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How many cups of sugar does it take to get to the moon?
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Let's say you can fly and do not need a space craft to carry you out of Earth's garvitational orbit. Let's also say you weigh 155 pounds (70 kg). Finally, let's say that your flight is completely powered by sugar.
1 cup of sugar (16 tablespoons) has 800 calories (kilocalories to be technically correct).
1 kilocalorie = 4.18 Joules.
To get into low-earth orbit, one needs 32 MagaJoules of Energy per kilogram of weight to counterbalance gravity.
To get into geostationary orbit, one needs 53 MegaJoules of Energy per kilogram of weight to counterbalance gravity.
So to get to the moon, you need just slightly more energy than it would be required to get into geostationary orbit, and momentum will get you to the moon (if you are aimed correctly at it), and the moon's gravity will pull you the rest of the way when you are close enough.
So, here's the math:
70kg times 53 million Joules = 3.71 GigaJoules (3.71 billion Joules)
3,710,000,000 Joules divided by 4.18 Joules per calorie = 887,559,808.6 calories
887,559,808.6 calories divided by 800 calories per cup sugar = 1,109,449.76 cups of sugar.
So to get to the moon by yourself on pure sugar power, you would need one million, one hundred and nine thousand, four hundred and forty nine cups and twelve tablespoons of raw sugar.
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The way the original answer was phrased completely misled from the more complete answer above. Once you have escaped the earth's gravitational pull (first of all, you would have to be the neutral dead zone and would be most of the way to the moon), then there are no gravitational forces (or drag) in play. It would take a minimal amount of energy to push you beyond that theoretical tipping point and into the sphere of influence of the moon's gravitational field, which would eventually do the rest of the job. I didn't say it would be a comfortable landing or a controlled landing, but you'd get there. Depending on your speed and direction, you also could take a few million orbits of the moon before you get there. Geeez I hate hypothetical meaningles questions.
The Genius
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all of you people on this page are so stupid....Ive been studying this for years...it takes about 4 1/2 cups of sugar to get to the moon....................and 4 acid tabs.
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Its 3 and a half according to goofy in the goofy movie
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This is the true answer. The only reason this question is being asked is because of the goofy movie.
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To solve this problem it would only take a small amount of time to realize that there is a very viable solution to the problem. All you would have to do is convert the sugar into ethanol, using sugar cane, and then design the space vessel to burn ethanol then the only problem that will arise, is converting cups of sugar to gallons of ethanol....easy as pie...