this question comes from Kim who asks what if there were a lake on the moon what would it be like to swim in it presuming that it's sheltered in a regular atmosphere in some giant Dome or something this would be so cool I honestly think swimming on the moon is cool enough that it gives us a pretty good reason to go to the moon in the first place at the very least it's better than the one Kennedy gave floating would feel about the same on the moon as on Earth since how high in the water
you float depends only on your body's density compared to the waters and not the strength of gravity swimming underwater would also feel pretty similar the inertia of the water is the main source of drag when swimming and inertia is a property of matter which is independent of gravity the top speed of a submerged swimmer would be about the same on the moon as here about 2 m/s everything else would be different and way cooler the waves would be bigger the splash fights more intense and swimmers be able to jump out of the water like dolphins
calculating the height a swimmer can jump out of the water requires taking several different things into account but the bottom line is that a normal swimmer on the moon could probably launch themselves a full meter out of the water an Olympic swimmer like Michael Phelps might manage 2 or 3 m the numbers get even more exciting when we introduce fins swimmers wearing mono fins can exceed 3 m per second which is fast enough for some pretty impressive jumps even on Earth data on fin swim top speeds and thrusts suggests that on the moon a champion
fin swimmer could probably launch themselves as high as 4 or 5 m into the air in other words on the moon you could conceivably do a high dive in reverse and it gets even better a 2012 paper concluded that while humans can't run on the surface of water on Earth they might just barely be able to to do so on the moon then we get to waves and splashes because of the reduced gravity on the moon the water would be launched upwards much more easily just like the swimmers the result would be larger waves and
more flying droplets in technical terms a pool on the moon would be more splashy to avoid splashing all the water out you'd want to design the deck so the water drains quickly back into the pool you could just make the rim higher but then you'd spoil one of the key joys of a pool on the moon exiting via slip and slide I 100% want to swim on the moon if we ever build a moon base I think we should abs put a big swimming pool there sure sending a swimming pool's worth of water to the
moon's surface would be expensive but on the other hand this lunar base is going to have people on it so you're going to need to send some water anyway and it's not really that hard or expensive in the grand scheme of things a large backyard swimming pool weighs about as much as four Apollo lunar Landers we don't have any functioning Apollo Saturn 5 Rockets but NASA's SLS launch system is ultimately intended to carry about the same amount as a Saturn 5 for the cost of a few billion dollars per launch and a private space company
would be even cheaper for comparison the budget for the Summer Olympic Games is typically upwards of $10 billion so maybe the next step if you really want a swimming pool on the moon is to invite the heads of NASA and the international Olympic Committee to your next pool party [Music]
