Timeline for What kind of event, if any, would knock the moon off its orbit, without destroying it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2, 2015 at 21:15 | comment | added | Draco18s no longer trusts SE | My mistake. Either way, some vectors are going to be more efficient than others, making the impact vector at least as important as the imparted energy. | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 21:06 | comment | added | user | @Draco18s What TimB said. You can read more about this in Pushing down a projectile from LEO on Space Exploration. | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 18:06 | comment | added | Tim B | @draco18s actually, that's not how orbital dynamics works. You need to hit it from behind to make it move out. | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 17:16 | comment | added | Draco18s no longer trusts SE | Doubly true for cometary/asteroid impact: in order to push the moon away from Earth, the object in question would have to narrowly miss the Earth by a margin easily a third of the value that already makes astronomers worry. That is: it would have to travel on a vector past Earth and slam into the near side. Hitting the far side will push it closer to Earth, not farther away. | |
| Oct 10, 2014 at 9:27 | comment | added | mechalynx | @guido if you fine-tune it (including size, as in, make it massive), maybe, but it's unlikely it'll be the same place after the impact. | |
| Oct 10, 2014 at 9:27 | comment | added | Tim B | A comet wouldn't be big enough. You'd need something with a substantial proportion of the Moon's mass. All the craters on the Moon didn't cause it to fly away after all - and some of them are pretty big :) | |
| Oct 10, 2014 at 9:25 | comment | added | guido | what about an impact with a reasonably sized comet? | |
| Oct 10, 2014 at 9:23 | history | answered | Tim B | CC BY-SA 3.0 |