Counterpoint:
Orbital semimajor axis of the moon (basically the orbit radius): 384400 km
Subtract earth’s radius: becomes 378000 km above earth’s surface at mean sea level.
Moon radius: 1737.4 km
tan-1(1737.4 / 378000) = 0.26 degrees
Conclusion: at best, assuming the moon is directly overhead and any glancing contact is a success, you can deviate maximally 0.26 degrees from a dead centre hit to hit the moon.
Good luck with that.
Thank you for doing the math on that.
You’re welcome! I thought it would be in the spirit of this community to put numbers to it, so that’s exactly what I did.
More importantly, the full moon occupies 0.00077% of our sky, and is moving at 1.022 km/s around the earth. Suffice to say, if you land on the moon, you’ve done something incredible.
Yeah, it’s a funny meme, but a basic understanding of physics reaaaallly flips it on its’ head.
A basic understanding
of physicsJust “a basic understanding”, yeah
Yeah. But then you remember that space is big—so it’s pretty damn easy to miss.
Like really, really big
You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
you might think it’s a long way to the chemist’s…
but that’s just peanuts to space.
You could easily fuck it up more. Like, shoot in the opposite direction, or shoot for the sun. Hell, you could just blow the rocket up altogether. Guys, it’s so easy to fuck it up waaayyy more.
I mean sure but the moon occupies less than 1% of the celestial hemisphere and its moving
The sun is 1.4 million kilometres in diameter, and it is surprisingly hard to throw something into it.
The more important question is how much of our night sky the moon takes up, and the answer is only 0.5 degrees.
How much is that in hamburgers? Sorry I only understand freedom units
Approximately .075 hamburger at arms length
I think you meant 5/64 of a hamburger.
I was told that the concept of decimal is too hard to understand compared to fractions.
Turkey at distance is the proper measure here. That’s a Turkey at I’d reckon 10 football fields.
This gave me flashbacks to being a new Kerbal Space Program player.
Someday I’ll rescue Jeb from his awkward Solar orbit.
I did the perfect shot, but then it just move out of the way >=\
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_steel_bore_cap
WE CAN SHOOT THE MOON
WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY
We just need to wait for a full moon so we don’t miss.
Having played Kerbal Space Program, orbital mechanics and ballistics make that diameter a lot smaller than one might anticipate. It’s pretty easy to fuck up.
Yeah well escape velocity >: (
YOU DO IT
Sounds like someone hasn’t considered the challenges of achieving escape velocity…