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Airy_mtn t1_itd5bes wrote

Hopefully they establish a "if you pack it in, pack it out" policy.

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Spacemanspalds t1_itd8esa wrote

If we mine the moon I wonder if we could ever manage to transfer enough mass to negatively affect our gravitational agreement with the moon and tides.

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hell-yeah-man t1_itdh0gt wrote

I’m no physics expert so if someone knows better definitely reply, but I doubt we could (almost) ever affect our gravitational alignment without mining an absolute shitload off the moon. There would of course be small effects, measured mostly from precise math, but to affect everything in a way that would be problematic would involve removing a HUGE chunk from the moon. Like, bigger than we can fathom chunk.

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Spacemanspalds t1_itdhedv wrote

Oh I'm thinking thousands of years of daily transits. But was just thinking.

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hell-yeah-man t1_itdpehm wrote

Well with some weak google searches I got ~90 tons extracted per year from the earth in total, should be recent but didn’t check too closely. And with the moon having a mass of about 8.1^19 tons it would take us about 2 quadrillion years to mine it all, but to affect earth it would be way less so my guess with no background knowledge is 1/30th the moons weight. To remove would probably take about 68 trillion years, I don’t feel like accounting for optimization of the industry and such, but I still doubt we can do it in any timeframe that we can affect.

Edit: you would also have to account for the moons orbit in how you moved the materials from the planet. But sorry for the long reply lol, had fun with some guesses.

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mdog73 t1_itfvhm6 wrote

At that point we could just move the moon closer to earth to counteract the weaker pull if necessary.

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viber_in_training t1_itgyjeu wrote

I would guess that 100 years ago people would say we would need to burn a SHIT TON of fossil fuel to actually affect Earth's climate

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hell-yeah-man t1_iti35k8 wrote

Oh no doubt, in a further comment I guessed without including that. Technological growth would definitely have a huge effect.

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justin107d t1_itdiw3r wrote

If the earth increases in mass enough would the earth move away from the sun and cool the planet?

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Spacemanspalds t1_itds6y0 wrote

I would think so(i dont know. But idk if the new orbit would be elliptical or if we would spiral out due to such a change.

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mdog73 t1_itfvlmm wrote

We gain many 1000's of tons of mass a year as it is.

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VikKarabin t1_itiypm9 wrote

what's that, dust?..

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mdog73 t1_itjhn2n wrote

yeah, anything falling to earth, not just dust but stuff that burns up in the atmosphere. That same amount of mass is still added to earth.

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VikKarabin t1_itlbmg5 wrote

wow I googled it, it says 40000 tons a year. Thanks!

I felt it was maybe a ton or two.

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namek0 t1_itgrr2l wrote

That like the boy scouts "leave only footprints" policy?

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