Earth-Moon Fire Pole
what-if.xkcd.com
Earth-Moon Fire Pole
1–10 of 72 posts
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#2Wow, great to see a new what-if! After no updates for a couple of years (?), I thought we had seen the final one…
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#3Randall Munroe is everything Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't. And by that I mean... not a bore.
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#4Reading these makes me very happy, I'm so grateful Mr Munroe is still working on them.
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#5Reading these makes me very happy, I'm so grateful Mr Munroe is still working on them.
Posts like these remind me why Internet is amazing.
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#6> There's one more problem: The Moon doesn't always stay the same distance from Earth. Its orbit takes it closer and farther away.
Then use a pole that is strong enough to eliminate this problem.
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#7I would imagine that what the five year old who asked wanted was an intuitive sense of how far away the moon is. My answer would have been far less interesting. I would assume a reasonable rate at which a child slides down a pole, say 1 meter per second, multiplied by roughly 384,000km from the moon to Earth, and it would take a little over 12 years.
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#8I initially assumed this was Randall's suggestion for a new password.
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#9Wow, great to see a new what-if! After no updates for a couple of years (?), I thought we had seen the final one…
Looks like 156 and 155 were both in March 2017, so about one year.
Re: Earth-Moon Fire Pole
#10> There's one more problem: The Moon doesn't always stay the same distance from Earth. Its orbit takes it closer and farther away. Then use a pole that is strong enough to eliminate this problem.
Doing so would have consequences.
Probably bad ones.