LESSWRONG
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by jacobjacob
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94

This is an exercise, and as such is a bit different from your ordinary question post...

What? 

Come up with 50 ways of sending something to the moon. In less than 1 hour. 

I don’t care how stupid they are. My own list included “Slingshot”, “Massive trampoline” and “Bird with spacesuit”.

What matters is that you actually hit 50. I want you to have the experience of thinking that you’re out of ideas, but nonetheless deciding to push yourself, and finding your best idea thus far. 

This regularly happens to me when I do this exercise. I’ll feel stuck. I’ll feel like giving up. But I force myself to say three more stupid things… “mega tall tree”, “super boomerang”, “railgun” ... and, all of sudden, I have a fourth idea that’s actually not that shabby.

Why do this? 

1) Becoming more creative. 

Coming up with ideas is a bottleneck for me personally. I want to become stronger. 

I have a very simple model for how to improve. My brain will start generating more ideas if I A) force myself to have ideas, even if they’re bad, and B) reward myself for having them. 

The act of filtering for actually good ideas is a second, different step. First you babble. And only then you prune. I claim that you can train each of those “muscles” separately.

I think that in the past my creativity has been held back by excessive self-criticism. I now think it should be possible to improve by separating the creative and the evaluative step -- at least for practice purposes. 

2) Building a culture of practice on LessWrong

LessWrong currently feels like an unusually intellectual bar. You pop in and grab a drink; instead of watching a stand-up comedian someone does a PowerPoint presentation; and the ensuing conversation is great. That’s a fine thing. 

But what if part of LessWrong was more like a gym? Or a dojo? 

You come in, bow to the sensei, and then you start practicing. Together. Each of you focusing all your attention on your movements, pushing yourselves to your limits, and trying deliberately to become stronger. 

I want us to have that, but for rationality. 

Rules

  • 50 answers or nothing. 

That’s the babble challenge. We’re here to work hard. 

  • Post your answers inside of spoiler tags! (How do I do that?)
  • Celebrate other’s answers. 

This is really important. Sharing babble in public is a scary experience. I don’t want people to leave this having back-chained the experience “If I am creative, people will look down on me”. So be generous with those upvotes. 

If you comment on someone else’s post, focus on making exciting, novel ideas work -- instead of tearing apart worse ideas. 

Reward people for babbling -- don’t punish them for not pruning. 

I might remove comments that break this rule. 

  • Not all your ideas have to work. 

Man, I barely know anything about going to the moon. Yet I did come up with 50 ideas. 

“Bird with spacesuit” is fine. I have some intuition where making these ideas actually helps me become creative. I try to track that intuition. 

  • My main tip: when you’re stuck, say something stupid. 

If you spend 5 min agonising over not having anything to say, you’re doing it wrong. You’re being too critical. Just lower your standards and say something, anything. Soon enough you’ll be back on track. 

This is really, really important. It’s the only way I’m able to complete these exercises (and I’ve done a few of them in the last few days). 

--

Now, go forth and babble! 50 ways of sending something to the moon!

Exercises / Problem-SetsBabble and PruneRationality
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gjm

220
  1. Apollo-style rocket mission.
  2. Space elevator/tether all the way to the moon. (What do you mean, a day doesn't equal a month? Details, details.) Climb it.
  3. Once you've got that, just pull the moon close enough to make the transfer trivial.
  4. Jump really really high.
  5. Discover a material opaque to gravitons, sit on it, and push off lightly in just the right direction. (This is totally how gravity works.)
  6. Pray really hard.
  7. Sell your soul to the devil in exchange for getting your object to the moon. (Note: probably do this one after 6.)
  8. Get abducted by aliens who happen to live on the moon.
  9. Send it to the place where they filmed the fake moon landings.
  10. Put it in an envelope addressed to "The Moon" and let the postal service handle it. They're really good.
  11. Project Orion (huge lead plate, set off nuclear bombs underneath it for thrust).
  12. Just wait. The uncertainty principle, it's a hell of a thing.
  13. Put it on the largest satellite yet made and launch it. Then blow up the moon. "The" moon is presumably now whatever earth's largest satellite now is. Done.
  14. Railgun.
  15. Same idea as 3, but move the earth instead of the moon. Extremely large rockets, perhaps.
  16. EmDrive. (Yeah, maybe this one is too silly to be on the list.)
  17. Make a very large fan and blow it upward.
  18. Throw it very hard.
  19. Write a novel in which the object is on the moon. (Does Sherlock Holmes live at 221b Baker Street? Yes. Is the object on the moon? Yes.)
  20. Just believe really hard that the object will be on the moon. However can that work? I can't tell you, it's a Secret.
  21. Take a photograph of the night sky, showing the moon and stars and whatnot. Place a small coin on Sirius. Place your object on the moon.
  22. Buy a horse and name it "The Moon". Put the object on the horse's back. Or, if you want to stress "sending to", change one letter: buy a house and name it "The Moon", and send the object there.
  23. Birds. Lots and lots and lots of birds.
  24. Hold its hand and kiss it. (Howard, 1954; Sinatra, 1964)
  25. Gigantic peashooter.
  26. Very large hot air balloon.
  27. Tell Donald Trump that Barack Obama went to great lengths to keep this object away from the moon.
  28. Catapult. May require some research into extra-strong elastic.
  29. Make getting it to the moon the largest term in a superintelligent AI's utility function.
  30. Very, very large seesaw. Not clear where the fulcrum should be (cf. Archimedes)
  31. Send spaceships out to the asteroid belt to collect asteroids and bring them to earth. Not to extract valuable minerals, just to make the earth bigger and heavier. Both the increased radius and the increased gravity will bring the moon closer. Eventually it will be close enough that I can just reach out and put my object on the moon.
  32. Star Trek-style teleporters.
  33. Install Diamond Age-style nanofabricators on the moon. Transfer (necessarily destructively) the object's entire quantum state to the moon for reconstruction there.
  34. Write a space-simulation game featuring both the object and the moon. Getting the object to the moon in-game is then straightforward.
  35. The moon was probably formed from bits of the earth. Historically speaking, the earth and the moon are two parts of the same object, and our parcel is therefore already on the moon.
  36. Instead of making the earth bigger heavier as in #31, make the moon bigger and heavier. Again, this will eventually bring the earth close enough to it to make the problem trivial.
  37. Solar sail. (Initial direction will likely be wrong; may need to arrange for slingshot manoeuvres around other planets.)
  38. "Solar" sail, but propulsion not from the sun but from a giant laser on earth. (Easier to get the direction right.)
  39. Attach to branches of an extremely large tree (cf. de St-Exupery 1943).
  40. Same as 10, but without the requirement that the postal service actually finds a way to do it. After all, the challenge was merely to send the thing to the moon and didn't say explicitly that it actually has to arrive.
  41. Give it to Hati Hróðvitnisson who perpetually chases Máni, the moon -- eventually, at Ragnarök, he will catch it.
  42. Wait for the Vietnamese Mid-Autumn festival, when Cuoi, the man in the moon, descends to earth. Hand the package to him.
  43. Send it via Julian Barratt or Noel Fielding. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recurring_The_Mighty_Boosh_characters#The_Moon)
  44. Find a copy of the Qur'an and open it to sura 54, The Moon. Place your object thereon.
  45. Persuade David Marks, Matt Moore, Larry Brown, and David Jackson to re-form their psychedelic pop band The Moon. Send the object to them.
  46. Bow and arrow.
  47. Ion thrusters, powered by a small nuclear reactor. (Would need other means to get into orbit; many of the other methods here would do.)
  48. VSIMR (it has "rocket" in the name but is different enough from e.g. Saturn V type rockets to count as a separate method).
  49. Construct a closed timelike curve using, say, a Tipler cylinder. Use it to bring the object back to before the collision that split the moon off from the earth. Place the object on a part of the earth that ended up as Moon. Wait.
  50. Getting the object to the moon is left as an elementary exercise for the reader.

Some comments:

  • I didn't have the experience of getting stuck, writing some stupid things, and then having obviously-good ideas. I mean, I did find some more-plausible answers later on, but I don't think the stupid answers helped me get to them; they just filled in the time before I thought of them. (Of course I could be wrong about that. Introspection is hard.)
  • It felt to me as if getting as far as 50 wasn't so much a matter of thinking further and further outside the box, but of how willing I was to "milk" certain general-purpose techniques. (Things that let you get things high up on earth but obviously wouldn't really get as far as orbit, never mind the moon. Wilful misinterpretation of "the moon". Fiction/imagination/etc. Magic and mythology and religion. Getting someone else to do it and not specifying how they would.) I'm pretty sure it would have been easy to find ten more of most of those, but it would have felt like cheating. (The amount I did felt a bit like cheating too, but I hope it was reasonable. In so far as anything here is supposed to be reasonable.)
  • Getting to 50 ways without feeling too cheaty was difficult, of course.
[-]Isaac King10

These are much more creative than mine, good job. I especially liked 8, 12, 27, and 29.

