system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 why the moon is moving 1.5 inches away each year

As a layperson, I’d expect that it would get closer to earth each year but I’ve just seen that it is moving away. How come?
gpt
It is because of the tides.

The moon is tidally locked to the Earth, but the earth isn't tidally locked to the moon.

The moon always shows the same side to the Earth, but not the other way round.

This means that the tides actually transfer some energy from earth to the moon.

The extra energy pushes the moon into a higher and higher orbit.

In theory this will continue until Earth and moon are mutually tidally locked to each other at which point the Moons orbit around Earth will decay and the moon will move closer and closer again until it gets too close, gets pulled apart by tidal forces and smeared into a ring.

However this process is all so slow that the will become a red giant and destroy the earth and the moon long before that.