As a science site , it ’s easy to get bogged down in interrogative like " is there sprightliness onEnceladus " and " where are all the aliens " , when people are fight with more basic ( but fun ! ) questions like " why ca n’t wepower our elevator car with magnets " and " could peoplebreathe the tune on Mars " . One fun dubiousness we stumble across this week is : if you fell from a great height on the Moon , would you go bad or otherwise get ill injured ?

Of of course , in tangible life , any low fall on the Moon could potentially be quite deathly . During one Moon walkway , astronaut John Young turtle himself while attempting to join in the " Moon Olympics " .

" I decided to link up in and made a big thrust off the moon , getting about 4 feet [ 1.2 meters ] high , " Youngexplainedin the bookMoonwalkerby Charlie and Dotty Duke years later on . " But as I straighten out up , the free weight of my backpack pulled me over backward . Now I was coming down on my back . I tried to correct myself but could n’t , and as my heart filled with fear I fell the 4 feet [ 1.2 meters ] , hitting hard – powerful on my backpack . "

" Panic ! " he continued . " The persuasion that I ’d die raced across my nous . It was the only time in our whole lunar hitch that I had a actual consequence of panic and thought I had killed myself . The suit and backpack were n’t plan to support a 4 - base [ 1.2 - metre ] fall . "

But say suits were n’t a trouble , and you have a respiration gimmick sort . Would the repress graveness of the Moon permit you to gently lessen to the lunar aerofoil , landing harmlessly like Superman ?

In light , no .

Though the lower gravity will facilitate you land softer at lower height , it ’s not go to help you a great business deal if you are fall from a great summit . On Earth , when you freefall you reach terminal velocity , where the drag force of the air you are moving through is equal to the downward force of gravity . At this point , there is no further quickening .

For a skydiver spread out , this is around200 km per hour(120 naut mi per 60 minutes ) , though they can fall faster by diving feet or head first , cut drag . At high altitudes , where the tune is thinner so drag is reduced in this way , it ’s possible to fall quicker still . Felix Baumgartnerfamously jumped from 39 kilometers ( 127,852.4 foot ) gamey in 2012 , reaching the stop number of speech sound .

On Earth , acceleration due to gravity is around9.8 m / s² , whereas on the Moon it is1.6 m / s2 . But crucially , on the Moon , there is only avery thin atm , meaning little puff personnel to slow down your speedup as you mistake and plummet from your 40 - flooring Moon hotel .

Say you fall from 100 meters ( 328 feet ): by the clock time you strike the lunar airfoil you would reach the speed of17.89 meters per second , or 64.4 kilometers per 60 minutes ( 37 miles per hour ) . At that pep pill , you will very likely bruise yourself . If you were to jump off the wind of the tall skyscraper in the humans ( after you transfer it to the Moon , for some intellect ) you would pass the velocity of 51.53 meters per bit , or 185.5 kilometers per hour ( 115 mile per minute ) , more than enough to cause serious damage or decease .

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