Reply
[-]qazzquimby10

I'm pretty sure it would have been easy to find ten more of most of those, but it would have felt like cheating.

I felt the same way. It's easy to generate something similar to an existing choice, like I included both catapult and trebuchet, but it feels wrong. But when I think about it feeling wrong, that's premature pruning...

Reply
[-]Alex Vermillion10

I almost put down #12 in my list as well, I'm glad to see it made yours

Reply
[-]gogishvilli10

13 and 19 are cool

Reply

gjm

200

This is only seven, one of them incomplete, for reasons that may become apparent.

CYRANO:

No imitator I of other men!

(De Guiche has succeeded in getting by, and goes toward Roxane's door. Cyrano follows him, ready to stop him by force):

Six novel methods, all, this brain invented!

 

DE GUICHE (turning round):

Six?

 

CYRANO (volubly):

First, with body naked as your hand,

Festooned about with crystal flacons, full

O' th' tears the early morning dew distils;

My body to the sun's fierce rays exposed

To let it suck me up, as 't sucks the dew!

 

DE GUICHE (surprised, making one step toward Cyrano):

Ah! that makes one!

 

CYRANO (stepping back, and enticing him further away):

And then, the second way,

To generate wind--for my impetus--

To rarefy air, in a cedar case,

By mirrors placed icosahedron-wise.

 

DE GUICHE (making another step):

Two!

 

CYRANO (still stepping backward):

Or--for I have some mechanic skill--

To make a grasshopper, with springs of steel,

And launch myself by quick succeeding fires

Saltpeter-fed to the stars' pastures blue!

 

DE GUICHE (unconsciously following him and counting on his fingers):

Three!

 

CYRANO:

Or (since fumes have property to mount)--

To charge a globe with fumes, sufficiently

To carry me aloft!

 

DE GUICHE (same play, more and more astonished):

Well, that makes four!

 

CYRANO:

Or smear myself with marrow from a bull,

Since, at the lowest point of Zodiac,

Phoebus well loves to suck that marrow up!

 

DE GUICHE (amazed):

Five!

 

CYRANO (who, while speaking, had drawn him to the other side of the square near a bench):

Sitting on an iron platform--thence

To throw a magnet in the air. This is

A method well conceived--the magnet flown,

Infallibly the iron will pursue:

Then quick! relaunch your magnet, and you thus

Can mount and mount unmeasured distances!

 

DE GUICHE:

Here are six excellent expedients!

Which of the six chose you?

 

CYRANO:

Why, none!--a seventh!

 

DE GUICHE:

Astonishing! What was it?

 

CYRANO:

I'll recount.

 

DE GUICHE:

This wild eccentric becomes interesting!

 

CYRANO (making a noise like the waves, with weird gestures):

Houuh! Houuh!

 

DE GUICHE:

Well.

 

CYRANO:

You have guessed?

 

DE GUICHE:

Not I!

 

CYRANO:

The tide!

I' th' witching hour when the moon woos the wave,

I laid me, fresh from a sea-bath, on the shore--

And, failing not to put head foremost--for

The hair holds the sea-water in its mesh--

I rose in air, straight! straight! like angel's flight,

And mounted, mounted, gently, effortless,. . .

When lo! a sudden shock! Then. . .

 

DE GUICHE (overcome by curiosity, sitting down on the bench):

Then?

 

CYRANO:

Oh! then. . .

(Suddenly returning to his natural voice):

The quarter's gone--I'll hinder you no more:

The marriage-vows are made.

----

(This is from Cyrano de Bergerac, and Cyrano is pretending to have fallen from the moon, or perhaps pretending to be a lunatic who thinks he has fallen from the moon, in order to keep de Guiche occupied while the woman he's chasing is getting married to someone else.)

[-]Matt Goldenberg20

Strong upvoted for form factor.

Reply
[-]ryan_b20

Cyrano comes up frequently enough that I am going to have to actually sit down and watch the play at some point.

Reply
[-]Neil 10

:D If you'll excuse my french, j'adore ce passage

Reply

Matt Goldenberg

170
  1. Sending a spaceship.
  2. Jumping really high.
  3. Beaming information with a laser.
  4. Making earth bigger so the moon comes close enough to just place it.
  5. Shouting a really loud sound that reaches the moon.
  6. The Postal service.
  7. shooting a really big gun.
  8. Making an elevator
  9. Attaching a rope to the moon and then hauling it up.
  10. Finding a moon rock and sending something to that.
  11. Asking Elon Musk to do it by sending him a Meme on twitter.
  12. Sending an email to a satellite and then having that send an email to the moon.
  13. Teaching an astronaut something that they'll learn on the moon.
  14. Giving an astronaut a temporary tattoo.
  15. Sneak into NASA and shout my message to an existing moon mission (do they do these anymore?)
  16. A big rubber band/slingshot.
  17. Just get a bunch of explosives and find a high mountain that will send debris towards the moon eventually.
  18. Crowdsourcing
  19. Build a really tall building then throw something from the top of it.
  20. Make a giant fan and blow something to the moon.
  21. 17, but with a Nuclear weapon.
  22. Create a REALLY BIG LIGHT SHOW that can be seen from the moon, and send a message that says "Something"
  23. 22, but instead of a light show just cover the ocean with ships so as to spell a message.
  24. Create a 3d model, then print out it using a 3d printer on the moon.
  25. 24, but with a message and an ordinary printer.
  26. 25, but with arbitrary information on a USB drive.
  27. Add extra fuel to an airplane
  28. Start from the moon, then it's easy.
  29. Take one of Richard Branson's space tourist flights, then at the right moment, throw something out the window.
  30. Name the desk to my left "the moon:, then place something on it.
  31. Make the worlds bounciest pogo stick.
  32. Use a bunch of helium balloons.
  33. Make a really light dirigible
  34. Give a random astronaut a chainletter, and hope it reaches an astronaut on the moon.
  35. Post this question on facebook, and use the best idea.
  36. Post this question on twitter, and use the best idea.
  37. Look at the other answers to this post, and use the best idea.
  38. Attach a rocket to a skateboard, and then activate it at the end of a megaramp.
  39. Use that crazy bat on youtube that explodes when it hits a baseball, and aim at the moon from a really tall mountain.
  40. Break out of the simulation, then reprogram myself to be on the moon.
  41. Put a really strong basketball really deep in the ocean, then have it pop out of the water and land on the moon.
  42. Put a magnet on the moon and throw another magnet at it.
  43. Make a really strong smell and waft it towards the moon.
  44. Send radio signals towards the moon.
  45. Send the moon my love.
  46. Create a highly pressurized squirt gun and squirt it towards the moon.
  47. Add a tiny engine to a paper airplane and throw it towards the moon.
  48. Moon the moon and hope it gets the message.
  49. Strap something to a jetpack and send it in the moon's general direction.
  50. Google "How to send something to the moon" and take the best ideas.
[-]Matt Goldenberg110

 51. Bonus that I came up with in the shower:  Leave instructions in my will that the contents of this beautiful ornate box goes to my first living relative that opens the box on the moon. When opened, the contents are just a screenshot of this thread.

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[-]jacobjacob20

Awesome!!

Reply
[-]MikkW10

Huh... Now I'm wondering whether #41 would actually work

Reply
[-]ErickBall10

I love #24 and #41

Reply
[-]Neel Nanda10

Beautiful! #14 and #22 were inspired

Reply

Tetraspace

150

About halfway through I forgot that I was only meant to be bringing something to the moon rather than having to visit it myself, and some of my items are very broad (the first one could make up a whole list in itself).

This was very fun!

rocket

space elevator

jump really, really hard

electromagnetic cannon

accelerate the spin of the earth until it falls apart

decelerate the orbit of the moon until it falls, by flying comets past it

or by painting one side of the moon black

or by using a giant rocket

or by detonating enough antimatter weaponry

flap your arms, again really, really hard

shine a torch at the moon (photons reach there)

start in space and use an ion drive

project orion nuclear bomb detonated below you

program an AGI and ask the AGI how to get to the moon

build a very tall ladder

spaceplane

wings made of wax

throw it really, really hard

spin around and let go

stand under an asteroid strike and join the ejecta

wait for quantum fluctuations to teleport you there

wait for random gravitational solar system pertubations to bring the moon to you

wait for another civilisation to bring you to the moon

time travel to before Theia hit and join the original moon

teleport

add mass to the moon until it becomes the planet and you are on the moon

find the space rocks the apollo astronauts brought back and stand on them

project orion but with fusion

project orion but with antimatter

trigger false vacuum collapse with particle accelerator and use new physics to develop as yet unknowable way of travelling to moon

astral projection

bird with a spacesuit

space helicopter

vacuum-filled zepellin

submarine with reactionless thruster inside

perpetual motion machine

buy a ticket on musk's starship

invest in dogecoin, use billions from dogecoin to start space program

stand above a supervolcano and hope ejecta takes you high enough

run very very fast reaching orbital velocity

very long space elevator reaching down from moon

very very long space elevator reaching down from mars

create microscopic black hole and use gravitational slingshot

carefully warp space to make a staircase built from the metric

make a normal staircase

wormhole

very, very fast bicycle with a ramp

add mass to moon until gravitational tide from moon lifts you from the surface of the earth

deorbit the earth-moon system into the sun and join it in the molten iron in the sun's core

apollo 11 mission

[-]Mati_Roy50

my favorite is "add mass to the moon"; genius! '^^

I also particularly like: ladder, spinning the Earth, spin around and let go, time travel, find the space rocks, false vacuum collapse, bird with a spacesuit, zeppelin, buy a tick on Musk's starship, run very fast, microscope black hole, deorbit in the Sun :)

great list!

