This morning, I was listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson's Stark Talk Radio Show as I was driving to the YMCA. One of the topics Tyson and his panel (active astronaut Mike Massimino and comedian Chuck Nice) discussed was farting in space. Now this is something I knew was possible once I heard it, but I'd never thought about it--it turns out you can propel yourself across the International Space Station by farting!
How you may ask? Well via Newton's Third Law of course! Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; ergo, by ejecting gas (an action) with an X amount of force, you can accelerate your body (a mass) with the ejection's reaction. That's exactly how rockets and balloons work! Think about it. Rockets expel gas at high velocity out one direction so that they can go up at a high velocity in the other direction! However, because a rocket is so huge and a gas molecule so small, rockets use up a lot of gas to move. Note that non-chemical rockets, such as VASIMR, do not face this problem since they do not use chemical reactions for power. I'll explain why tomorrow!
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