9 ms·
Am I the only one who was disappointed that this wasn't an article about a plan to actually raise a ladder to the moon?
by harry-wood 7y ago
Am I the only one who was disappointed that this wasn't an article about a plan to actually raise a ladder to the moon?
- kwhitefoot 7y agoNo, there are at least two of us!
- Galaxeblaffer 7y agomake that three
- brujoand 7y agoAnd my axe!
- jve 7y agohttps://what-if.xkcd.com/157/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/157/
- aflag 7y agoI'm also agonizing in disappointment.
- balabaster 7y agoWhile this would indeed have been amusing, given the moon's orbit of the earth, how would this be possible?
- accnumnplus1 7y agoA rope ladder hanging from the moon. (Not quite "raising", and ignoring a bunch of other details.)
- balabaster 7y agoI wonder if it got caught on a mountain or something equally robust it could stop the moon's orbit. I wonder what, aside from the tides, this would affect.
- jstanley 7y agoYou would need quite the rope ladder in order to stop the moon's orbit. Also, once you've stopped it, it would probably fall towards the Earth, because it is not at the right altitude to stay in geostationary orbit. That would be extremely bad.
- usrusr 7y agoAre you suggesting that we reel in the moon to geosynchronous orbit? Ignoring our obviously insufficient mastery of the art of ropemaking etc, that's a quite entertaining thought experiment. Tidal forces while moving the moon closer would knead our whole geology into utter chaos once, then later tectonics could stabilise much more than possible with the moon in its current orbit. The weather would also be quite funny, with those daily, hours-long eclipses hitting the same regions over and over again, causing dramatic gradients in energy influx.
- tsbinz 7y agoWe are already doing that (or rather, the moon is doing it to us), more by changing earth's rotation than by changing distance. We just need to wait a couple billion years for earth to be tidally locked to the moon (and not just the other way around like it is now).
- djsumdog 7y agoYea I was hoping this was about some new developments on a space elevator cable, but with the base being out in sea or something. A space elevator would be amazing, but we don't have any materials strong enough yet to withstand the atmospheric sheer ... or a way to grab and pilot an asteroid anchor into orbit .. yet.
- thechao 7y agoIt’s a pity we don’t talk about ‘orbital ring systems’ more: many of the advantages of space elevators, but build-able with “off the shelf” superconductors, and steel & fiber optic cables. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring
- module0000 7y agoKim Stanley Robinson, is that you??? Reading your comment(whether you intended it this way or not), made me want to read 'The Mars Trilogy' again. If I remember, grabbing and piloting an asteroid above Mars was how they setup their space elevator.
- djsumdog 7y agoThis is my absolute favourite sci-fi trilogy of all time. The part of the series where he describes the most complex navigation A.I. ever developed by humanity, on a ship that clamped onto an asteroid, setup a factory that mined it for fuel to redirect its course ... it was so incredibly well written, researched and believable. I read it while drunk on a bus and the next morning I just had to go back and read that entire chapter again. For those who haven't read it, it's a really good series.
- Udik 7y agoI thought it would mention "The distance of the Moon", the first (and one of my favourites) short story from Italo Calvino's "Cosmicomics". http://www.ruanyifeng.com/calvino/2007/07/ch_1_the_distance_of_the_moon.html http://www.ruanyifeng.com/calvino/2007/07/ch_1_the_distance_...
- SilasX 7y agoIf they meant that, they could have just said "literally". That would have clarified it.
- theoh 7y agoSomehow, titles like this are acceptable (I don't see anyone asking for it to be changed). At the same time, more informative titles that people find irritating (because they seem clickbaity) apparently do warrant editing. So we're supposedly in a fragile enough emotional equilibrium that we can't cope with clickbait titles, but obscure poetic titles are OK because... maybe because this is about elitism and intellectual snobbery, not about saving the user having to click to find out what the article is about?
- monkeydreams 7y agoI was also disappointed, but also a little concerned as to why MS would be publishing such an article.