Reply
3jacobjacob
Hey Mati -- friendly admin reminder to put stuff in spoiler tags!
1Mati_Roy
oops, right, thanks for the reminder

jacobjacob

150

Here are my answers: 

  • 1 Slingshot
  • Rocket
  • Railgun
  • Heavy throw
  • 5 Exercise your legs for a massive jump
  • jetpack while wearing astronaut suit
  • Airplane
  • Massive trampoline
  • 10 Swing
  • Balancing swing
  • convince the US gov to run another space program and become an astronaut
  • go through astronaut school and become good enough friends with all of them that they'd do you a favour and bring something with them on the next trip
  • make it profitable to send things to the moon and then have everyone do it and just buy a ticket on one of those things -- maybe building super tiny rockets is somehow cheaper? what's the bottleneck for going to the moon?
  • 15 convince Elon Musk to do a moon mission and bring your item
  • put a bird in a spacesuit and send it off
  • make the moon come to you (or at least bring it close enough it's reachable by plane or so)
    • somehow increase the earth's gravitational pull
    • by flying out spaceships, tying major big strings around it, and just dragging it back
    • by detonating a nuke on the other side of it so it gets enough force to fly toward the earth
  • 20 just send something close enough to the moon that you can fire off your item, have it get into orbit, and then circle the moon for a lot of years until it finally lands
  • build some kind of huge accelerator around the circumference of the earth that could spin something around, gaining more momentum, and then shoot something out of itself and have it go all the way to the moon
  • just send a very tiny and easy thing -- like a neutrino or something, might you be able to just shoot it all the way over there?
  • get NASA to send a 3d printer to the moon, build your thing over there
  • destroy the universe in all worlds where your thing does not get to the moon, and anthropically find yourself in a world with your thing on the moon
  • 25 orchestrate a global 1984 campaign to switch names of the "Earth" and the "Moon" -- voila, most things are at the "Moon"!
  • decide to send information, and use e.g. some kind of mega laser to just etch your message into the surface of the moon from a distance
  • helicopter w/ rocket for steering outside the atmosphere
  • do genetic engineering on an insect until their legs are mega strong enough to jump to the moon
  • forecast moon movements, aim something to appear in front of the moon, and wait for the moon to catch up with it
  • 30 build a super-bouncy material
  • build some sort of uber strong material that withstands detonating a nuke, and then turn it into a long, thin cylinder, and use that to send a force propelling something towards the moon
  • use a super strong fan to send a beam of air
  • somehow expand the earth's atmosphere in such a way that any flying thing could get close enough to the moon's gravitational field
  • make the moon really hot and send a heat-seeking missile there
  • 35 tall tower
  • elevator
  • swing around the sun and use it's gravity to give yourself leverage
  • get shot out by a super volcano
  • attach it to a mega boomerang
  • 40 send off a million copies of your thing in all different directions such that some of them would land on the moon
  • convince the UN to run a program for global peace by 1 million citizens to send an item to the moon on a mission organised jointly by the world's major superpowers
  • convince a philanthropist to help you run a prize competition paying a big bounty to whichever team manages to get your item to the moon
  • genetically engineer trees to grow mega large and have the top be able to survive outside the atmosphere
  • intern at a space company and secretely place it on an upcoming moon probe
  • 45 choose to send some sort of inspirational object (e.g. an olive branch) with high meme-worthiness, and make an inspiring movement such that children grow up wanting to send things to the moon, and soon as the next mission appears, whatever item you created will be the Schelling item to send
  • make your item be the flag of whichever country is most likely to next go to the moon
  • figure out if some substance is surprisingly common in the moon's surface, and build a device that has some sort of magnetic-like attraction to that substance, and get it to drag its way there
  • paper plane made of steel
  • convince the world your particular item is super dangerous and has to be buried under ground on another planet
  • 50 put your thing in a super solid and light box, that's easy to get outside the atmosphere with some cheap basic rocket, and just steer its way to the moon using a remote control from earth -- if necessary, have it be followed by a satellite to carry the signal
[-]ryan_b20

Switching the names of the earth and moon is hilarious!

I also love the supervolcano idea, even aside from humor; I had several that boiled down to hijacking natural phenomena or building artificial versions of them.

Reply
2jacobjacob
:)  Also, friendly admin reminder to put things in spoiler tags!
[-]Matt Goldenberg20

Love it.#28 is my favorite. Would make a great XKCD what if, seeing as every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction.

Reply
[-]ErickBall10

#24 made me laugh

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[-]Neel Nanda10

Inspired!

I'm very entertained by the amount of items our lists converged on

Reply

ErickBall

120

Okay well it took me more than an hour to get to 50, but still a great exercise!

1. Chemical rocket

2. Launch off of space elevator beyond geosync

3. Giant balloon (aim carefully you can't steer)

4. Coilgun

5. Launch loop (seriously how has nobody built this yet)

6. Railgun

7. Nuclear thermal rocket

8. Electric (ion) rocket powered by capacitors or batteries (ok might be a little heavy)

9. Electric (ion) rocket powered by lasers from the ground

10. Ablation rocket powered by lasers from the ground

11. Spaceplane combined with any of the rocket types, especially ablation rocket

12. Giant crossbow

13. One of those extending boxing glove toys with all the struts forming parallelograms (apparently this mechanism is called a "pantograph")

14. Series of nested giant crossbows: each one shoots a smaller crossbow

15. Hitch a ride on a passing asteroid using a tether

16. Use superconductors to levitate a flux-pinned magnet to the moon

17. Fusion rocket

18. Project Orion-style nuclear bomb rocket

19. Run a tether from the moon to the earth, and just let the tip drag along the ground and you can attach climbers to it as it goes by every day

20. Antimatter rocket

21. Ramjet

22. Bussard ramjet

23. Trebuchet

24. Bubble cavitation in a vacuum (could launch a tiny particle at high velocity from LEO)

25. Light gas gun

26. Plasma gun? Is that a thing?

27. Combination balloon and solar sail. The balloon lifts the solar sail until the air is too thin to keep rising, and then the sail takes off.

28. Build a giant radiotelescope to contact space aliens and ask them to carry something to the moon for you.

29. Ablation rocket powered by the sun (using dry ice maybe)

30. Hack the simulation and add code to teleport stuff on your command

31. Build a space elevator on the moon and use it to launch chunks of rock constantly towards earth, which you catch with a see-saw contraption to launch something smaller back the other way

32. Nuclear explosion underground that launches a big chunk of steel through a borehole, like in Operation Plumbob (have to use something longer and tungsten-coated so it doesn't vaporize)

33. Light sail powered by lasers from the ground

34. Use lightning to superheat pressurized gas in a massive gun chamber

35. Kite that turns into solar sail once it clears most of the atmosphere

36. Build a giant tower from Earth that reaches almost to the moon, with a vacuum chamber inside so it can be supported by an electron beam, and then just toss things from the top

37-39. Practice, practice, practice

40. Get that arm surgery that lets pitchers throw faster than they did before they were injured, but like 50 times

41. Stow away on the next moon launch

42. Bring the moon to you: rob the Earth of its rotational energy by over-using your space elevator, and the moon will slowly drift closer due to tidal locking (I think)

43. Fake a Dr. Evil-style terrorist threat to force the government to send people to the moon to stop you.

44. Rename your home to "the moon"

45. Something with carbon nanotubes (grow them to the moon I guess?)

46. Great great great great great pyramid

47. Drink way too much coffee in order to come up with more ideas (recursive self-improvement technique?)

48. Nuclear-powered jet engine that builds up momentum by circling the Earth a bunch of times like superman, at slightly higher altitude each time

49. Some kind of reactionless drive based on Hawking radiation

50. Just send neutrinos to the moon, nothing will stop them. (You are already doing this.)

Neel Nanda

120

Fun exercise, thanks for suggesting it!

I can't figure out multi-line spoiler tags, so I've put my 50 in here (a lot of these are blatantly cheating, but 50 is surprisingly hard!)

[-]jacobjacob60

Okay I went ahead and implemented #39... 

I did it via the OpenAI API. My prompts are in bold. I used about 5 restarts in total to generate this sequence. 

