this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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It's a slow death for me, but a fast death for mankind.
Now I'm not some fancy science-man, but I do reckon that an impact of that magnitude would propel massive chunks of Earth debris in every direction at incredible speeds. Odds seem fairly well even that you'd get your own little impact death pretty well soon after.
If you're lucky.
eh...given the distance and the weird orbits it's gonna take for the debris to actually hit...a few days probably?
couple of days for the bombardment to hit the surface, and then it's a game of statistics how long it takes for a direct hit or secondary ejecta to hit your landing site/base.
probably a better idea to take all the fun pills all at once than to wait for that...
actually, you can probably simulate this rather well in universe sandbox! ;)
Yeah no that thing impacted with a lot of speed. Like >1% of the speed of light to go through the entire earth like this. Consequently, the debris is moving very fast as well.
the ejecta themselves would definitely pose a danger, but air supply running out would probably kill you before they impact the moon.
the distance between earth and moon is already significant, the angle shown in the picture is pointing away from the moon, most of the mass would stay in the same place due to gravity pulling everything back together, the orbital path the debris has to take in order to impact is gonna take multiple orbits for most of the debris, and only a fraction will impact on the site pictured.
still dangerous, but not as immediately as one would think.
the only significant projectiles would be a small portion of the debris just off-center from the exit crater (the sort of "cork" shooting out):
so it would only be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that even has a chance of coming down onto the astronaut pictured, but that's still gonna be enough to be dangerous.
it's also gonna take a couple days to arrive most likely; the debris is not gonna come straight at the moon, because by the time it makes it there, the moon would have moved and it would miss.
a vanishingly small fraction will move fast enough to impact on a (mostly) direct trajectory. those impactors will still take at least a couple hours, even at close to relativistic speeds, and it'll consist almost entirely of dust and tiny micro meteorites. the fast movers have to be tiny, because anything larger would be torn apart by the acceleration.
(...actually I'm not sure any material apart from more exotic states of matter like nuclear pasta (which doesn't exist on earth. yes, that's an actual technical term) could even theoretically be accelerated to a significant fraction of c in the presumably less than a few seconds pictured above without being torn apart at the atomic level...and dense material experiences greater gravitational pull, so it would have a harder time reaching the moon...)
in order to impact, the vast majority of the debris would need to move on parabolic trajectories, and most of those will take multiple orbits in order to impact.
during those orbits, most debris will be pulled back onto earth, or in orbit around earth, since it's gravitational pull is so much greater than the moons. add another fraction to the ones above ;)
we're still missing a bunch of considerations, but I'm gonna stop here.
point is: as pictured above (apart from the impactor being impossibly dense) the danger to someone on the moon is mostly manageable and secondary to the danger of supplies running out.
I think at that point you would just take of the helmet.
Is it bad that I would possibly give it a bit?
Like, I'm fucked either way. Who knows, maybe I'll make it for another sleep cycle, and the last thing I'll see will be those fragments further scattered. Something pretty, as the liquid in my eyes begins to rapidly boil.
Death by starvation isn't this person's fate, is it? I wouldn't think it would take more than a few days or maybe even hours for the debris to land. I'd just sit there in existential horror while trying enjoying the view, waiting to get taken out instantly by some giant chunk of the mantle landing on my head. Of course that's mostly because I'd be too afraid of the pain to take off my helmet.
Actually, can you even take one of those helmets off without equalized air pressure or is there a mechanical safety that locks it? If there's a separate nitrogen tank and you have control over the mixture, just turning off the oxygen would be the way to go.
So, uh, is it a bad sign that I put that much thought into hypothetical ways to kms on the moon?
In this scenario, it would probably be the rational path forward, as you're in a situation where you're guaranteed to die either way. So why not make your death as painless as possible?
I dunno... I don't know how much help they needed from the ground to pilot (I know they needed a lot, but I mean in the case there isn't any, could they pilot at all?), but if they could manage to get picked up by the guy orbiting it might be interesting to just fly through space for a bit, or even do something super crazy like try to land back on a peice of the earth. Worst case scenario you die crashing into the centre of the earth or something.
So it looks like maybe? But it would be extremely difficult. The suits are internally pressurized and designed for removal when external and internal pressure are closely matched, such as in an airlock.
Depending on which mission this is it could be a lot shorter. The original PLSS backpacks had a two hour air supply. The LM was powered by batteries and could only sustain life for 48-72 hours depending on configuration. If they launch and rendezvous with the orbiting CSM, they can extend their survival by several days, but there's functionally nowhere to go.
For my money the best way to go is probably in the suit, outside, and let the oxygen run out while the carbon dioxide scrubbers are still working.
I'd be out there until I was floating in a most peculiar way.
My thought exactly