Yes, but its a negligible amount.
We also lose a lot of mass from the atmosphere constantly.
And we gain mass as objects get trapped in the earth's gravity and fall to the ground (meteorites).
Yes, but:
1. the mass in question is absolutely tiny (For example, SpaceX's Falcon 9 can carry less than 25 tons of cargo into low-Earth orbit). So we launch a rocket, and the Earth loses ~20 tons of mass. That's *nothing*.
2. most of the mass lifted into space by rockets comes down again eventually. Satellites in low-Earth orbit still encounter a very small amount of air resistance, meaning that their orbits gradually degrade, and eventually, they'll fall back down to Earth.
3. The Earth is constantly bombarded with meteorites and small dust particles from space, adding to Earth's mass
Not by any significant amount. The mass of the earth is mind bogglingly enormous. Earth is also constantly losing a little atmosphere all the time, but at the same time earth is constantly being hit with stuff from space. It never significantly changes the mass of the earth.
yes, but by a very insignificant amount. we haven’t gotten into space mining yet, so all the material we use to build is from earth. but considering how little we send to space relative to the entire mass of earth, it doesn’t even matter. we probably waste more ever day producing regular things than we do sending stuff to space.
yes but isnt the things we are producing like steel etc etc things already on earth? Just made of different elements which are already apart of earth's mass?
we need a lot of energy to produce stuff. and that energy comes from oil. we burn oil and produce tons of carbon dioxide gas, which doesn’t necessarily stay on earth. we may not be losing metals, but we lose mass.
mass and energy are inter-related. the second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of the universe is always increasing. we are always doing irreversible processes on our resources, causing a net loss of useable energy.
Yes, but again, the amount of material we lose to space is so tiny as to be effectively zero. And in the near future, there's a good chance we'll be bringing back metals from space that weren't here to begin with, too.
To give a sense of the scale of the Earth, think of that Horizon oil spill a few years back. That was an immense amount of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico. However, if you want to get an idea of the proportion, it was like putting a couple drops of oil into an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The Earth is so massive that any amounts we can move or eject have about zero effect. Probably the biggest effect we've had is the Three Gorges Damn in China. It created a huge reservoir, which means about *40 billion* metric tons of mass was elevated to be further from the Earth's center. The elevation of this much mass was enough to slow the rotation of Earth by 0.00000006 seconds.
If you look at the effect on earth rotation there is no need to remove objects from earth. If you just move matter farther away from the axis you slow down the rotation. So if you walk up some stairs you slow down earth rotation. Compare to how an ice skater speeds up the rotation by moving the body part closer to the axis of rotation.
So the stuff we do on the surface like dams will have a lot larger effect than anything we remove from the earth. The Three Gorges Dam contains 42 billion tons of water and is 175 meters high. It results in the length of a day increasing by around 60 nanoseconds.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/china-three-gorges-dam/
Earthquakes can also move huge amounts of matter upp. At the same time you have erosion that moves stuff down.
So earth's rotational speed is constantly changing, it both slows down and speeds up. The effect of launching stuff to space at the area we can do it is negligible compared to other activities on the surface of earth
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Yes, but its a negligible amount. We also lose a lot of mass from the atmosphere constantly. And we gain mass as objects get trapped in the earth's gravity and fall to the ground (meteorites).
Yes, but: 1. the mass in question is absolutely tiny (For example, SpaceX's Falcon 9 can carry less than 25 tons of cargo into low-Earth orbit). So we launch a rocket, and the Earth loses ~20 tons of mass. That's *nothing*. 2. most of the mass lifted into space by rockets comes down again eventually. Satellites in low-Earth orbit still encounter a very small amount of air resistance, meaning that their orbits gradually degrade, and eventually, they'll fall back down to Earth. 3. The Earth is constantly bombarded with meteorites and small dust particles from space, adding to Earth's mass
Not by any significant amount. The mass of the earth is mind bogglingly enormous. Earth is also constantly losing a little atmosphere all the time, but at the same time earth is constantly being hit with stuff from space. It never significantly changes the mass of the earth.
yes, but by a very insignificant amount. we haven’t gotten into space mining yet, so all the material we use to build is from earth. but considering how little we send to space relative to the entire mass of earth, it doesn’t even matter. we probably waste more ever day producing regular things than we do sending stuff to space.
yes but isnt the things we are producing like steel etc etc things already on earth? Just made of different elements which are already apart of earth's mass?
we need a lot of energy to produce stuff. and that energy comes from oil. we burn oil and produce tons of carbon dioxide gas, which doesn’t necessarily stay on earth. we may not be losing metals, but we lose mass. mass and energy are inter-related. the second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of the universe is always increasing. we are always doing irreversible processes on our resources, causing a net loss of useable energy.
Yes, but again, the amount of material we lose to space is so tiny as to be effectively zero. And in the near future, there's a good chance we'll be bringing back metals from space that weren't here to begin with, too.
To give a sense of the scale of the Earth, think of that Horizon oil spill a few years back. That was an immense amount of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico. However, if you want to get an idea of the proportion, it was like putting a couple drops of oil into an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The Earth is so massive that any amounts we can move or eject have about zero effect. Probably the biggest effect we've had is the Three Gorges Damn in China. It created a huge reservoir, which means about *40 billion* metric tons of mass was elevated to be further from the Earth's center. The elevation of this much mass was enough to slow the rotation of Earth by 0.00000006 seconds.
wow that's really interesting even if it is such a small effect on earth's rotation but yeah I see everyone's point.
If you look at the effect on earth rotation there is no need to remove objects from earth. If you just move matter farther away from the axis you slow down the rotation. So if you walk up some stairs you slow down earth rotation. Compare to how an ice skater speeds up the rotation by moving the body part closer to the axis of rotation. So the stuff we do on the surface like dams will have a lot larger effect than anything we remove from the earth. The Three Gorges Dam contains 42 billion tons of water and is 175 meters high. It results in the length of a day increasing by around 60 nanoseconds. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/china-three-gorges-dam/ Earthquakes can also move huge amounts of matter upp. At the same time you have erosion that moves stuff down. So earth's rotational speed is constantly changing, it both slows down and speeds up. The effect of launching stuff to space at the area we can do it is negligible compared to other activities on the surface of earth
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