I, as a student with no budget, devise the following plan to get to the Moon, and it works! Yes, it is a little far-fetched but this is an example of the creativity that is at the heart of the game. 
The game is simple to play, just two dice are required. 
By the end of the game you will see how I made it to the Moon using the following: 
A cardboard box 
A sheet of tin foil 

... (read more)
Reply
[-]Bautista Cazeaux20

I'm amazed. If i compare my work to yours i realize i still have a very long way to go which is pretty exciting, i guess i'll have to read some more post here...

Loved #11 btw

Reply
[-]Matt Goldenberg20

Love it! #22 was my favorite, the image is awesome.

Reply
[-]jacobjacob20

Woop! Really excited to have you join Neel! In case you wrote 50 I think you only copied a 8 of them, and if not -- looking forward to the other 42 ;)

Reply
1Neel Nanda
Ah, sorry, the original comment was an experiment with multi-line spoiler tags. I've now given up on that, and linked to a Google doc
3jacobjacob
I literally laughed out loud while reading your ideas in bed. Some of them are just beautiful!
[-]gogishvilli10

22 and 42 are awesome!

Reply

steven0461

110
  1. rocket
  2. catapult
  3. cannon
  4. nuclear propelled spaceship
  5. wait for civilization to advance a lot and then just mail the item
  6. throw the item up into the sky and be okay with failure
  7. note that the earth is the sun's moon, you're on the moon now
  8. scan, destroy, rebuild on the moon
  9. put a note on the item promising a bounty to the first person who takes it to the moon
  10. extremely long tube
  11. time travel to a time when the moon was where you are now
  12. gravity manipulation
  13. climb to the top of mount everest and just keep going
  14. hit the item very hard
  15. genetic engineering to become taller until you reach the moon
  16. teleport spell
  17. have the item split in two in opposite directions, repeat until 1/2^n of the thing reaches the moon, repeat 2^n times
  18. survive the death of the sun and wait for the moon to fall to earth
  19. uplift the item to sentience and motivate it to take itself to the moon
  20. ask the lords of the matrix to edit the item's location property
  21. wait for a particularly powerful volcano
  22. magical rope
  23. wait for a full moon, full enough to reach the earth
  24. drag the moon to earth with a rope
  25. wormhole
  26. kill the item, then use necromancy to resurrect it on the moon
  27. telekinesis
  28. attach the item to the fabric of spacetime and move the earth-moon system down until the moon is where you started
  29. start the problem in a state where the item is already on the moon
  30. giant longbow
  31. giant blowgun
  32. uplift the moon to sentience and motivate it to come get the item
  33. shrink the earth and grow the moon until the moon is the earth and the earth is the moon
  34. ask some aliens to abduct the item
  35. attach the item to a long stick, then keep adding new stick parts to the bottom of the stick
  36. meditate until all is one, including the moon and the earth
  37. laser sail
  38. wait for the item to quantum tunnel to the moon by coincidence
  39. wait for the big crunch, when everything will be in the same place, including the item and the moon
  40. make the item very sturdy and keep shooting it with a gun
  41. find some moon dust that astronauts took to earth and put the item on the moon dust
  42. attain godhood and use omnipotence somehow
  43. emit greenhouse gases until sea level rise takes the item to the moon
  44. very tall elevator
  45. very tall escalator
  46. delegate to all other humans so everyone only has to transport the item a few centimeters
  47. attach the item to a balloon filled with a gas lighter than vacuum
  48. gender reveal party
  49. temporarily move all of earth's mountains to the same location
  50. artificial geyser
[-]jacobjacob40

Great job, I thought #33, #35, #36 were great

Reply

Harmless

90
  1. Saturn V rocket
  2. SpaceX Starship
  3. Shine a torch (the something you are sending is light photons)
  4. Point a radioactive source towards the moon
  5. Point a neutrino emitter
  6. Send data by interfacing with the satelites around the moon
  7. Invent teleportation, and then teleport there
  8. Create a machine that can exactly copy your object and then destroy the 'original', use it to get the object to the moon, and then resolve the resulting dilemma about whether it's the 'same' object with your choice of counterargument
  9. Space elevator
  10. Just walk
  11. Sit on a nuke, and then detonate it
  12. Actually, just detonate a nuke anywhere in an atmosphere, and statistically speaking at least one air particle is likely to make it
  13. Project Orion Battleship (possible overlap with previous two)
  14. Jump really high
  15. Make a seesaw, stand on one end, and have a heavy object fall from lunar orbit onto the other end
  16. Climb a ladder
  17. Ohvyq n gbjre bs onory, ohg fgbc jura vg ernpurf gur zbba
  18. Decelerate the moon until it crashes into earth, so that everything on the earth is also on the moon
  19. Wait for a quantum event of negligable probability to take it there
  20. Promise someone £1 billion conditional on them getting the object to the moon
  21. Use that one company whose thing is sending products to the moon so they can say that there's one of those products on the moon
  22. Wait for someone else to attempt a lunar landing mission, and sneak the object onboard (fun fact: it's already been done with the lunar art museum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csInNn6pfT4)
  23. Reclassify Earth as the moon
  24. Reclassify anything reachable as the moon, and then place the object on that
  25. Place the object on the Apollo lunar samples
  26. Monorail
  27. Regular rail
  28. Rail, but with more than two rails
  29. Use a plane to accelerate really fast in-atmophere, and use that momentum to get to the moon
  30. Ditto, but with running
  31. Cannon
  32. Trebuchet
  33. Catapult
  34. Make something that disables Earth's relative gravitational field for an object, and turn it on at the right time
  35. Accelerate really fast in a submarine, and use that momentum to get to the moon
  36. Use a fishing rod to tether the moon, and reel it in until it's close enough
  37. Use a fishing rod to tether the moon, and reel yourslef towards it
  38. Use a fishing rod to tether another celestial body, and reel yourself towards it until you're in the path of the moon, then wait for it to arrive
  39. Stand on a mirror that faces downwards, which rises upwards on a stream of photons bouncing between this mirror and another mirror on earth that faces skywards
  40. Project Sea Dragon
  41. A tower comprised of Delta-V stages
  42. A space shuttle, with more stages
  43. Make a bridge that spirals from earth to the moon, and then walk
  44. Ditto, but with a road vehicle
  45. Fold an A4 piece of paper 45 times, and then climb up the resulting stack
  46. Climb up a rope
  47. Climb up a fireman's pole, and then slide down the last fraction to the moon
  48. Gather a large number of golf balls, and hit each one away from yourself to accelerate
  49. Use a spray can

And finally, the most impractial item on the list

     50. SLS

NunoSempere

90
  1. Pay for it to be sent on a rocket
  2. Railgun
  3. Space elevator
  4. Air balloon + rocket
  5. Hit the moon with comet and have it impact Earth
  6. Use force of nuclear explosion
  7. Sneak it into someone else's moon mission
  8. Convince billionnaire that going to the moon is cool, then piggyback
  9. Make item so common and useful that it will certainly be brought to the moon if it is ever colonized
  10. Bring a 3D printer to the moon, then print it.
  11. Convince government to make the moon a criminal base (like Australia). Get sent.
  12. Bribe an astronaut
  13. Nerdsnipe a collective at MIT to do it for you
  14. Use many conventional explosives
  15. Use an Alcubierre drive
  16. Controlled matter-antimatter explosion
  17. Laser propelled balloon
  18. Really big spring.
  19. Really big sling
  20. If thing is small, use particle accelerator
  21. Put big magnet on Moon
  22. Reorient a hurricane to sling it.
  23. Invent anti-gravity propulsor
  24. Cancel gravitational field of Earth
  25. Make Moon bigger than Earth
  26. Put rockets on Moon so that it crashes into earth
  27. Otherwise destabilize Moon orbit
  28. Get fragment of Moon
  29. Large pyramid on Earth which reaches Moon
  30. Destroy Moon into smaller fragments which are easier to reach
  31. Explode Earth and be in a fragment which reaches Moon.
  32. Blackmail Musk
  33. Take someone important to Musk hostage
  34. Large Mentos+CocaCola chemical reaction
  35. Position oneself strategically before volcanic eruption
  36. Channel energy of earthquake into jump
  37. Create powerful instantaneous earthquake
  38. Make Earth bigger
  39. Big spring board
  40. Large catapult
  41. Amplify earthquake
  42. Manipulate Earth's electromagnetic field to propel you
  43. Become best petrol engineer. Create rumors of oil in Moon.
  44. Become astronaut
  45. Impersonate astronaut
  46. Take someone important to an astronaut hostage
  47. Create new space race. Profit.
  48. Get money to go to mars but use it to go to the Moon instead.
  49. Make rockets cheaper, then buy a ticket.
  50. Use powerful sound wave.
[-]gogishvilli40

I like 22 and 24, but the 42 is genius! Did you intend to put the best under the 42?

Reply
2NunoSempere
Not in particular; I'm actually most fond of 43 ;). Also, #12 is based on a real incident, and it's probably how I'd actually do it:
[-]jacobjacob30

Good to see you hear Nuno, I know I can always count on you for joining experimental rationality projects! :)

Reply

justinpombrio

90

50 ways to send something to the moon. Although it ended up more like 25 ways to send something to the moon and 25 ways to avoid sending something to the moon.

