of thousands of years, similar to Martian axial shift) then it would be catastrophic for life.

Try to imagine the seasons on an Earth with an axial tilt of 90 degrees or close to it. Nothing complex could survive the extreme temperature variations nearer the poles, and the equator would likely be subjected to massive storms.

In that case, you need not even hit the Earth with the moon. The burn, as seen from Earth, would be much brighter than the sun. Any part of the Earth within view of the moon during the burn would be fried.

I'd like to see just how fried the Earth would be.

It also depends on what sort of rocket you are using for this; a photon rocket would not emit a bright exhaust stream, but debris etc in it's path will be fried and become very very bright.

I also wonder if it is possible to place the rocket on the exact opposite side of the Moon from the Earth, thus using the Moon as a light shield. It might take more Dv to deorbit it then, but considering that we've got a handwavium enriched rocket...

 

[Linguofreak]

I'd like to see just how fried the Earth would be.

Well, assuming reasonable efficiencies (~50% or less) and ISP's (Although "reasonable" ISP's would end up with alot of the moon's mass being used as reaction mass, but higher ISP's would just make the frying all the worse), and a 24 hour burn time, I calculated the brightness at a distance of one light second to be on the order of magnitude of 250 times that of the sun as seen from Earth.

Crissssspyyyyyyyyy...

It also depends on what sort of rocket you are using for this; a photon rocket would not emit a bright exhaust stream, but debris etc in it's path will be fried and become very very bright.

Considering that you're talking 300 Megawatts / Newton, I'm not sure a photon rocket would do much better. It would light up the interplanetary dust really pretty, at the very least...

And that's assuming that your photon rocket and its power plant are 100% efficient.

I also wonder if it is possible to place the rocket on the exact opposite side of the Moon from the Earth, thus using the Moon as a light shield. It might take more Dv to deorbit it then, but considering that we've got a handwavium enriched rocket...

You still might have backscatter problems off of interplanetary dust, for the photon rocket, or "plume isn't entirely hidden behind the moon" problems for a thermal rocket.

 

[Hmuda]

This reminds me what I heard in a lecture recently. There was a story about a pregnant woman asking a scientist when to commit suicide, so that she could save her child from the suffering in 2012.

Now, it's painfully obvious that the OP is just here for a few laughs trolling, but there are people out there who have real anxieties about these kinds of things (Milky Way's SMBH, solar flares, asteroids, hell, even satelites falling on their heads).

If only there were more people like Sagan, we would just might have less people worrying about such things.

 

[T.Neo]

but there are people out there who have real anxieties about these kinds of things (Milky Way's SMBH, solar flares, asteroids, hell, even satelites falling on their heads).

Solar flares can cause trouble with electrical systems here on Earth, and they can be lethal for anyone outside the magnetosphere.

Falling space debris can also be a (remote) risk. As are bolide impacts; a large bolide impact could be considered the closest thing to an "end of the world as we know it" cataclysm.

But you are right; there are far more likely things to worry about. Aircraft crashes, automobile crashes, disease, natural disasters such as meterological or geological events, criminal activity...

It's a fun world...

 

[Sky Captain]

Hehe

I remember how I tried to deorbit the Moon in Orbiter using very powerful rocket:lol:. I had just learned to make simple config file based vessels and first thing I dd was put very powerful vessel on the Moon so the exhaust points retrograde and fired. At that time I didn't know it's not possible to move planets with rockets in Orbiter and I become very frustrated when the Moon didn't even budge no matter how much thrust I applied to it.

 

[Hmuda]

Solar flares can cause trouble with electrical systems here on Earth, and they can be lethal for anyone outside the magnetosphere.

Falling space debris can also be a (remote) risk. As are bolide impacts; a large bolide impact could be considered the closest thing to an "end of the world as we know it" cataclysm.

But you are right; there are far more likely things to worry about. Aircraft crashes, automobile crashes, disease, natural disasters such as meterological or geological events, criminal activity...

It's a fun world...

Thanks to 24/7 monitoring of Sun activity, we have a good forecast about these eruptions and it's only a matter of shutting down those satelites for a bit and adjusting the electrical network to compensate. At least I saw these preventative measures mentioned in popular media. But actually, I was refering to the idiotic ideas about one of those flares stripping away the atmosphere, tilting our axis, etc. There are people out there who believe this.

As for falling debris, AFAIK there are only two incidents in recorded history when any object from space hit a person (none of them leathal).

Even for large scale impatcs, the only current candidate is that Apophis rock, and not even that would cause a mass extinction. Of course, one undiscovered mountain-sized rock might hit next week for all we know, but still.

Getting hit by lightning has a bigger chance of happening than any of these.

I'm suprised there isn't a similarly "wide-spread" fear of gamma-ray bursts hitting Earth yet.

 

[RisingFury]

How much DeltaV would be needed to prevent the moon from drifting away from Earth ? Would it be possible by firing numerous ionic thrusters for a few hundred years ? Just an idea :lol:

A better idea would be to dam the oceans in such a way, that the tide the Moon creates gets pushed a bit less.

The Moon creates tides... we all know that. But the reason our big lucky Moon is receding from us is that the tides get "paddled" forward a bit by the continents as Earth rotates. That creates two bulges almost equal in mass, one pulling the Moon forward and one pulling it back. Because the one pulling it forward is closer, it exerts a larger force and the net force is thus positive.

The Moon's orbit increases, at the expense of Earth's rotational energy. If we can dam the oceans in such a way that we prevent these two tidal bulges from going ahead the Moon, we'd be able to slow down the speed of it's "escape".

It's not the time to panic yet though...