How many balls of string are needed to reach the moon?

Question

How many balls of string are needed to reach the moon?

Answer 1

depens how big the balls of string are

Answer 2

Just one really big one.

I couldn't resist, just for fun.

How big a ball?

Assume some fairly thin string that is only 1/100 of an inch in diameter when tightly wound.  Your ball would be 11 feet, 10 inches in diameter.  You might think it should be bigger, but we are generally very bad at estimating cubic measurements.  

This doesn't consider the fact that even a tightly wound ball of string will have spaces in it, so the ball might be as big as 12 or 13 feet in diameter.  Also keep in mind that there is no kind of string which could hold up its own weight at that distance.

Edit: Oops! Somebody thumbed me.  Okay, speaking of balls, tell me why.  If I've said something wrong, I'll gladly delete my answer.

Answer 3

Lots!

Answer 4

Avg Distance to moon = 238,857 miles

=1,261,164,698 feet

Avg ball of string = 300 feet

So you'd need, 4,203,882 balls of string to reach the moon. Plus a few hundred extra balls for the length taken up by the 4.2 million knots!