Surviving Seveneves: What would you do?

[mikegarrison]

Wouldn't the pieces of the moon basically reform to be a new moon? Or possibly spread out to be a ring? Just because you separate a thing in orbit into many small pieces does not mean those pieces fall out of orbit.

[peadar1987]

11 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Wouldn't the pieces of the moon basically reform to be a new moon? Or possibly spread out to be a ring? Just because you separate a thing in orbit into many small pieces does not mean those pieces fall out of orbit.

You're going to have a lot of pieces acting gravitationally with one another, giving gravity assists, and smashing into each other. The moon itself is probably going to reform eventually, but some significant proportion of those pieces are going to get the right gravity assists to fling them straight at the earth. The more pieces, and the smaller they are, the easier it will be for them to be fired out of the moon's SOI, so as the moon fractures more and more, more mass will end up being ejected and raining down on the earth.