The International Space Station (ISS)

Toroid

Founding Member
I think a rock launched from one of those things would suffice. But what the hell, in for an antipenny in for an antipound.

This is a version of what an Abrams tank does. It fires a 120mm projectile in a sabot that peels away from a depleted uranium penetrator rod. 20 pounds of inert hurt traveling in excess of 5K fps.

The Pentagon’s New Super Weapon Is Basically A Weaponized Meteor Strike

The Pentagon’s New Super Weapon Is Basically A Weaponized Meteor Strike

In 2013, the U.S. Air Force 846th Test Squadron and civilian researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory successfully test-fired a kinetic energy projectile, a tungsten-rich shell moving at 3,500 feet-per-second — more than three times faster than the speed of sound — on a specialized track at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. More recently, the Pentagon has tested the Navy electromagnetic rail gun’s hypervelocity projectiles with the help of conventional U.S. Army howitzers; the Navy hopes the completed cannon will be able to launch shells at up to 4,500 mph, six times the speed of sound.

Explosives may be dazzling in their destructiveness, but there’s an elegant, almost Newtonian lethality to the kinetic energy projectile, explains Matt Weingart, a weapons program development manager at Lawrence Livermore.

“The classic way of delivering hurt against a target has been to pack a lot of chemical explosive into a container of some kind, a barrel or a cannonball or steel bomb,” Weingart told Task & Purpose in a phone interview. “The violence comes from the chemical explosive inside that bomb sending off a blast wave, followed by the fragments of the bomb case. But the difference with kinetic energy projectiles is that the warhead arrives at the target moving very, very fast — the energy is there to propel those fragments without the use of a chemical explosive to accelerate them. The more mass, the more violence.”
Does a projectile traveling that fast break the sound barrier? o_O
 

Toroid

Founding Member
I think a rock launched from one of those things would suffice. But what the hell, in for an antipenny in for an antipound.

This is a version of what an Abrams tank does. It fires a 120mm projectile in a sabot that peels away from a depleted uranium penetrator rod. 20 pounds of inert hurt traveling in excess of 5K fps.

The Pentagon’s New Super Weapon Is Basically A Weaponized Meteor Strike

The Pentagon’s New Super Weapon Is Basically A Weaponized Meteor Strike

In 2013, the U.S. Air Force 846th Test Squadron and civilian researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory successfully test-fired a kinetic energy projectile, a tungsten-rich shell moving at 3,500 feet-per-second — more than three times faster than the speed of sound — on a specialized track at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. More recently, the Pentagon has tested the Navy electromagnetic rail gun’s hypervelocity projectiles with the help of conventional U.S. Army howitzers; the Navy hopes the completed cannon will be able to launch shells at up to 4,500 mph, six times the speed of sound.

Explosives may be dazzling in their destructiveness, but there’s an elegant, almost Newtonian lethality to the kinetic energy projectile, explains Matt Weingart, a weapons program development manager at Lawrence Livermore.

“The classic way of delivering hurt against a target has been to pack a lot of chemical explosive into a container of some kind, a barrel or a cannonball or steel bomb,” Weingart told Task & Purpose in a phone interview. “The violence comes from the chemical explosive inside that bomb sending off a blast wave, followed by the fragments of the bomb case. But the difference with kinetic energy projectiles is that the warhead arrives at the target moving very, very fast — the energy is there to propel those fragments without the use of a chemical explosive to accelerate them. The more mass, the more violence.”
I worded the last post poorly. I meant would those projectiles create a sonic boom?
 

Kchoo

At Peace.
I worded the last post poorly. I meant would those projectiles create a sonic boom?
Anything traveling faster than the speed of sound creates a continuous wake, so yes, anyone standing behind the traveling object can potentially hear a boom if they are in its wake.... the target will not hear it coming, which is a real advantage of flying above Mach 1.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I worded the last post poorly. I meant would those projectiles create a sonic boom?

First read about mass drivers in Popular Science in the '70s. Using the Moon and it's resources to build ships in deep space to explore the Solar system makes sense. But as human beings we would naturally consider it's potential to kill one another with.

I imagine something like that would be hypersonic and would impact long before a sonic boom or any other noise would arrive. Probably makes a series of sonic booms but that might not be noticed. People in London during the Blitz would say they could hear the V1s coming (which is why they were called buzz bombs) and knew that when the motor cut out they were about to hit. Low & slow. Propeller driven fighters could catch them and hit them with their wingtips to destabilize them. The V2s actually made a suborbital hop very much like Alan Shepherd would eventually do. Witnesses said that you heard nothing until the warhead impacted.

Navy rail guns are the only example I can think of that are examples of 'mass driver.' Maybe maglev trains would be also? Never gave them much thought but it sounds similar.

In context, go grab a .30-06 hunting rifle. It'll fire a 150 grain projectile roughly 3000 fps. A pound is 7000 grains.

US Navy ships aren't primarily gunfighters anymore but the standard 5" deck gun in use for years would fire about a 30 pound projectile at roughly the same speed.

The rail guns they're producing are taking a projectile of roughly the same size and sending it along at 8200 fps. In technical terms that's 'shit-hot'.

USA Electromagnetic Rail Gun Proposal - NavWeaps
 

Toroid

Founding Member
Astronaut Aboard ISS Snaps Amazing Picture of Soyuz Rocket Launch - Coast to Coast AM
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a breathtaking image of a Soyuz rocket on its way to deliver new crew members to the ISS. Christina Koch snapped the photo yesterday as the vessel was in the midst of the second stage of its launch and subsequently posted the awesome sight on her Twitter account. Aboard the Soyuz were American astronaut Jessica Meir, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori of the United Arab Emirates.

When the rocket docks with the ISS, Meir and Skripochka will reportedly join Koch and the rest of the space station crew for an extended stay and Almansoori is set to return to Earth in about a week. What made the photograph particularly poignant to Koch is that she trained to be an astronaut alongside Meir and, as such, marveled that the moment showed "what it looks like from the Space Station when your best friend achieves her lifelong dream to go to space."
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nivek

As Above So Below
NASA launches 8,000-pound Cygnus capsule filled with supplies including manchego cheese, chocolate, fresh fruit, and candy to satisfy cravings of three astronauts stationed on the ISS

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A cargo ship rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday, carrying candy and cheese to satisfy the astronauts' cravings. Northrop Grumman launched its Cygnus capsule from the Virginia seashore at 3.21pm and the nearly 4-ton (8,000-pound) shipment - containing more than 7,500 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory and its crew - should arrive Tuesday. Besides the usual experiments and gear, the capsule holds cheddar and manchego cheeses, fresh fruit and vegetables, chocolate and three kinds of gummy candy expressly requested by the three station astronauts: Skittles, Hot Tamales, and Mike and Ike's.

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nivek

As Above So Below
So is this the first time Skittles went into space?...

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