Raymond Patnesky, age 10, of McD Penna, for his question.,

Will the moon rockets upset our tides?

Can you imagine a rocket as big as our whole world? Of course not. A rocket to the moon will be less than a billionth, billionth part of the earth. Our moon is not exactly a pygmy. It is one quarter the size of the earth. To the moon, our biggest rockets would be no more than a sizable building landing upon the earth.

The moon controls our tides with the pull of its gravity and every obUect, of course, has its own built in gravity. A rocket will add a tiny, tiny bit to the moon's gravity   but not enough to upset our tides. We might compare it to a little pebble on a mountain. Even a thousand rockets are no upset to the moon's mighty gravity, at least not enough to pull our tides out of shape.