Tommorrow the Earth begins it's attack on the MOON

[kupocake]

oh man! we should try this out with death row inmates. if they live, they can work on Mars for as long as humanly possible.

It worked with Australia. Then they banned our games.

Let's not let Australia happen again folks.

 

[theotherguy]

650 kg is a huge step downwards in capacity per launch, but depending on how much time there would be between, and the cost of each launch, maybe it'd be worth it.

The idea is that this would be primarily used to put cargo in orbit, like fuel, water, and food, while conventional rockets could carry people and sensitive scientific equipment. Most of the launch capacity for rockets is taken up by fuel, food, and water anyway, so it could dramatically improve capacity on conventional rockets.

 

[VirusType2]

I worry about shifting gravitational balance long term if we launch enough flights, nothing like flinging the earth into the sun but shifting tides and such which could be detrimental.

Where did you hear of this? I would think it will have pretty much zero effect.

I was watching a show on NOVA ScienceNOW and they say the moon has been drifting further away (something seemingly insignificant like 1 foot per 100 years) since it came into orbit with the Earth. Regardless, this causes changes on Earth.

Doing launches off of the moon could slow this drifting down - or, send the moon hurling towards Earth in a fiery inferno, reminiscent of the [theorized] original impact event that created the moon and put the Earth on its peculiar wobble, axis and rotation that we all know and love.

To be more clear, since you didn't see the awesome CGI, there was a gigantic ****ing asteroid, god damn massive - perhaps 1/4 the size of Earth, and it glanced off the earth, breaking the asteroid up, and leaving particles and pieces of rock that formed the moon. Over millions or billions of years, these particles in orbit around the Earth gradually clumped together due to some law that I don't remember the name of, but the gravity of each other pulls them together in a sphere shape.

 

[Maestro]

It's really just unsupported speculation, but I'm paranoid nonetheless.

 

[Sheepo]

Spoiler

This is far and away the best post in this thread.