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Calculating Pi on the Moon (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-10 21:51:40
Edited:
2025-06-11 09:45:49
Imported:
2025-06

Content

Yes. We're going to calculate pi on the Moon. I know. Look, I'm as bewildered as you.

The short version is: a company is letting me run some code on a Lunar Rover and I'm using it to calculate pi. Because of course. For the full story check out the early release video. I'll set it live tomorrow (Wednesday) sometime.

The thing is, I need to run a Kickstarter to cover all the extra cost incurred for having my code on the mission. But I wanted to make two very important points here before I mention it publicly:- As my patreon supporters you should absolutely get priority boarding. As you'll see in the video: people get their own lunar value of pi in order of signing up (within each tier). So here is your heads up if you want to lock in a spot. It can always be cancelled later if you want.- Also, you are already supporting me, so you shouldn't have to pay money into the Kickstarter as well. I am going to add all patreon supporter names to the Flight Support Crew. You're welcome to 'pay for an upgrade' and join the Kickstarter of course. But you don't have to. I've not mentioned this elsewhere as I don't want people to think I'm using the mission to make extra money on patreon. This is just a quiet little perk between you and me.

That's it! We're going to the Moon to calculate pi. My career is ridiculous. And I owe it to you fine people for supporting me and making it possible. Thank you so much.

PS This is the kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/standupmaths/moon-pi-were-going-to-calculate-on-the-moon

PPS Once I finish a few things, the main mission site will be pi.space

Files

We're going to calculate π on the Moon! (And need your help.)

Support the mission, become a Mathstronaut and get you own bit of Lunar Pi here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/standupmaths/moon-pi-were-going-to-calculate-on-the-moon For more details, and the teacher sign-up, head on over to https://pi.space/ Thanks to the great people at Astrobotic Technology. Here is the latest news about the Griffin-1 mission: https://www.astrobotic.com/astrolabs-flip-rover-joins-astrobotics-griffin-1-to-the-moon/ Yes, I thought of the joke "Houston, we have a maths problem". Huge thanks to my Patreon supporters. They keep me in orbit. https://www.patreon.com/standupmaths CORRECTIONS - None yet, let me know if you spot anything! Filming and editing by Alex Genn-Bash Written and performed by Matt Parker Produced by Nicole Jacobus Music by Howard Carter Design by Simon Wright and Adam Robinson Realistic space background by the SUM large black piece of fabric. MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician Website: http://standupmaths.com/

Comments

Kyle Hampton

Signed up before even reading the whole description. Apparently I have FOMOON (Fear Of Missing Out On Nmoon)

martin shoosterman

Pledged 11£ before watching the video, but then once I learned I’m getting actual cpu cycles on the moon dedicated to me, I changed to the £111 pledge.

Steve Taylor

Imagine using the actual oblate spheroid shape of the moon enclosed snugly in a cuboid.

Bret Scofield

Silly and fun. Also, the Kickstarter reward has a small typo: "They will otherwise me given to school students for free." I think it should 'be' given.

Blue

Makes me wonder if one could have the rover do the Monte Carlo simulation using an image it takes of Earth; ie, "Is random-pixel inside the visible Earth-disk?" (Never-you-mind that the Earth's profile is not a perfect circle.) Can the rover even take a suitably-high-rez photo? Would Earth being partially in shadow be a problem ... or a *challenge*? ... All things considered, precision would likely be so horrible that this would be a bit wasteful of the opportunity. *shrug*

Hamish Barker

Version control is easier than in the Apollo era, when you would have to have your (assembly language no stinkin' python!) code woven into magnetic core memory rope and potted in epoxy...

Steve Taylor

I'm in, using my married name "Steve Chantry-Taylor" since "Steve Taylor" is too ambiguous.

J. S. B.

YES! I am in!! Is this where the next Pi-by-hand calculation is going to take place? :) Also, I need that outfit. Last edit: signed up for the kickstarter as well even though we don’t need to! I absolutely support the nerdy activities of this channel.

J. S. B.

FOMOON = Best acronym ever!

Gregor Shapiro

Missed a space between I & owe in the penultimate sentence (prior to the post script) π

Bryn

Moon pi

Dan Oberste

First marshmallow on the Moon?

Gilad Teller

Technically, most recent lunar landers reached the moon. They just didn't stop in time (aka "lithobraking on the surface").

Marco Ferrari

Ridiculous!!! Count me in, flight (Matt obviously need to be our Flight Director)

Jan-Willem Markus

It feels a bit pointless, though. I'd be more happy with a raw noise from space to seed a RNG, or something. You can't ever have enough random numbers.

standupmaths

Fixed! Thanks. This post is all about space.

standupmaths

Thanks so much! I think Moon Pi will be such an event, I might move the next Pi By Hand back a year to give me more prep time for that. I really want to break the record next time. Hopefully this Kickstarter is over-funded and we use the surplus for long division paper.

Maarten Daalder

If the lander lithobreaks, will you use a photo of the impact crater to calculate Pi? Just hedging my bets here...

