A comet follows a long, narrow orbit around and around the sun. A meteor is usually a random roamer through space with no special orbit. For most of its orbit, the comet is slow for a space traveler, though it reaches terrific speeds when its orbit swings it close around the sun.
The meteor, on an average, is generally a faster traveler txzan a comet and may cruise along up to 25 miles a second. Both the comet and the meteor, however, are members of the Solar System.
How high could I jump on the moon?
A lunar camping trip calls for some bulky equipment, for you must take along all the oxygen you plan to breathe. You also will need all your food, brought from faraway earth, plus every drop of water you needed for washing and drinking. But on the moon you would be able to break every record made on the earth by the Olympic champions in running and weight lifting, disc throwing and jumping.
The height you can jump on the moon depends upon the height you can jump on the earth, The same holds true for your prowess in lifting and throwing, running and all other athletics. You simply take your records of physical achievments on earth and multiply them by six. If you can jump four feet high on earth, you can jump 24 feet high on the moon.
It is fun to imagine a lunar camping trip. Of course, your food and water, oxygen and other necessary equipment Would be rather bulky, but every six pounds on earth weighs only one pound on the moon. This also applies to your own weight if you weigh 96 pounds on earth, you weigh only 16 pounds on the moon.
If you could jump 24 feet high on the earth, you would almost certainly break a few bones when you landed on the hard ground. But this would not happen on the moon. Your fall would be slower and less severe. You would have time to grab at something on the way down or make a turn in the air and then land softly on your feet without even stubbing a toe.
While hiking on the moon you would meet many obstacles such as ridges and mountains, steep walled craters and wide crevasses.
But the latest scientific evidence, gathered from radio waves, suggests that 90% of the lunar surface is smooth and perhaps easy to walk upon. Under good walking conditions on earth you could walk perhaps four miles an hour. On the moon, the same effort would take you 24 miles. At this speed, non stop, you could walk around the moon’s equator in one hundred hours.
This brings up the problem of the lunar day which is equal to about two earth weeks. After twelve hours effort, you would need to sleep, as you do on earth. But you would have to sleep in bright daylight and on the sunlit side of the moon the temperature may be hot enough to boil water.
The merry antics of a lunar camping trip are, of course, possible because of the moon is light gravity. Our muscles are used to coping with earths gravity, which is six times stronger. After a few months of lunar living, we might adjust to the lighter gravity and return home only one sixth as strong as we were when we left.