  1. Mail it.
  2. Where will the moon end up in 1 billion years? Invent time travel, put something there in the future, then send it back in time to today's moon.
  3. Rail gun.
  4. Space elevator to get it to space, then nudge it. Assuming it can deal with the landing.
  5. Giant slingshot. By which I mean spin, then release. This isn't silly, there's a serious startup doing it right now. (To get things to space, not the moon, but shouldn't be very different.)
  6. Space elevator, then give it a parachute, then nudge it to the moon.
  7. Big cannon, with gunpowder.
  8. Put it on a rocket. Rocket to take off & rocket to land.
  9. Invent teleportation, and teleport it.
  10. Does the thing really have to start on earth? Make it on the moon. Makes shipping much easier.
  11. Compressed air cannon.
  12. Land bridge, that's connected to the moon but not the earth. It gets within a few miles of earth.
  13. Big tree on earth. At the right time of day, its highest point gets close to the moon.
  14. Earth is in such a big gravity well. Maybe make the thing on a moon like phobos (which I know from UT), then send it via one of these methods to the moon.
  15. Make it in space, then drop it to the moon.
  16. Is it digital? I hope it's digital. Email it!
  17. Send it through the IPFS. Because it's digital.
  18. Ok, it's not digital. But it can be 3d-printed right? Email the design to an automated printer!
  19. Seriously, you don't want to physically send the thing to the moon. Start a manufactoring service on the moon. It taAlthough this turned more into 50 ways to avoid sending something to the moon.kes instructions to make something, and makes it, and ships it. All very automated. You send them a JSON file and some dollars and they make the thing.
  20. Is it audio? Is it a song? Call them up and sing.
  21. Why are you still trying to physically send it? Is it because you feel that if the thing is also on Earth, you haven't really sent it to the moon after manufacturing it there? How about manufacturing it there, then destroying the copy on Earth? Is that satisfactory?
  22. Ok maybe the thing is very expensive. Like a big diamond. Don't send it on its own. You don't need a dedicated rocket to send a diamond! Bulk shipments! Group it with the next hundred items.
  23. Wait 50 years until we have better technology, then send it.
  24. Get someone to inadvertently bring it to the moon. Like Musk is going there because he likes space, slip it in his pocket. Might need to pay a lunar pick-pocket to get it back after.
  25. Convince a big company that they want to advertise the thing on the moon, and get them to foot the shipping bill. Ok, maybe there is no manufacturing capabilities on the moon, and that's why you're so insistent on shipping this thing. Maybe it is the manufacturing facilities.
  26. NANITES. Send nanites. Have them make the manufacturing facilities.
  27. Take the thing, turn it into magical goop, and haphazardly slingshot the goop. Then tell the goop to return to its original form.
  28. Invent AGI and ask it to ship the thing to the moon.
  29. Magic. Literal magic. Wave your wand and speak in latin.
  30. Does it really have to be the moon, or do you just need people to think its on the moon? Send it to a film set that looks like the moon.
  31. Pay the moon people to say you sent it to them even though you didn't.
  32. Fake the moon transmissions to make it sound like the moon people got the thing even though they didn't.
  33. If it's a plant, grow it on the moon.
  34. If it's a plant, send the seed, then grow it on the moon.
  35. In general, instead of sending X, send a generator for X. Ok I'm going to actually thing about how to get matter from Earth to the Moon again.
  36. Strap a rocket on it.
  37. Warp space so that the moon is 20 feet away, then toss it.
  38. Turn its matter into energy, beam it via microwaves, then turn the energy back into matter.
  39. Turn it into plasma, stream it over, turn it back.
  40. Put it in a big bouncy ball, and toss that over (say with a slingshot or railgun as previously mentioned). Like we did with that mars rover.
  41. Have a space station between the earth and moon, with long ropes (read: cararbon nanotube ropes). Lift it up one rope, and down the other.
  42. Take a chunk out of the moon, and send it to earth. Then ship everything you want there.
  43. Take a chunk out of the earth (say around a big factory city), and send it to the moon. Then ship from earth-chunk to moon-desination. Right, physically moving a thing from one place to another. Back on track.
  44. Space train. I'm just now feeling out of ideas.
  45. Regular slingshot. Like with big stretchy cables. With a big foamy spot for it to land.
  46. Defeat gravity. Then use a gravity-ignoring spaceship with tiny little compressed-air jets.
  47. Rocket, powered by nuclear explosions. Probably not good for the environment.
  48. Big see-saw. When a shipment comes in from the moon, it lands on one end. It is on the other end, and gets flung to the moon.
  49. Same idea for space elevator. For balance, an object from the earth and an object from the moon of the same weight are pulled in unison to meet at the middle, then lowered on the other side.
  50. Really big fans. Fast enough to send the thing out of Earth's gravity. Though that probably wouldn't be good for the environment.
  51. Compressed air tube.

MikkW

90

50 Ways to the Moon

  1. Put 3D printer on moon, print the things you want on the moon
  2. Bring the moon to us
  3. Not original idea: Use a battery-powered rocket that expels water instead of exhaust
  4. Use a nuclear bomb, contained within a very robust containment, and point the firey end down
  5. Use a magnetic vehicle, and create a very strong EM field to push the vehicle away from earth
  6. Not original idea: Use a space yeeter (Rotating object in orbit which has a tether, a vehicle in low orbit attatches to tether, and the space yeeter’s angular momentum brings the vehicle to a much higher altitude)
  7. Take the object to a very high place (Burj Khalifa? Mt Everest? A Burj built on top of Everest [Burj Everista]?), then launch the vehicle using a railgun, and only start burning fuel once its launched
  8. Use some mechanism (or series of mechanisms) that catches other vehicles that are entering orbit from space, and redirects their kinetic energy to bring outgoing vehicles to space
  9. Create a wormhole that links Moon’s surface to Earth’s surface
  10. Breed birds, testing how high altitudes they can reach, and their ability to survive in low pressures, changing what we breed for (pure max height? height sustained for a certain amount of time? maximum upgoing velocity? Low oxygen performance? etc) when birds reach a plateau in performance, and see if we can breed birds that can get to space
  11. If I want to get an object to the moon, I should just give it to the Artemis astronauts when they launch
  12. Create so much gas (probably N2 with appropriate levels of O2, or whatever is convenient to create enough) that the Earth’s atmosphere extends to the Moon, and fly an airplane up to the moon
  13. Start from north pole, and ride the Earth’s magnetic field into space
  14. Create a multi-piece space elevator, which starts with a very high structure attached to Earth, which terminates above the atmosphere, then it transitions vehicles to an orbiting object which occasionally gets close enough to receive vehicles, the vehicles then climb that object, which then passes off vehicles to another orbiting object. Since each piece is smaller than a full-size space elevator, it won’t have to withstand the same stresses the space elevator would
  15. Absurd: Create a strong-force colour field, and have a colour-charged vehicle which gets propelled by the colour field
  16. Launch the object into low-earth orbit, wait for an asteroid to come nearby, manuever the object such that it crashes into the asteroid in such a way, that the momentum of the object is cancelled out relative to the Moon, so the Moon’s gravity can pull it in
  17. Ask the object to please go to the Moon
  18. Like the battery-powered water syringe, except instead of using batteries, we use nuclear power
  19. Hack the universe’s source code, so that gravity is 10x weaker
  20. Get recruited as an astronaut, go on a mission to the moon, and bring the object with me
  21. Pay SpaceX to put my object on the moon
  22. Redefine the word “Moon” to actually refer to my basement
  23. Get so, so, so buff, that I can do a jump squat, and land on the moon (Aka the “Chuck Norris manuever”)
  24. Search deep in my soul, discover the reasons why I want to get this object on the moon, and realize that I never actually ever wanted to get it to the moon in the first place (Aka the “Bhudda manuever”)
  25. Create an airplane whose wings can become so big (and lightweight), that it can generate lift simply by interacting with solar wind
  26. Publish a blog post encouraging people to come up with ways to get my object on the Moon
  27. Take inspiration from Breath of the Wild speedrunners, and use Stasis to freeze a metal cube in place, whack it with an industrial-grade whacker a billion times, get inside the cube, wait for the stasis to wear off, and get launched at absurd speeds in the direction of the Moon (Edit: apparently the new meta [involves shield surfing, precisely timed super attacks, and archery-based time warping](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVIcwXponM&t=8m06s), so we’ll do that instead)
  28. Take inspiration from Orcas, which start underwater, then launch into the air. Likewise, we will start from the air like a regular airplane, and once we have maximum height and altitude obtainable with a plane, we will launch the rocket phase
  29. Develop a chemical substance which has a higher specific energy (Joules per kilogram) than hydrolox fuel
  30. Get bitten by a spider, then use my newfound superpowers to fly to the moon
  31. Ironman suit that can go to space
  32. Hold a moondance, and by worshipping and honoring the moon, the moon god will allow us to visit and bring our object to the moon
  33. Eat so much black pepper and wasabi, that I sneeze so hard I get launched to the moon
  34. Imagine myself and the object already being on the moon. If I imagine it hard enough, it will become true
  35. Remove the atmosphere of the Earth, so I can launch rockets without having to get through the atmosphere
  36. Start with the object already in space, far from Earth’s gravitational influence - then manuever the object towards the Moon
  37. Print out a picture of the object, and bring that to space. This way, we don’t have to waste precious capacity on the physical object itself
  38. Not original: Use a railgun. On top of Burj Everista. (Edit: I didn't realize I had already mentioned a railgun in #7 when introducing Burj Everista)
  39. Use EM field particle manipulation, so that the atoms and nucleons on the Moon arrange themselves into the shape of the object
  40. Build a giant factory on the Moon, and manufacture the object there (variation on idea #1)
  41. Discover that the universe actually has a hidden four-spatial-dimensional structure underlying it, and build a pathway utilizing the fourth dimension
  42. Build a very, very, very powerful trebuchet on the Earth, powerful enough to launch an object to the moon
  43. Create a dense cloud of space debris between the Earth and Moon, and climb the space debris as if you were climbing El Capitan
  44. Like idea #14, build a multi-piece series of structures in successively higher orbits leading to the Moon. But this time, it’s like a little track that the vehicles can ride on like a road
  45. Like idea #14, except each piece propels the vehicle like a maglev train
  46. Like idea #14, except there are no vehicles (beyond transer from one structure to the next). People will climb up each piece like they climb stairs
  47. Put rockets on the Earth, and make the Earth accelerate so fast, that it gets far away from you (and the moon) before you can fall back to it, so now the only gravity acting on you is from the moon
  48. Photoshop a picture of you standing on the moon, and post it on the internet, so everybody thinks you actually got there
  49. It’s a rocket, except instead of simply propelling fuel exhaust downwards (to obtain equal and opposite momentum), it launches packages back towards earth. This technique is called the “Jeff Bezos manuever”
  50. Kidnap Santa Claus, and use his magic reindeer to get to the moon