Jonathan Dugan

in the video, as you walk through calc in increasing dimensions, it occurs to me, is this possibly the first time we've run a simulation on the moon? granted a very simple one of a circle/sphere, but a simulation nonetheless. not only pi, but also a lunar-run simulation?

The Dean

Congrats on smashing through the funding goal in record time! No other project to calculate pi on the moon has ever funded faster!

Rohan Sawhney

Well that went fast! Hope you have a blast (only by the engines at launch tho) through this whole thing!

Steve D

Yes, we are off to the moon!

J. S. B.

We *did* go through a lot of paper. So exciting that you’ve surpassed the goal already!! I am actually not surprised. Please let me know when the next PBH happens, because I really want to get out of the US. LOL PS: ALL OF CALIFORNIA IS NOT ON FIRE.

Danny

I love the idea of using the moon as a random number generator. But as a method of calculating pi, I feel like it's "moony" enough. I'm guessing you've already looked at it and there isn't enough access to any other sensor data to calculate pi, but just throwing out some ideas... I know you said we couldn't drive the rover around the moon to measure the circumference or anything like that. But would it be possible to use the path driven and reference against other things like the location of the sun/earth and use that to calculate pi? Or perhaps use images of the earth? Or how about measuring the orbit of the moon around the earth ? Or even more ridiculous, how about measuring the number of rotation of the tires of the rover and then borrowing time from a telescope to track the distance it travels during that time. :-)

‘‘CK’’ wiťh manual curly quotes

[copied from my YouTube comment] The "Gigamoon" image is 1.3Gpix which is 32,613 by 40,766 — not equal? that's a red flag yes, leaving "space" around the moon for artistic reasons — the actual moon within that image is 8.7K in either width or height. 8,735 x 8,733 pixels to be precise. If the moon is 3,474km in diameter — a figure you could derive from first principles via a telescope and a laser-bounce timing reading, if we're allowed to take the known speed of light as a given — then at best, in the centre of the image and the point of the moon closest to earth, that's 2.5 pixels per kilometre, or 400 metres per pixel. But it's not that bad — if the rover travels along the 90º E/W meridian that divides the near and far side of the moon, it also gets 400 metres per pixel. As long as we know the starting and ending point of a straight and flat kilometre of travel, we could deduce a lot about the surface of the sphere and use that to calculate pi, with A = 4πr². This would need some coordinate geometry that I'm not too hot on, but I'd hope that averaging a few short straight trips, and laying onto a photo of 8.7K at best guess to the nearest pixel, could get a value for π between 3 and 4. You could even include all the straight-line-but-hilly travel, and assume that the altitude changes will cancel each other out with enough sample data.

‘‘CK’’ wiťh manual curly quotes

I did a post just now working out that our best amateur astrophotographers have created moon images of 8,735x8,733 pixels — so if my calculations are correct, 400 metres per pixel, in certain (but multiple) circumstances. Check my comment for more details.

‘‘CK’’ wiťh manual curly quotes

Wow that's pretty god-like, "pi in the stars". I'd rather something a bit more "down to earth", well, down to an earth orbit at least. I like Blue's idea. I think that it's amazing how our cave-man ancestors might have only had two perfect circles in nature — the moon and the sun. And the sun is too hard to look at. So maybe the Earth is another one — just look at it, assume it's a circle, and ask "is that pi?" Draw a square around it and measure the pixels inside the square for "space" or "not space". If it's between 3.1 and 3.2, then the Earth is a circle … and NOT FLAT!

‘‘CK’’ wiťh manual curly quotes

OK, the same artist Andrew McCarthy, has other images (like First Quarter of Luna) that have moons of 14,000 pixels … and the one I measured earlier was labelled "300Mpix" not 1.3 gigapixels. That comes out to about 36K width but halve it if half of it is space. This then comes out to 200m per pixel worst case for best position, or 100m per pixel if it's best case for best position. Anyway I like the visual element of this — anybody can verify it. We can try it out with any previous rovers too. And just to set expectations — Apollo 17 travelled 7.6 kilometres from the spacecraft. Not achieved in a straight line but that's measured in a straight line, so this is useful!

Blue

"our cave-man ancestors might have only had two perfect circles in nature — the moon and the sun" ... If you count the Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse, that's three. :) ... Y'know, a cool way to calculate pi using those cave-man circles would be to measure the sum of the angles (in radians) in the triangle determined by the lunar rover, ESA's Solar Orbiter, and, say, Matt's phone.

Reed Bowman

So, given that at this point you're closing on $500k raised, with quite some time still to run on the Kickstarter, I have a semi-serious question: Given the propensity of a lot of space hardware to end up outlasting its nominal mission duration by large factors... if this rover lives on for a while, can you use the extra hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep paying for downlink time to calculate pi to more digits? Or maybe even calculate tau?

Parrik

Too bad I missed this - I'd have loved to support this :A

Ian foster

Love this, and soo happy to be involved even at this late hour. But... missed opportunity to run the classic beginner coding program in any programming language "Hello, world!". Imagine. "Hello, world!" from the Moon...