What If the Moon Orbited at the Same Height as the ISS?

Re:What If the Moon Orbited at the Same Height as the ISS? by sitkack on Monday May 19, 2014 @03:47PM (#7769388)

That is a really interesting problem to calculate. What would that water mountain look like? Could you even tell?

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Re:What If the Moon Orbited at the Same Height as the ISS? by dTal on Monday May 19, 2014 @06:11PM (#7770067)

The area of deflection would likely be very large and gravity would still be normal to the surface of the water, so no, you probably wouldn't be able to tell. You might perhaps notice the horizon being closer.

</boring>

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Re:What If the Moon Orbited at the Same Height as the ISS? by ars on Monday May 19, 2014 @04:23PM (#7769546)

In orbit only the center of mass of the object is in free fall.

Anything farther away is falling "up" and anything closer is falling "down". So the water would fall "down" (i.e. toward the moon).

But since there is plenty of gravity on earth this would mean the water is effectively just lighter. And water on the other side of the Earth is heaver, and would flow to the lighter area until the lighter side was tall enough (i.e. had enough extra water) to balance that out.

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Re:What If the Moon Orbited at the Same Height as the ISS? by mrgriscom on Monday May 19, 2014 @05:06PM (#7769748)

Since the position is static the earth itself would deform too eventually. So I believe the answer is "not much".

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Re:What If the Moon Orbited at the Same Height as the ISS? by sitkack on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @02:19PM (#7774219)

So the earth would take the shape of of an egg and the ocean would ride over it with a constant depth?

I wonder how that would effect rocket launches? Would it be better to launch on the far side of earth or the moon side?

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