[edsheppa]

Thanks, but there's no explanation of how the moon stabilizes the Earth's tilt. Perhaps it's too complicated. But curious that Venus and Mars happen to not be extraordinarily tilted just at this time. Just more randomness I guess.

BTW, your reference has an interesting proposal that the Moon may once have been a mere 20K from the Earth. By my calculation that corresponds to an orbital period of about 0.35 days. Obviously then the tides would have been much larger (the Moon being so much closer) but also would have gone "backward" relative to how they go today. (IOW they would propogate around the Earth faster than the Earth's rotation.) My intuition is that in that circumstance the Moon would have been attracted toward the Earth by tidal friction - the opposite effect of today with the Moon eventually crashing into the Earth. I'd conclude that, unless the Earth's day was very much shorter than today's, the Moon was never so close.

[NukeMan]

You are right! The tides were huge, and the day was short (a couple of hours). Gimme awhile and I can find the reference for this. IIRC, the moon is receding from the earth at about 2 inches (woo hoo!) a year.

[NukeMan]

Try this ref for an explanation of the what earth would be like without the moon. Written for intelligent layman's perspective:

Here