I don't imagine the technical issues are all that tough:
The moon always shows the same side of itself to Earth throughout it's orbit, even though the Earth is always revolving much faster "below." An astronaut would just have to time his call when he's positioned opposite the United States. He'd probably light up every cell phone tower in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. No roaming charges, because his home area would be active too.
This is similar to how you would receive the same satellite video from anywhere in the U.S. It's just that the astronaut's satellite cell phone on the moon is calling from 10x further than a geosynchronous (stationary orbit) satellite.
Radio signals (and TV and cell phone calls) travel outward from Earth to the rest of the solar system every day and can be received easily so the reverse is also true. Otherwise the Apollo astronauts would not have been able to communicate with mission control, right?
The phone call would have to be made from the Lunar Lander because you can't hold or dial a cell phone in your helmet, right?
It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. The only thing that I'm unclear about is whether a cell phone's low-wattage radio is powerful enough to reach the earth without using a huge antenna like "Arecibo" in Puerto Rico to hear it.
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I don't imagine the technical issues are all that tough:
The moon always shows the same side of itself to Earth throughout it's orbit, even though the Earth is always revolving much faster "below." An astronaut would just have to time his call when he's positioned opposite the United States. He'd probably light up every cell phone tower in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. No roaming charges, because his home area would be active too.
This is similar to how you would receive the same satellite video from anywhere in the U.S. It's just that the astronaut's satellite cell phone on the moon is calling from 10x further than a geosynchronous (stationary orbit) satellite.
Radio signals (and TV and cell phone calls) travel outward from Earth to the rest of the solar system every day and can be received easily so the reverse is also true. Otherwise the Apollo astronauts would not have been able to communicate with mission control, right?
The phone call would have to be made from the Lunar Lander because you can't hold or dial a cell phone in your helmet, right?
It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. The only thing that I'm unclear about is whether a cell phone's low-wattage radio is powerful enough to reach the earth without using a huge antenna like "Arecibo" in Puerto Rico to hear it.