How many times would you have to fold a piece of paper to reach the moon?

What did Douglas Adams claim was the meaning of life? 42! Turns out that 42 folds will get a wad of paper thick enough to reach the moon! That's assuming that it would be possible to find a piece of paper big enough, and that you have the strength to make those folds.

If you could fold a piece of copier paper 27 times, it would be more than 13km thick. Mt Everest is just over 8.8km tall.

Incredibly, 42 folds would make the wad as thick as the distance from the Earth to the Moon! That's 384,400km.

https://www.cleverlearning.co.uk/foldingPaper.php

The above website offers an Excel workbook for download to help with the mathematics. It also discusses the very real point that the distance between the Earth and the Moon is not constant, but constantly changing.

Ah, the power of doubling!