I am doing a research project on the moon and need to receive answers from an expert. If you know alot about astronomy please give me your opinion on these questions, even if you are not an expert it will help me to survey what people know about the moon.

What is the future of moon exploration?
What would happen to the earth if no moon existed in orbit?
How was the moon created?

These are my three big questions. I have more but if you can answer these questions i would really appreciate it.

thanks

josh saltzman

RickJ

1. The moon will play a big part in our future...not as much exploration (although I'm sure there will be some), though, but as a place to do things we cannot do here on earth...or do as effectively, like:

Monitor for radio signals and Near Earth Objects
Study things in low gravity, etc...

2. We would have no tide activity without a moon.

3. No one knows with certainty "where the moon came from", but a popular theory is that it was once a piece of Earth.

For more, here are a couple of good articles that might help in your project:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/resear...space/moon.htm

http://www.nineplanets.org/luna.html

nymphetamine

check dish out heah: www.nineplanets.org/luna.html

Thad

Here are some interesting ideas about the moon ....

Many scientists believe that in the future the moon will be pulled closer to the earth and that the gravitational force (which would be greater on the side facing the earth than the side of the moon facing away from the earth) will rip the moon apart and eventually the moon will become a ring around the earth similar to the ring around Saturn.

There are actually three theories of the origin of the moon.

One is the capture theory, where the moon was a planet like earth but was captured by the earth's gravity and pulled into a stable orbit.

Another is a theory that says when the earth formed it did not form out of homogenous material and part of that material was dense enough to be forced out of the spinning earth creating the moon.

The last theory is that the moon and the earth both formed at the same time out of the same materials with the moon forming in orbit around the Earth. Evidence from the Apollo moon landings supports this theory because the rocks found on the moon have exactly the same percent of most minerals as do the rocks that are found on the earth.

If you imagine an earth with no tides then you must imagine a earth with radically changed climates. Without the constant moon gravity stirring things up on earth, cold places would be much colder and warm places much warmer.

There may be less volcanic activity because the moon does cause land and sea to be raised up as the earth spins and the moon orbits. This would probably allow the build up of much more pressure within the earth's crust so when there was a release of pressure it would be cataclismic.

We may actually have colonies on the moon in the future but it would be very dangerous living there because of flares erupting on the sun throwing out radiation. This radiation is so strong (sometimes) that it could kill human life in seconds.

You could jump from much higher heights than you could on the Earth. Image jumping from the roof of you school and falling much slower towards the ground because you do not weigh as much as you do on the earth. A whole new type of Olympics could be created from the lower gravity on the moon.

Fr_Chuck

I beleive that many are more intersted in looking past the moon today, it most likely will not be in my life time, but I still see a moon base to be used in future study of the rest of the universe by telescope and as a lauching point. but that is only my opinion.

With no moon the rotation of the earth would be slightly diffferent, there would be little tides ( universal pull from other planets could cause some slight tides ( maybe) And since all bodies in the universe pull and effect each other, slight variations in all orbits of all plantets could be effected

God made it and the earth and all things

Thad

Fr Chuck said ...
"With no moon the rotation of the earth would be slightly diffferent, there would be little tides ( universal pull from other planets could cause some slight tides ( maybe) And since all bodies in the universe pull and effect each other, slight variations in all orbits of all plantets could be effected"

Gravitational effects by other planets is almost nothing compared to the gravational effect of the sun. So, you are right, there would be some tides but these would be caused by the sun's gravity pull on the earth.

I would think that by now we would have had bases on the moon. Landing and taking off seemed so easy for the Apollo lems.

augustknight

Actually the moon is becoming more distant. The gravitational aspect is far more involved than just creating tides. Without the moon the earth would start to wobble and cause strange variances in climate. The moon took a lot of hits when the meteors broke off from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter thus deflecting major damage to the earth. The moon is the biggest satellite in the solar system for any planet. It seems unlikely that the moon is a spin off from the earth but rather a failed planet that was brought into earth's orbit. By the way, Jupiter is a failed sun, as it is a gaseous planet but it never reached the point of fission. The future of the moon from an economic standpoint is vague. I can see manufacturing, like ball bearings that are almost perfect because of the low gravity. Everything made on earth is flawed because of some settling. But to make that feasable the raw materials would have to be mined on the moon. We haven't done such a great job here on earth and even a 'dead' planet like the moon can be damaged. Not to mention that by current treaty no one owns the moon and cannot use it. But I'm sure Disney and McDonald's have someone working on getting a permit to set up shop.

saturday

Here are some facts i got from Wikipedia:The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It has no formal English name other than "the Moon", although it is occasionally called Luna (Latin for "moon") to distinguish it from the generic term "moon" (referring to any of the various natural satellites of other planets). Its symbol is a crescent. The related adjective for the Moon is lunar (from the Latin root), but this is not found in combination with words using the prefix seleno- or suffix -selene (from the Greek deity Selene).The average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,399 kilometres (238,854 miles), which is about 30 times the diameter of the Earth. The Moon is about one-third the size of the Earth and has a diameter of 3,474 kilometres (2,159 miles).It is the fifth largest moon in the Solar System behind Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, and Io. The Moon makes one complete orbit about the Earth every 27.3 days, and the periodic variations in the geometry of the Earth-Moon-Sun system are responsible for the lunar phases that repeat every 29.5 days. The gravitational attraction of the Moon is responsible for the tides on Earth.The Moon is the only celestial body that human beings have orbited or landed on. The first man-made object to escape Earth's gravity and pass near the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 1, the first man-made object to impact the lunar surface was Luna 2, and the first photographs of the normally occluded far side of the Moon were made by Luna 3, all in 1959. The first spacecraft to perform a successful lunar soft landing was Luna 9 and the first unmanned vehicle to orbit the Moon was Luna 10, both in 1966. The United States' Apollo program achieved the first (and only) manned missions to the Moon, culminating in 6 landings between 1969 and 1972.Manned exploration of the moon ceased with the conclusion of the Apollo program, although several countries have recently announced plans to send either manned or unmanned spacecraft to the Moon in the near future. On December 4, 2006, NASA outlined plans for a permanent base on the Moon as part of preparation for a voyage to Mars. Construction of the base is scheduled to take approximately five years, with the first preliminary missions beginning by 2020.

Synder222

About the future of moon exploration. One of the big things that astronauts would have to worry about is the effect of solar flares on the sun. These solar flares are constantly happening on the surface of the sun and then spurting out long trails of radiation. The earth moon system travels through these from time to time. So far, all that has happened is the disruption of radio communication. If there happens to be astronauts out in space (even in spaceships), the radiation can kill them in seconds.

This was a topic in the novel "Space" by Auther C. Clark

Capuchin

Congratulations and welcome to 2 years ago