Tuesday, 21 February 2012

Zero Moon

I was thinking about the Space 1999 pilot Break Away. If I remember rightly, after some high jinks at Moonbase, the moon leaves Earth's orbit. What would the effects be if this actually happenned? Would it be catastrophic for us here on the mainland?

10 comments:

  1. Interesting questions that were left unanswered also in Breakaway: What were the repercussions of such a nuclear disaster on the Moon for Earth, was it either destroyed or forced off-the-orbit so that, for Alphans, there never was any Earth to return to?

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  2. Speaking of senior moments... Checking on it again, in Breakaway there actually is an intercepted newscast reporting massive mayhem brought upon Earth. Been awhile since the last screening...

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  3. Presumably some seismic activity during the break, followed by a mass extinction of shore-line species as the tides flattened (molluscs, see-weeds, sand flees, algae and the like), then a more rapid cooling of the Earth's core shortening the life-sustaining period of the Earth's state by hundreds of thousands of years...but we'd get by!!

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  4. A case of "don't try this at home"?

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  5. Of course the results would be presumabley worse if the Moon fell to Earth. Is this even possible? I'm getting worried up here on Moonbase!

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  6. The Earth and moon actually form a binary planet system, they orbit around a common centre, which happens to be inside the Earth. If you removed the moon from that system, you would seriously disturb the Earth's orbit around the sun. Such a change would not be good.

    The moon, by the way, is getting further away from the Earth (but ever so slowly), so I don't think it is going to crash into us.

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  7. But some argue it's already crashed into us once...if it liked us enough to hang around all these years...?

    Start packing-up Moonbase, Commander; you're off to Mars!!

    'ensidF 0.249'...the code on the crate you need to find to pack your collection correctly! (these verifiers are getting silly now!)

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  8. The U.S. Space: 1999 comic ran a prose story with the premise Maverick states: while Koenig and Russell eat a hydroponically grown meal in comfort, they discuss how important tides were back on Earth and how completely devastated the ecosystem must have been. They conclude those left on Earth would envy the survivors on the Moon.

    The only time this was every really touched on in the series was the one episode briefly depicting a future Earth turned barren except for high-tech enclosed bubble cities. That's what the whole episode should have been about, but instead it switched to time travel silliness in Scotland...

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  9. It would be utterly catastrophic if the Moon were to leave Earth's orbit - where would we get cheese from then ?!

    I remember that episode, Richard. But what about "Another Time, Another Place"? Not one of my favourites, and it has one of the silliest lines EVER, EVER, EVER in Space 1999 ("John, she has two brains!")

    In that one they revisit Earth ... at least, I think they do. And it's a devastated Earth. Was that said to be the result of the Moon breaking out of orbit, or from some other cause? (makes note to go back and watch it again sometime ...)

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  10. I watched it last night ... it isn't clear that the planet is the same Earth as the one they left. And it is vague as to what caused the devastation. (It's one of the mystical stories where there are no real explanations.) So, I guess it doesn't count after all.

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