Lars Kecke wrote:
BruceS wrote:

Lars Kecke wrote:


Anyway, the moon's centripetal force is of course GmM/r^2 and its
binding energy is about -1/2 gmM/r, with r being about 4*10^8 m and
GmM being about 3*10^37 Jm, iaW the moon's binding energy is a few
thousend yottajoules (had to look up that prefix, never used anything
bigger then exa- ).

Are we still conflating energy with force?


Never did. I just don't use the concept of "force" much, at least for
closed systems like the earth-moon-system, that's why I went for the
binding energy; to get the force in Newtons, just divide by r/2. Btw,
what happened to my exponents in your reply?

I don't know. They look the same in my reader (Mozilla) for your
original message, my reply, and your reply to that.

Or is there another issue, that some forces are measured in different
units than others?


The SI unit of force is Newton, but sometimes it is more intuitive to
measure force (e.g. the thrust of a jet engine) in kiloponds (or pounds
of force for you anglophones).

Thanks, that's what I thought. I was originally replying to a claim
that force wasn't measured in pounds. Apparently, that poster was mistaken.