shoot for the moon

The sun is 1.4 million kilometres in diameter, and it is surprisingly hard to throw something into it.

The more important question is how much of our night sky the moon takes up, and the answer is only 0.5 degrees.

How much is that in hamburgers? Sorry I only understand freedom units
- Approximately .075 hamburger at arms length
- 0.5° is 0.00873 radians
- Turkey at distance is the proper measure here. That's a Turkey at I'd reckon 10 football fields.
- Degrees are the freedom unit!

More importantly, the full moon occupies 0.00077% of our sky, and is moving at 1.022 km/s around the earth. Suffice to say, if you land on the moon, you've done something incredible.

Yeah, it's a funny meme, but a basic understanding of physics reaaaallly flips it on its' head.
- A basic understanding ~~of physics~~
  
  Just "a basic understanding", yeah

Having played Kerbal Space Program, orbital mechanics and ballistics make that diameter a lot smaller than one might anticipate. It's pretty easy to fuck up.

This gave me flashbacks to being a new Kerbal Space Program player.

Someday I'll rescue Jeb from his awkward Solar orbit.

There is a one button solution to lost Kerbalnauts…
- True
- A final stage that ejects a gas tank into the cockpit?
I was in a band called Awkward Solar Orbit. We had a very bright outlook but even we knew we weren't going anywhere.

Yeah. But then you remember that space is big—so it’s pretty damn easy to miss.

Like really, really big
- You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.

Then you remember that he's in a 2'407'100 km void.

Ok. What country uses apostrophes instead of commas, or periods? I had thought that India's messed up comma system was the most irritating notation possible. I had never seen this notation.
- 1,00,000
  
  what in the actual hell.
  
  ok so it kinda makes sense?
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
  
  Still, wow.
- German i guess? The apostrophe for thousands, the dot for fractions. Using commas in numbers is the weird thing.

I did the perfect shot, but then it just move out of the way >=\

Counterpoint:

Orbital semimajor axis of the moon (basically the orbit radius): 384400 km

Subtract earth's radius: becomes 378000 km above earth's surface at mean sea level.

Moon radius: 1737.4 km

tan^-1(1737.4 / 378000) = 0.26 degrees

Conclusion: at best, assuming the moon is directly overhead and any glancing contact is a success, you can deviate maximally 0.26 degrees from a dead centre hit to hit the moon.

Good luck with that.

Thank you for doing the math on that.
- You're welcome! I thought it would be in the spirit of this community to put numbers to it, so that's exactly what I did.

I mean sure but the moon occupies less than 1% of the celestial hemisphere and its moving

Sounds like someone hasn't considered the challenges of achieving escape velocity...

You could easily fuck it up more. Like, shoot in the opposite direction, or shoot for the sun. Hell, you could just blow the rocket up altogether. Guys, it’s so easy to fuck it up waaayyy more.