To better comprehend the magnitude of gravitational force between earth and the moon, pretend gravity is turned off and the pull replaced by the tension in a steel cable joining them. How thick would such a cable née to be? You can estimate the diameter by knowing the tensile strength of steel cable is about 5 x 10^8 N/m. Furthermore, the mass of Earth is 6 x 10^24 kg and the mass of the moon is 7.4 x 10^22 kg. The average Earth-moon distance is 3.8 x 10^8.