Friday is Math Day

We just had a customer email us to ask if the Nemoid Foot Pump (for his Morpho) could be used to inflate Astro as well. The small (packing) pump we made to inflate Astro and other sleeping pads is called the Disco Pad Pump and the customer wanted to know if he could eliminate redundancy in the pumps.

The reason the same pump isn't used in both applications is because, relatively speaking, Morpho airbeams are a low volume/high air pressure (8 psi) product and Astro is a high volume/low air pressure product (0.7 psi). If you use the Nemoid footpump to try to inflate Astro, it would be pretty frustrating and slow because the volume of air that the Nemoid pushes out versus Disco.

It would be like trying to inflate this giant pool toy with this little bike pump.

Since sometimes math is louder than pictures or words, we did some quick calculations here on the volume output of the Nemoid Foot Pump versus the Disco Pad Pump. Roughly speaking, Disco (141 cubic inches) outputs 3.6 times more air than the Nemoid Foot Pump (39 cubic inches). Besides other key differences that involve materials, construction, and weight, the lower volume output alone on the Nemoid Foot Pump would be mean a pretty slow inflation time for the Astro. You can't use a Disco Pump to inflate Morpho airbeams because this simple design won't allow you to generate enough pressure to make the airbeams structural.

-Connie