This was pretty fun, though man, it took quite a bit to come up with all 50. Some of them are maybe plausible, some of them for sure are not

[-]jacobjacob30

Kudos for persevering! #43 and #47 are pretty cool, along with many others :) 

Reply

Mati_Roy

90

I didn't read others' answers before answering.

My favorite from my list are 1, 30, and 39

First things first

  1. Create this LessWrong post

Bring object to the Moon

  1. elevator
  2. vertical hyperloop
  3. stairs XD
  4. wormhole
  5. attach magnet on object and on both celestial object
  6. artificial gravity
  7. astro-catapult
  8. nuclear-fusion rocket
  9. nuclear-fission rocket
  10. chemical reaction rocket
  11. solar energy rocket
  12. orbiting asteroid
  13. light a giant candle going from the Moon to Earth, put the object on it, and wait for the candle to burn down

Bring object information to the Moon

  1. disassembled and send structural information with photons
  2. disassembled and send through particle accelerator
  3. disassembled and send through electric wire
  4. disassembled and send with gravitons
  5. make a giant QR code on Earth surface for Moon-based people to scan with a telescope

Bring the Moon to the object

  1. bring the Moon on Earth through a wormhole
  2. bring the Moon on Earth using gravity
  3. bring the Moon on Earth by disassembling it in smaller pieces, and reassembling it on Earth

Bring the Moon information to the object

  1. anthropic(?) capture: simulate the moon on Earth

Meta: create incentives for other humans to do it

  1. fund a prize for bring things on the moon
  2. advocate the government to create a road to the moon

Meta: create incentives for non-humans to do it

  1. make a deal with simulators
  2. make a deal with superintelligent aliens
  3. pre-commit to acausal trade

Meta: create other minds to do it

  1. breed human until they can fly in space
  2. breed interstellar non-human animals to do it
  3. create AIs that will solve the problem
  4. genetic engineering to create smart humans to solve the problem
  5. have children, and train them for the task

Meta: wait

  1. wait for random quantum fluctuation to bring the object there
  2. wait long enough until the Moon is now on Earth
  3. wait for someone else to do it

Other: genius

  1. create an object big enough that it will be both on Earth and on the Moon
  2. send a non-existing object
  3. create a quantum coin that makes you do something different in each branch in such a way that you do all possible actions; one of them is likely to send something on the Moon.

Make no sense

  1. blow strongly on it
  2. use wishful thinking
  3. use non-violent communication to share your feelings to the object
  4. threaten the object
  5. offer to fulfill the objects deepest desires
  6. ask a monkey to do it
  7. sing a song while dancing
  8. walk in a straight line until you stumble upon the Moon
  9. create a time paradox if no objects gets to the Moon
  10. pray that Rick & Morty show up and get them to help you
  11. use more nukes... make Earth uninhabitable so people go on the Moon
[-]gogishvilli40

14 is really creative, 19 is hilarious!

Reply
2Mati_Roy
thanks!:) I was inspired by 14 because I had one in my field of vision ^_^ ; 19, yeah XD
3frontier64
I also had a candle in my field of view and a very strong belief that it could somehow help get me to the moon. There's something powerful about candles.
2Mati_Roy
fun fact: "spark plug" and "candle" is the same word in French ^_^
[-]Mati_Roy10

ideas I got from reading others' list:

  • lower the Moon's orbit so you can reach it with your arm
Reply

James Fadden

90

 

  1. pyramid

2. slingshot

3. catapult

4. teeter totter

5. transporter beam

6. psychic projection

7. cannon

8. car ramp

9. sitting on a bomb

10. breeding a tall dinosaur

11. super tall tree

12. skyscraper

13. wait for tectonic plates to make mountains

14. bouncy chihuaha

15. geyser

16. supercollider (point it at moon)

17. asking aliens for help

18. shooting rope to moon with crossbow

19. giant tsunami

20. pile  of army ants

21. wishing really hard

22. in a dream

23. centrifugal force from big rotating thing

24. quantum fluctuation

25. the man in the moon reaches down

26. pole vault

27. shoes with big springs

28. flatulence rocket

29. solar sail (and laser?)

30. giant escalator

31. redefining kansas to be part of the moon

32. giant stilts

33. take lsd

34. Wizard of Oz tornado puts house on moon

35. threaten to hold your breath until someone puts you on the moon

36. produce more atmosphere and fly there on a plane

37. call an Uber

38. medieval siege tower

39. reconstruct the tower of babel

40. practice jumping really really high

41. pass a tax break for property on the moon and wait for a rich guy to claim it

42. ask Superman to do it

43. propeller beanie on space suit

44. ejaculate really hard

45. atomic powered tennis racket and ball

46. giant beanstalk

47. giant Jenga game        

48. get energetic cat. point laser at moon.

49. send it by UPS and let them figure it out

50. get punched by Jackie Gleason

(Took me 30 minutes. I was really sleepy which may have hurt or helped.)

[-]gogishvilli30

31 Is also fun

Reply
[-]jacobjacob20

Nice job, I really like #36 and #41!

Reply

Bautista Cazeaux

90

This was a really fun exercise and i kind of feel like i cheated with some of these ones but i agree with you that this could be a great exercise for your brain to stimuli creativity. If you come up with some new activity i'll gladly get into them.

Here are my answers

[-]gogishvilli40

45 is my favorite

Reply
[-]Neel Nanda20

Nice! #13 is my favourite

Reply

Neil

80

I understood the prompt as "get your ass to the moon" (Buzz Aldrin reference), and there are actually quite a few solutions here that are interesting because of that extra constraint. I would suggest scrolling ahead after the obvious solutions: 

