{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/917",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 917,
    "subject": "Moon and energy",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-04T10:21:38+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-04T10:21:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0108@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "mary whalen",
        "address": "marewhalen at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-04T10:21:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Moon and energy",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is Sean Whalen (prion).\n\nQuite a while ago there was some discussion about how much energy was\navailable from the planet Urth, and how much Abaia could get, as\nopposed to the Commonwealth, and about the level of energy controlled\nby humans in previous eras.\n\nOne of the methods of harvesting energy was from the tides created by\nLune, which has been moved closer to Urth than it was in our time.\n\nWhat I'm about to say next isn't hinted at in the text at all (as far\nas I'm aware), but it's just a possible process that I'd like to\nspeculate on.\n\nIt's possible that the technology of the people who terraformed the\nMoon was very high (or it could have been any group after them,\nreally) and that instead of expending a huge amount of energy to\nchange the Moon's orbit, they actually gained an incredible amount of\nenergy by changing it.  If whoever changed the Moon's orbit had\npowerful gravity absorption devices, they could have put them on the\nMoon and absorbed gravitational energy until it reached the orbit they\nwanted.\n\nCurrently, the Moon is moving farther away from Earth every second\nbecause it's gravitationally absorbing energy from the Earth, which\nhas much greater rotational energy than the Moon.  This process would\nnormally continue until the Moon is much farther away than it is now\nand they are both in rotational equilibrium (they would each only have\none face that pointed to the other, they'd retain their relative\npositions when rotating).  The Moon would then have much more\nrotational energy than it currently does.  However, on Urth, Lune is\napparently closer than it was in our time, which must have been\nartificially produced.  The energy it lost in going to a lower orbit\nmust go somewhere.  If the humans (or whatever) just used explosions\nto move them closer to each other, the gravitational energy would turn\ninto heat which would make both spheres quite a bit hotter and cause\nearthquakes, volcanoes, etc.\n\nAs a final note, wouldn't the equilibrium state of the Earth and Moon\npermit the building of a structure between them?  This sounds exactly\nlike the tower in To the Dark Tower Came.\n\nprion"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}