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What if the moon orbited Earth at the same distance as the International Space Station?

Let’s say you woke up this morning to find that the moon had moved as close to Earth as the International Space Station.

What would happen? Some crazy and calamitous stuff!

The moon, at present, is about 240,000 miles from the Earth. If we were to move it to the space station’s orbit, which is about 230 miles above the Earth, it would be a factor of 1,000 times closer.

Because the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two objects, it means the gravitational pull of the moon would be 1 million times stronger. Someone more well versed in physics will have to calculate how significant of an effect that would have on tides, but I’m guessing I’d want to move to Denver.

Another interesting question is what the moon would look like up close, and the short answer to that is, IT WOULD LOOK AWESOME.

Check out this video:

Can you imagine having an eclipse like that every 100 minutes?

(Found via David Bradley)

Eric Berger

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