system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If the moon is pulling away from the Earth at approximately 1-2 inches each year, how long would it take for it to lose orbit with us? Also, what affects would that have on the Earth?
gpt
It never will. 

The moon is being accelerated in its orbit by the tidal bulge in the ocean, which, because of the rotation of the earth, is always a little bit ahead of the moon, which produces an acceleration of the moon in its orbit, and a deceleration of the rotation of the earth. This raises the moon into a slightly higher orbit, and increases the length of a day on earth. Eventually, the length of a day on earth would be equal to the orbital period of the moon, in other words we would become tidally locked with the moon, having one side of the earth always facing it and the other side always facing away.

It would take about 50 billion years for this process to complete, at which time the moon would orbit the earth once every 47 days, and a day on earth would be 47 days long. However, the expansion of the sun will boil off earth's oceans in about 2 billion years, ending the process.