"Ami Silberman" wrote in message ...
"Brad Guth" wrote in message
om...
"Is the moon leaving, or are we shrinking"

Whatever you do, don't ask the likes of David Helfand, as you might be
unpleasantly surprised at his response.

I believe this supposed recession rate from Earth (cm/yr) of 3.8 is
rather insignificant, at least until we calculate upon what that
represents, into the amount of added speed and/or thrust needed for
the task.

Brad, the mechanisms for the lunar recession have been well understood for
decades. In a nutshell, tides cause friction between the oceans and the
ocean floors, which transfers energy from the solid part of the earth to the
oceans. One of the effects of this friction is that the tidal bulge is
off-center, and is located "eastward" of the moon. (So the high tide
actually occurs when the moon is west of overhead.) The result of the tidal
bulge being off center is that there is a torgue effect placed on the moon,
and this in turn transfers energy from the earth to the moon. The earth's
spin rate slows, the moon is speeded in its orbit and therefor moves further
away from the earth. (This transfer of energy is essentially a transfer of
angular momentum, which is a conserved quantity.) The historical (over
geological eras) rate of recession has varied due to varying amounts of
tidal friction due to shallower or deeper oceans, and the positions of the
continents.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html has a nice discussion of the
whole topic.

Thanks so much, as what you've explained is certainly a whole lot more
believable than all the other flak I've received.

I'll do some further research and see if I can discover upon the
actual amount of said recession energy, in relationship to what a
dipole tether arrangement could possibly extract.

Being that the LSE-CM/ISS offers an unlimited opportunity for such a
tether dipole, this is where I believe there's a great deal of energy
to being had, subsequently stored within those counter-rotating
flywheels.

BTW; does this lunar recession argument represent that Earth is moving
away from the sun?

Or that any other moons are moving away from their planets?

Regards, Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-se-flywheels.htm