Re: [math-fun] Draft of my June 17, 2019 essay
James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
One advantage of moving the moon closer to preserve total eclipses, rather than building a wall on the moon for the purpose as you propose, is that it would also get rid of the need for leap seconds, as it would restore the rotation rate our planet had when the length of the cesium ("atomic") second was established, i.e. it would Make Seconds Great Again. Another advantage is that it could be done without the hassle of traveling to the moon. All we'd have to do is build lots of tidal power stations here on Earth and run them in reverse, putting energy into them to undo decades of tidal drag. Keep in mind that traveling to the moon would be harder today than it was during the Apollo project, since the moon is further away now (by about six feet). I don't know if there is any fuel on the moon, but there is on Mars. That meteorite from Mars that was found in Antarctica may or may not have contained fossils, but it definitely contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are better known as petroleum. No, I'm not proposing a trip to Mars. I'm proposing that we fuel our society by mining oil-bearing Mars meteorites from Antarctica. When we run out of those, we can siphon methane ("natural gas") from the lakes on Saturn's moon, Titan. The total length of hollow tubing manufactured since the beginning of recorded history would probably reach Titan if it was all put end to end. If not, we could move Titan by building lots of tidal power stations on Saturn. Of course burning oil or natural gas consumes oxygen. What happens when Earth starts to run out? It's been claimed that nowhere else in the solar system is there any free oxygen. That's not true. There's one place where there's far more free oxygen than on our planet: The sun. There's plenty of oxygen there, and it's nearly all free, i.e. almost none of it is chemically combined with any other element. The sun also conveniently located, just one AU away, ten times closer than Titan. So we should mine the sun for oxygen.
Was your dad a miner? WFL On 6/13/19, Keith F. Lynch <kfl@keithlynch.net> wrote:
James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
One advantage of moving the moon closer to preserve total eclipses, rather than building a wall on the moon for the purpose as you propose, is that it would also get rid of the need for leap seconds, as it would restore the rotation rate our planet had when the length of the cesium ("atomic") second was established, i.e. it would Make Seconds Great Again. Another advantage is that it could be done without the hassle of traveling to the moon. All we'd have to do is build lots of tidal power stations here on Earth and run them in reverse, putting energy into them to undo decades of tidal drag.
Keep in mind that traveling to the moon would be harder today than it was during the Apollo project, since the moon is further away now (by about six feet).
I don't know if there is any fuel on the moon, but there is on Mars. That meteorite from Mars that was found in Antarctica may or may not have contained fossils, but it definitely contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are better known as petroleum. No, I'm not proposing a trip to Mars. I'm proposing that we fuel our society by mining oil-bearing Mars meteorites from Antarctica.
When we run out of those, we can siphon methane ("natural gas") from the lakes on Saturn's moon, Titan. The total length of hollow tubing manufactured since the beginning of recorded history would probably reach Titan if it was all put end to end. If not, we could move Titan by building lots of tidal power stations on Saturn.
Of course burning oil or natural gas consumes oxygen. What happens when Earth starts to run out? It's been claimed that nowhere else in the solar system is there any free oxygen. That's not true. There's one place where there's far more free oxygen than on our planet: The sun. There's plenty of oxygen there, and it's nearly all free, i.e. almost none of it is chemically combined with any other element. The sun also conveniently located, just one AU away, ten times closer than Titan. So we should mine the sun for oxygen.
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Keith F. Lynch