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Could humans alter the moon's orbit significantly with current technology?


A terrible virus has made most of the populations and government officials of the largest superpowers on Earth stark, raving mad, without depriving them of their intelligence. They have decided t...

Simply detonating one of those things on the surface of the Moon could probably do some damage, certainly make a pretty new crater and maybe rain some debris down on Earth, but I don't think nuclear bombs are a viable method for changing orbits of celestial bodies. It is however perfectly feasible (well, in theory, assuming space travel technology advances uh... yet a tiny bit) to land on, or orbit around it, and use some method of creating a small but continuous force, for example by melting ice on one side with a solar reflector or such to get a repulsor effect. While the amount of force that is needed to permanently disturb this equilibrium in "finite time" (read as: before the next ice age) is still huge from our point of view, that's only because humans are so small and weak, comparatively.

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