  1. Tower of fire: find something very flammable and put it within a cylinder of something not flammable, then push the fire in the right direction and exploit Newton’s third law
  2. Giant slingshot: nobody really cares about your organs anyway (well the black market does but we’re remaining strictly legal here) so we’re just gonna use that, ey? The same disclaimer applies for whatever comes next.
  3. Very very very large piece of rope attached to a stone and catapulted up with the slingshot (or a catapult). Once the rock lands (it’ll blend in nicely with the other craters) you’ll have a very solid piece of rope spinning all over the place, so hang on tight.
  4. Easier option: use that last strategy to hook yourself to the ISS (you may kill a few astronauts in the process but that’s okay the ends justify the means) and then pull yourself up. Bring the slingshot along with you, and throw yourself from the ISS toward the Moon.
  5. Get a very big plaque of metal and then head over to Los Alamos and drag a few dusty rice cookers (“rice cookers” is a euphemism) out of the basement and aim for the moon before detonating.
  6. Take a whole lot of drugs and then stare at the moon and think There’s no place like the moon there’s no place like the moon there’s no place like the moon
  7. A very large balloon filled with absolute emptiness. ABSOLUTE emptiness. Now wait till you are gradually sucked up into the sky until you reach lunar orbit. 
  8. Pray to the soul of Neil Armstrong and use dark magic to bring him back to life: then use his ghost, which is naturally attracted to it, to bring you to the moon. Alternatively, use whatever machine they used in Nolan’s Tenet to reverse Neil’s entropy, and then hitch a ride with him as he reverse-lands on the moon.
  9. Head over to CIA headquarters, break into their basement, and walk onto the moon landing set. 
  10. Alternatively, break into Roscosmos headquarters and look up top secret projects for getting to the moon. They probably have a set there too, they just couldn’t fake it in time because in all things Hollywood, the US beat them.
  11. Get a degree in genetics and engineer a dragon. Who hasn’t dreamt of getting to the moon on the back of a dragon? The dragon can use Newton’s third law to push itself forward once wings no longer work. 
  12. Alternatively, build a space squid. Science fiction novels love imagining space as an ocean (think of Carl Sagan as well) and so why not make it a reality? A vacuum-defying squid it is! You can design its esophagus to be habitable so that it can keep you nice and warm!
  13. Go to France and bring Cyrano de Bergerac back from the dead using dark rituals. He may have only devised 6 methods to get to the moon, but he’ll be invaluable in your brainstorming process. Yeah, don’t forget the meta-problem; if you can’t figure out how to get to the moon, then find someone who can!
  14. You know those long sticks they use in the olympics? In French that’s saut à la perche. So yeah, find a very long stick and push yourself up and bam! 
  15. Find that one cow that jumped over the moon I forgot whomst it was.
  16. Use that occult dark magic again (you should be used to it by now) to bring Archimedes back to the realm of the living, and find sufficient leverage and a place for him to sit in order for him to move the world. Have him move Earth toward the moon. Why go to the moon when the moon can come to you?
  17. Don’t bring Shakespeare back from the dead. Rather, apply this Orwell quote: “if there is such a thing as turning in your grave, then Shakespeare must be getting a lot of exercise”. Harness the perpetual motion machine that is William Shakespeare to push yourself toward the stars! 
  18. Make the tides more extreme. Build a giant magnetic engine and make the tides so extreme that when the oceans are pulled toward the moon, they get all the way there. Because you will be within a giant plume of outstretched seawater, you will be safe from the vacuum of space. People will call you super-Moses for the rest of time. 
  19. Summon the dinosaurs again using occult genetic techniques, and harness their legendary bad luck to attract another asteroid. Put the dinos in the right place, though, so that the asteroid veers into the moon and pushes it toward us!
  20. Yo mama’s so fat, that she’s gravitationally pulling the moon toward her. Keep it up, mama!
  21. Get the fertility rate in turtles to go up (think of old Diego) and then draw inspiration from Dr.Seuss to build a very large pile of turtles.
  22. Those people back in biblical Babylon seem pretty good at engineering large buildings. Find their graves and have a corpse-summoning palooza, before getting them to work again. Google Translate makes the eternal curse of the wrath of the Almighty a trifle. 
  23. Summon Jesus. This presumably does not require dark magic. I think he can fly. 
  24. Summon the Devil. Have him open a gate to hell in lake Baikal, and then position yourself on a boat on that lake. The extreme heat of Hell will make the water boil suddenly, and you will find yourself projected towards the moon. 
  25. Bring Rapunzel back from non-existence using occult dark magic and then harness the power of her hair to build a sturdy bridge to the moon. 
  26. Did you know trees literally never stop growing? Genetically modify one for it to grow reeaaaally fast and ta-dah, a bridge! Ideally, Lao Tzu would argue, this would be a giant blade of grass instead of a tree. 
  27. Continue pumping gas into the atmosphere! Convert metals (astronomy definition of “metal”) from the Earth’s core into gasses, and then inject them into the atmosphere. After enough time, the atmosphere will become so wide a bubble around the Earth that the moon will be brought down through constant friction. 
  28. Have a Paperclip Maximizer produce a very large pile of paperclips for you. Then, assemble millions of fellow humans to painstakingly unfold these paperclips and turn them into a large bridge to connect to the moon with. 
  29. Use lasers on Earth to carve a silicon microchip (lunar regolith is composed of 20% silicon) from afar, and then program that chip, again from afar, to run your consciousness on it. (If you are worried about this not being “you” on the moon, then go the ship of Theseus route and gradually turn your brain into a microchip on the moon. :D) 
  30. You know those CEOs and those kindergarteners from the spaghetti experiment that were so good at building towers of spaghetti? Yeah, hire those to be your chief architects and build a spaghetti tower to the moon (Lao Tzu would be proud because spaghetti, at least when boiled in lake Baikal, is flexible). Disclaimer: this plan may require you to take over Italy, which might add some coordination problems to your original problem. 
  31. Blood is thicker than water, is it not? Use blood to pressurize a water cannon to an excessive degree, and then shoot yourself out the other end. The things we  do for puns smh.
  32. Break into an insane asylum and find a lunatic. They’ve already been on the moon.
  33. Get yourself a gigantic army of wolves, and then find a few million ledges for them to stand on. Then, all in sync, have them howl at the moon in such a way that the air will become highly pressurized and will allow you to propulse yourself to it. 
  34. Hear me out here: A GIANT FROG. Build a giant frog and hop to the moon! Kangaroos work alternatively, but because their mating cycles (get it, cause it’s Australia mate?) take more time, breeding them into giants will take a while more.
  35. Harness the hardly believable and incredible power of pseudoscience to use Lamark’s theory of transformism and wait till a giraffe stretches it neck toward the moon enough for its neck to be long enough for you to get to the moon.
  36. Contact the little-known alien city of Zgroobulon, which can be found in the Sea of Tranquility, and dare them to do the “find 50 ways to get to Earth” challenge, then shamelessly steal their best idea and reverse it.
  37. What is the largest champagne bottle ever made? If your capsule were to take the place of the cork, could you send yourself to the moon as a simple byproduct of humanity doing what it does best? Disclaimer: this may involve taking over France, which might be a great deal more difficult than taking over Italy because contrary to popular knowledge, the guillotines in their museums have not yet rusted and are perfectly functional. 
  38. You know how Apollo left a few mirrors on the moon for our lasers to bounce off of? Well send much more powerful lasers now in order for the moon to start spinning on itself faster. If you spin it for long enough, it will flatten out into a very thin disk, thin enough that it will touch Earth and all you have to do is walk onto it! As a bonus, you can even use your lasers from the microchip idea to program a song onto the Moon and turn it into the largest record there every was!
  39. Convince all established academics in the world that we got it all wrong; the moon isn’t orbiting Earth; Earth is orbiting the moon! Therefore, one can argue, we are the moon and it is the planet. Welcome to the moon! 
  40. You know how DNA is very thin and if you stretched all the DNA out in your body it would be longer than the 150,000 round trips to the moon? Yeah, just program your consciousness onto some DNA, and then send that to the moon with a few bacteria to develop life there; with 150,000 round trips, you’ll have some backup, too. Wait until the extremophiles you sent there develop into an intelligent civilisation: then, when the scientists of this lunar civilisation are peering into their genetic code to see what it looks like, have them discover the inscribed words “never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down” and then activate the procedure which reprograms all their brains into your consciousness, based on the information you programmed. Now you have an entire civilisation of hive-minded lunar inhabitants at your disposal, too! 
  41. Set off a bout of Kessler syndrome in just the right way for a shower of debris to hit lake Baikal and comically hurl you toward the moon as a consequence. 
  42. Click the button on your Infinite Improbability Drive until it gives you space whales able to fly to the moon using roller skates.
  43. Set up vast testing facilities to empirically test every oil lamp in Iraq in order to find a lamp with a genie inside. Ask that genie to transport you to the moon. Disclaimer: This may involve invading Iraq, but there’s precedent for that so you’ll probably be fine.
  44. Find an obscure but legit voodoo sorcerer and have him build a voodoo doll of you. Then slingshot that voodoo doll to the moon and call it a day!
  45. If that doesn’t work, further question the voodoo sorcerer until he tells you, with a flare of melodramatic lightning, where you are going to die. Then destroy that place and repeat, until you get “the moon” for your death place. To die there, you have to get there first, right? Exploit the formidable power of the Charlie Munger quote: “all I want to know is where I’m going to die, so that I can avoid it forever.” 
  46. Using a kugelblitz black hole (or a neutron star bullet) to get attracted by the immediate gravitational pull of it, and then have some magnets or something push the black hole toward the moon. Make sure to ignore the tremendous amount of energy the black hole is giving off, and also ignore the fact that its pulling at your organs in different ways and also that you are experiencing time slower than those around you and the fact that your organs are each experiencing a different time zone, so to speak. 
  47. Use occult dark magic to possess the body of a tardigrade, and then slingshot it to the moon. 
  48. Use a graviton machine to twist the very fabric of spacetime in a way that makes you “slide” toward the moon for no other reason than the very geometry of the universe!
  49. Use rocket engines or something to speed up Earth’s rotation to insane levels, and then just stop the thing at once. Ignore the obscenely large winds and tsunamis that put Interstellar to shame and then climb the giant mountain chain that will at this point spontaneously and temporarily appear on the equator as Earth’s innards are gutlessly expunged toward the outside. The mountains, if you’ve spinned Earth fast enough, will be tall enough to reach the moon. Centrifugal force rocks!
  50. Become a monk that has such mental discipline and rigor that they are able to levitate. Then, get enough additional discipline and rigor to push yourself all the way to the moon. You’ll get insane spiritual enlightenment as a bonus, enough to put idea 6 to shame.
  51. I’m sure they have interesting objects you can exploit in Area 51. 
  52. Organize humans around you and build the Apollo project. Duh. Also smile at yourself because it’s people who shared 99.99% of your DNA, so basically you let’s be honest here, that got the moon for real. 

