Effects of Mining the Moon

[Aletheia Athanatos]

Trying to get a handle on how mining the moon might effects its orbit.

The moon is approximately 50 times the mass of the water in all of the Earth's oceans combined.

How long do you think it would take to excavate even 1% of that? Where would you get the energy from to lift it out of the Moon's gravity well?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Trying to get a handle on how mining the moon might effects its orbit. Gravitational effect is based on the mass of objects. If we reduce the mass of the moon and transfer that mass to earth, will the moon's orbit be affected?

Probably it would if we could remove enough material. But I don't think we could do it.

Tunneling and removing material to change the orbit of a planet was concept I first read about as a kid in an Alan Dean Foster novel called Orphan Star. The inhabitants of a planet were tunneling to change the orbit of their planet to make it warmer and more habitable.