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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: willcousa who wrote (58662)	1/10/2002 6:47:20 PM
From: mitch-c	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

OT - Energy generation - moon launch Hey, it's really a concern for the "rocket scientists" who plot spacecraft trajectories. They can use a gravitational slingshot effect to save propulsive energy ... but at the cost of minutely (VERY minutely ...) changing the moon's orbit. In part, that's why it's easy to boost spacecraft out of earth orbit ... once a month, you can use the moon to help you go whichever way you want. Some astrophysicists have actually calculated the change in moon orbit due to tidal friction. The moon draws a bulge of water towards it - that's what we call a tide. That bulge follows the moon as the earth rotates, so every location on the earth's surface sees the bulge and then the opposite - high tide and low tide. Dragging that water around creates friction; when you consider the energy source and the conversion of that energy, it's much the same as a waterfall: the energy comes from the moon falling (around the Earth in what we call an orbit), and is dissipated as random frictional energy like ripples in a bathtub. My point was that a significant increase in tidal friction might have a correspondingly greater effect on the lunar orbit. Of course, we would be converting MUCH more of that tidal energy to a usable form than now ... but the end result WOULD make the moon spiral outward from the earth. It's happening anyway, naturally. If you aren't looking at a system where energy in = energy out, you're missing something. It's gotta come from somewhere to go somewhere. The challenge is to devise ways to capture a greater fraction of USABLE energy as it goes. - Mitch