• tiramichu@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    It’s actually nothing to do with mixing mentos and coke but just funding the mission via corporate sponsorship

  • Furbag@pawb.social
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    15 hours ago

    Does this still count as a solid-fuel booster or is this some new science shit I’m too dumb and/or drunk to understand?

  • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The proportions are way off, you’re never going to reach Mars this way. You only need 1 mentos per 1 - 1.5 liter of coke

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      This made me wonder, what is the fuel and oxidizer in a coke/mentos reaction?

      To me, it seems like coke is the fuel, and mentos is the oxidizer.

      Or would you say that coke is a monopropellant and the mentos is just the igniter?

      • Zer0_F0x@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The fuel is CO2 gas within the coke that gets rapidly released by the surface texture of the mentos.

        Since the mentos doesn’t interact chemically it’s not an oxidizer, it interacts mechanically though so it acts as a turbopump maybe?

    • cerothem@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      That’s the trick, it’s actually about advertising to increase the total NASA budget so that they can actually get some space travel done

    • 🍉 DrRedOctopus 🐙🍉@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      you need about 18000km/s delta V to go from Earth’s surface to Mars’s surface.

      A mentos+coke gets about a couple meters per second delta V.

      no, you cannot use 18 million bottles, because of the rocket equation

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        no, you cannot use 18 million bottles

        Not with that attitude, you can’t!

        because of the rocket equation

        “Equation esmation!”

        – whichever idiot Trump is undoubtedly about to appoint as head of NASA regardless of whether or not he is legally authorized to do so

      • null@lemmy.org
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        1 day ago

        This is the type of thing a science teacher throws up on the projector as a joke before transitioning to the actual chemical reactions going on during takeoff now that they have the kids’ attention with something funny and relatable.

      • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        I know what coke and mentos do together. That has been mentioned plenty in this thread. My comment was going for a different take, a more literal interpretation of the image, but that seems to have missed its target.

  • Rudee@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Any r/theydidthemath refugees around to calculate the amount of thrust you would receive from something like this?

    • 🍉 DrRedOctopus 🐙🍉@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      the questions are the specific impulse of those engines, then Delta-V.

      a mentos and coke can reach about 3m height gayser, therefore initial nozzle velocity is 7.67m/s, and a 2l bottle lasts about 2 seconds. resulting in a ISP of 0.7822 seconds.

      for comparison, the shuttle solid rocket booster has an isp of 250 seconds, a normal liquid rocket engine is about 450 seconds (the more the better).

      plugging in the weights of the Saturn 1, gives a delta V of [drumroll] 18.6 m/s… enough to accelerate a giant rocket to highway speeds.

      can we make it bigger to get to orbit? nope, the rocket equation won’t let you with that specific implied. sorry

  • zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon came up with such an idea in front of all the lead scientists at SpaceX.