NASA is planning on capturing a near by asteroid with the diameter of 4m and take it into orbit around our moon, to create a 'new moon' They're 'aim' is to help with further studies for the Mars journey. I don't know much about science, but I feel like something could go terribly wrong with this...


http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/march/nasa-announces-next-steps-on-journey-to-mars-progress-on-asteroid-initiative/#.VRsZpfnLdcQ

That`s awesome!!

>>1

Something can go terribly wrong with anything. If your fears are meant preclude your sense of advancement, and progress then we'd still be all grunting to each other waiting for wooly Mammoths to fall dead so we could vulture the carcasses.

Well there is a possibility that the new Moon will take normal orbit around the sun and shifted slightly or the original moons orbit around us will be shifted

Capturing an asteroid, regardless of size, sounds like enough of a scientific achievement really

>>3 true, but there's theory that this could affect the gravitational pull of the moon, causing it to have some effect on the Earth. So far whatever man has made, although helpful in some ways, has also had a negative effect in other ways, Some worse than others. Our earth could possibly become a wreck, and for the sake of this experimentation.

Not necessarily negative, but I just like to point out these too.

There is no theory that an asteroid could affect the gravitational pull of the moon to cause an effect on Earth. If you mean the very, VERY tiny orbital change due to another object interacting with the gravitational field of the moon, its something that's so small, you won't notice a difference. Just like you don't notice the moon slowly pulling away from the earth an inch at a time. We didn't make asteroids, the universe did. A 4 meter, let alone mile, asteroid is not going to change the orbit of the moon by a significant amount. Its this kind of thinking that people use to justify all kinds of crazy things.

>>7 Give math and sources or fuck you.

>>8

Source: Sir Issac Newton, namely his Law of Universal Gravitation.

Source 2: The physical observations of every physicist since.

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/circles/Lesson-3/Newton-s-Law-of-Universal-Gravitation

Since you don't seem to understand:

http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/qa/gravity.php.p=Capture%2Bthe%2Bcosmos@,capture,%3EGravity@,capture,gravity,

There is no theory that an asteroid could affect the gravitational pull of the moon to affect the Earth. That is 100 percent, pants on head stupid. You aren't going to put an asteroid into lunar orbit and have it affect the gravity of the moon. The moon's gravitational pull is an effect caused by its mass and its acceleration. That's like saying putting racing stripe stickers on your 300z makes it faster.

(Sidenote: The burden of proof in a debate is on the person making the claim. The only reason I am even giving you this information is for other people who end up reading this. Also, learn to science, small mass is attracted to larger mass. I.e. You and the earth. That is pretty much the scale you are talking about with an asteroid and the moon. By the time you get an "asteroid" up to the size where it would affect the moon, you basically have another moon or dwarf planet.

Now for some of those maths you couldn't crack a physics textbook, do a google search, or check out anything written on the subject.

The mass of a 4 cubic mile object, lets make it really dense and say its made up of lead, so it has a density of 11.34 grams per cubic centimeter. Lets say there are four cubic miles of it with a constant orbital velocity of 1.023 km/s.

Now, 4 cubic miles into cubic centimeters (4.16818184306E+15 * 4) cubic centimeters to deal with. This comes out to 16672727372240000 cubic centimeters at 11.34 grams per cubic centimeter which comes out to: 189068728401201.6kg (kilograms), not a light object at all. Humans weigh, on average, 62kg for a comparison of mass.

The Moon, having an iron core and various upper strata, comes in at 7.3477×10^22 kg or 73477000000000000000000 kg now, which mass is larger? The moon, by ages. You don't need to believe me. Do the math yourself. The weight in grams per cubic centimeter of lead is known, the mass of the moon is known, the orbital distance for LLO (Low Lunar Orbit) is known (62-69mi), do the physics work yourself.

*votes TransitiveVerb for president*

-death by physics-

I'm just waiting for the whole thing to happen, and see if we go explode or we look at another fkin annoying man-made midget in the sky...or we explode.

>>9 >small mass is attracted to larger mass

Every particle with mass attracts every particle with mass in the entire universe. While insignificant compared to larger masses, you are making it seems as if there is no force at all. Also you're kind of being a jerk even though I have the same viewpoint as you.

I find it equally frustrating when people really don't understand physics, and start to believe really far-fetched stuff and get freaked out by it, but your passage here is not going to convince any one of those people, frankly.

Also
>The moon's gravitational pull is an effect caused by its mass and its acceleration

It's caused by its mass and distance from whatever it's pulling. Acceleration is for direct forces.

>>6 The only thing an asteroid could do is move the moon in its orbit, it can't directly change it's gravitational pull (like, absorb or shield it or anything like that). It wouldn't move it very much either, not enough to make a difference in the next million years. The International Space Station is 370,131kg, pretty heavy, and that hasn't changed it noticeably at all.

>>11 Gravitational Acceleration (the acceleration of an object due to the force of gravity) is a thing. I didn't explain it well, and for that I am sorry.

As for greeting hostility with hostility, I'm not sorry about that at all. Treat others how you want to be treated. S/He decided to come from a place of hostility, so I treated him/her that way.

I always believed that in the universe, everything is set out in perfection. I read an article a looooong time ago that they finally found scientific proof that if the sun moved, even 1 cm away from us or towards us, we would die. Science still has a long way to go, and I'm guessing that there'll probably be some sort of effect on us if we were to do something like this.

>>13 if this world was best, niggers wouldnt exist plus we are a product of our world so it seems good to us

>>13 ...Dafuck 1cm and where all gone I need a source on that since during one year our orbital distance from sun varies by 5,000,000 km the sun also changes in diameter at random since it isn't a perfect sphere. Also a 4m boulder off an asteroid even if something went catastrophically wrong and it impacted the moon or earth it wouldn't leave a crater large enough to make note on the moon and the earth it would break up in the upper atmosphere and make a pretty light show and maybe a couple of small stones like the one in 2013 was 18m in diameter and going much faster. Yet here I am alive and our orbit is stable.

how would this help the research on mars in the lightest all its going to accomplish is making the space around earth more and more cluttered

>>15 I wasn't exactly thinking 'impact' as in it will collide with the earth or moon but rather some gravitational problem or such, could be something else or even that though.

Did you ever wondered why some people want to achieve something bigger in the astronomy? they want to discover something big even though the earth isn't fully discovered yet. (like the ocean; only 5% of it discovered.) By the way sorry for the bad grammar if there's one :P