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Old 19-May-2007, 05:13 PM
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Hamlet Hamlet is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by feathermoon View Post
I made a remark to my boss that "if we can make it to the moon" than we can do this....well, his response to me was "we didn't go to the moon", "if there is no gravity on the moon then how did the rover not float away?"....now this had me scratching my head.....why did the men not float away, is there absolutately no gravity at all on the moon, did we really land on the moon....all these questions.
First of all, welcome to the BAUT! Second, yes we did land on the Moon. Third, everything with mass has gravity. This includes the Moon and any other celestial body you care to name. You have mass too, so you are exerting a gravitational force on your surroundings. The gravitational acceleration you experience is proportional to the mass of the body and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between you and the center of the body.

The formula that expresses this relationship is: g = GM/r2

Where:

g = gravitational acceleration
G = gravitational constant (6.673 x 10-11 m3/kg s2)
M = mass of body
r = radius from the center of the body to measurement point.

For example, gravity at the Earth's surface can be computed using the following:

Mass of the Earth: 5.97 x 1024 kg
Radius of the Earth: 6.378 x 106 meters

Plug these values into the formula gives: gearth = 9.79 m/s2

Now do the same thing for the Moon:

Mass of Moon: 7.35 x 1022 kg
Radius of the Moon: 1.738 x 106 meters

Plug these values into the formula gives: gmoon = 1.62 m/s2

You can see that as Fortis mentioned, the gravity of the Moon is about 1/6 of that of Earth.

Quote:
I have done some research today on line but can't find anything that can give me the "explanation" as to how the rover stays on the moon surface. I know the men used weights so why not the rover, right?
The reason you couldn't find anything is that your premise is wrong. There is gravity on the Moon, so the answer to how the men and rovers stayed on the Moon is simply gravity.

Why do you think the men used weights? How do you think this would have helped if there were no gravity?
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