Video: Could you fart your way to the moon?

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My brother-in-law could fart his way to another galaxy.

3 Likes

Dang, I love science.

It would have been a little more informative/ridiculous if he’d done the math for an ignited fart, versus one expelled by muscle power. Hell, run that flatus through an ion engine, and you might have… (still nowhere enough thrust to go anyplace)

This is where someone makes a reference to “The Eternal Flame” from that obscure movie, Freaked…

Starting from orbit is cheating. I want to see him climb out of the gravity well.

It’s only a slight increase. The thrust from burning something works because of the huge change in volume from the fuel to the combustion products, causing the exhaust to expand rapidly and accelerate, giving the huge exit velocity that produces the large thrust. Our farts are already gas though, so burning them wouldn’t produce a large change in volume and hence velocity.

If you burn methane (the main component of farts) and oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water vapor, you only have a 20% increase in volume, so igniting the farts would only give you a 20% increase in velocity. So instead of 3 m/s you’d have 3.6 m/s.

He didn’t even do the math correctly for starting from orbit. He should have calculated the required delta-v for the maneuver and then calculated how much time it would take to get that delta-v through constant (or daily) peeing or farting.

Perhaps if one starts with the proper fuel…

2 Likes

aw yeah.

'dy’ever see Squeal of Death?

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[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfIehCrO4Zs&feature=youtu.be[/video]

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