Elizabeth

80

 

  1. Rail gun
  2. Write a letter to NASA
  3. Write a letter to China
  4. Write a letter to Russia
  5. Write a letter to SpaceX
  6. Ask [Redacted 1] to ask Elon Musk
  7. Ask [Redacted 2] to ask Elon Musk
  8. Ask [Redacted 2] to get me invited to a party where Elon Musk will be so I can ask them
  9. Travel back in time and kidnap Wener Von Braun to recruit him to my space program instead
  10. Send item back in time and hide it in Apollo 11 landing module
  11. Start my own rocketry company
  12. Does EU have a space program? Write to them.
  13. Get really good at Kerbal Space Program until I can start my own rocketry company
  14. Give money to KSP devs and see if they can make a real rocketry company
  15. Cannon (won't work because escape velocity)
  16. Cannot on ISS.
  17. Invent teleportation myself
  18. Fund invention of teleportation
  19. Develop psychic powers, steal secret of teleportation from someone who already knows.
  20. Ask for ideas on twitter
  21. Ask for ideas on FB
  22. Ask for ideas on LW
  23. Ask for ideas on my blog
  24. Ask [Redacted 3] in particular, he seems good at interacting with the physical world.
  25. Recruit top rocketry dude at Space X to my own program
  26. Have child, raise to be rocket scientist, polgar style.
  27. Kick it really hard
  28. Bring enough moon rocks down to Earth to make it count as "The Moon", walk to it and place item
  29. blow up moon, let dust settle on Earth, making it "the Moon", place anywhere
  30. Drone but better
  31. Hang around by NASA campus and make small talk till I find someone who can help.
  32. Find the guy who wrote the moon jujitsu class poem, maybe he has ideas.
  33. Portal gun
  34. Convince DARPA/IARPA to fund teleportation to the moon
  35. Endow a prize to whoever gets item to the moon, see what turns up.
  36. Convince someone else to endow said prize.
  37. Get 3D printer on moon, send information to spin up my item.
  38. Invent nanobots, send to moon on a spaceship, have them assemble item.
  39. Invent flying nanobots, let them get to the moon themselves, assemble item.
  40. Flying nanobots carry item to moon.
  41. Get EM to build space elevator, launch from top
  42. Get NASA to build space elevator...
  43. Get China to build space elevator...
  44. Get EU to build space elevator...
  45. Get Russia to build space elevator...
  46. Start moon tourism company, include item as payload
  47. Start prison colony on moon, send item up as payload
  48. Plant idea to place item on moon in EM's head, Inception style.
  49. Convince China US is about to do it, see if they beat us to it
  50. Will that cannon from Moon is a Harsh Mistress work in reverse? Seems like it could, especially if it was a guided missile instead of a rock.

:::

[-]jacobjacob10

Congrats on almost completing your first Babble challenge! Though as the gamemaster, I am obliged to point out that combinatorial variations (like #41-46, or #2-5) don't count, so you still have a few to go to reach 50. 

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8Elizabeth
I reject your reality and substitute my own. More constructively, I am confused as to the model behind rules. There are two main confusions: * Rejecting variants requires pruning, and this is purely a babble challenge, so why don't variants count? I think coaxing variants out is pretty integral to getting my brain in a babble mode. * Why do some things that clearly won't work (bird in a space suit) count while others (watching Tiger King) don't?
2jacobjacob
Combinatorial variations don't count because they're too easy. They're an algorithm for writing a program to complete any babble challenge for you, but without actually generating much creativity. Put another way, I can come up with one babble, and then move into a different mode, and start generating combinatorial substitutions. (Perhaps it's not different, but just strictly easier.) This feels less like "striking at the enemy" to me. So, if you need do some combinatorial variations to "keep the wheels spinning": consider batching many combinatorial variations into one entry, or just going to 60 or 70 in total to compensate for the variations. You don't need to literally prevent yourself from writing them down.  Boring answer: I have an intuition about what helps me push the boundaries of my creativity, and also some explicit models about how this works. I try to make the rules of the challenge to track that intuition, even though I haven't been able to make it fully legible yet.  When I write "bird in a space suit" my brain is at least trying to gesture in the direction of the problem. You could also imagine works of fiction where this is a way of getting to the moon. (And I think that accomplished fiction authors likely have high levels of creativity, in a way where gradient descenting a bit towards what they're doing seems good.) When I write "watch Tiger King", however, it doesn't feel like I'm even trying to do the challenge. 

Alex Vermillion

80

Started at 22:46:30

Finished at 23:24:25

 1. Chemical combustion rocketship

2. Solar sail rocketship

3. Interplanetary tether

4. Slingshot / Materials based launcher

5. Catapult / Tension based launcher

6. Cannon / Propulsion based launcher

7. Very large balloon (get to space, then release material)

8. A gun with A LOT of bullets (there is a problem with launch mass though)

9. Acoustic launcher (Similar to "Acoustic levitator" ideas)

10. Untethered tower built up from surface (the "Minecraft" technique)

11. Runway + plane + no air resistance in space

12. Jumping / Single self-contained force at surface@13. Stored tension (think of a two-state button)

14. Trebuchet / Counterweight based launcher

15. Small rocket + gravitational assist from Earth

16. Railgun / Magnetic based launcher

17. One of those things that spins rafts in lakes on its side spinning at 10,000% speed

18. VERY sturdy container and a lot of bombs

19. Harnessing hurricane/tornado energy using pulleys and tethers

20. A very high pulley, a light shuttle, and a heavy weight very high up

21. A very high pulley, a light shuttle, and a tether tied to a very fast car

22. A very high pulley, a light shuttle, and a motor that turns very fast

23. The galaxy's largest teeter-totter and a heavy weight

24. A lot of precisely arranged repelling magnets packed very closely together and an astronaut with no pacemaker

25. A mechanism that can transfer energy from a flyweight to a pole and a mechanism that can translate rotational energy into upward movement

26. A bullet train pointed up

27. "The sore arm", a terribly high ladder (made more feasible as a train rail that extends upwards all the way) (say goodbye to trees)

28. A steep decline, a high incline, 4 sets of frictionless bearings, and a skateboard

29. A **very** large flashlight

30. Every person in the world working together (thanks to levers or something equivalent in moving force a distance to coordinate)

31. A mountain, a trampoline at the Earth's core, an aerodynamic shuttle in a wingsuit that can jump straight down towards the trampoline

32. Bird harnessing machine (ditch them VERY QUICKLY as ballast once you get high enough up to push yourself into space)

33. Someone throwing a baseball straight down VERY fast

34. Portals

35. Divine intervention

36. A counterweight system set up with the help of a group already on the moon

37. A rope tied to the moon's surface that you can grab onto

38. The bouncy ball formally known as the Eastern Hemisphere

39. A very strong laser pointed down (can be equivalent to a hot air balloon if it's a good enough laser, but different in that the material is not part of the craft)

40. Everyone in the world making a technically/physically/culturally improbable human pyramid

41. Someone throwing a shuttle straight up VERY fast (See 33)

42. A very large magnet on the room and some iron spacesuits

43. Some cheatcodes for the simulation that the universe is in for the purposes of this list item

44. Some large rockets on the other side of the Earth (it gets our object closer to them moon, it just moves the other things)

45. A harpoon gun on the moon and a VERY good aim

46. Matter scanner, radio, and matter replicator (the "hard scifi teleporter" method)

47. A very strong wind (you might need one of those nice bladeless fans)

48. A very strong wave and a sailboat (we're going for escape velocity here)

49. A racecar that can go very fast and a road that happens to be aligned with the moon

50. A balloon under pressure with the soon-to-be-open end pointed straight up in a line that intersects our shuttle and the moon

51. Something with gyroscopes (This is #51, I'm allowed a joke)

Note: For the purposes of this challenge, I largely assumed we are capable of perfect coordination. That is, reaching space = reaching the moon. I understand this is not feasible, but the prompt said "Bird with spacesuit" is fine, so I think I'm in the clear here.

[-]jacobjacob20

Your initial spoiler didn't work, so I edited it to insert the spoiler protection. 

Kudos on your submission! 

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