Question 1: If a gun was fired near the earth at the right angle and in the right place and at the right speed..would it orbit the earth? Would the orbit decline?
Question 2: Could a space machine gun be an offense weapon for destroying satellites, missiles or spacecraft? Example: A weapons platform can fire off thousands of 22 size bullets at a satellite.. Doesn't this make directed energy weapons, lasers and rail guns seem a little goofy? D from BC
oops...Would the bullet orbit the earth? D from BC
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As others have pointed out it depends on the angles and velocities involved.
And don't forget action/reaction; a gun is a rocket (Google for "reaction pistol"). You fire a bullet _this_ way, you accelerate _that_ way.
Quibble; railguns aren't "directed energy weapons" any more than my .
22 rifle is, they're just fancy guns.Directed energy weapons have the "advantage" that if you miss, your shot is very unlikely to shoot _you_ down on a later orbit.
Also, every bullet you expend not only changes your state of motion but also lessens your total mass, making later course change calculations just that much more complicated. There's an inevitable similar effect from DEWs but it's much feebler per E=mc^2.
Better minds than yours (and mine) have thought about this kind of thing and concluded bullets in space are A Very Bad Idea. One of the reasons everybody got all wound up when the Chinese whacked a satellite* recently was because of all the shrapnel that can't fall down; it's created yet another LEO navigation hazard that will exist for a very long time.
*slight group relevanceMark L. Fergerson
Ignoring atmosphere? Any such launch sets up an ellipse (orbit), parabola, or hyperbola. The last two would escape. In the elliptical case, the point of launch is included in the orbit. The best to hope for is that the point of launch is the perigee. So if you count that last one, then maybe.
With atmosphere, there would always be a force acting opposite to the direction of motion. I haven't worked it out, but I don't think there is a window of angles available, regardless of initial velocity, for an orbit entirely above the atmosphere to result.
I think you need to go google on using guns to reach orbit, though. My bet is this idea has been revisited an inane number of times. Ah... wiki, of course:
Presumes an orbit. So no need to try and answer it.
And that would, of course, move the platform as well. Most likely, in a way you wouldn't want. So plenty of fuel would need to be stored. But I'm more worried about the regularity of the muzzle velocity. My guess is that this wouldn't be sufficiently predictable in actual use to make prediction practical.
???
Jon
Late at night, by candle light, D from BC penned this immortal opus:
From what I know of orbital mechanics you'd have to fire it exactly horizontally, any other angle it'll plow into the earth at one point or another. Not counting air friction and angular displacement it'd make a high elliptic arc and hit you in the ass on the way back.
I've read some idea of throwing chaff (metal particles) at them. At a high enough relative velocity even iron filings may do quite a bit of harm. At the distances involved hitting them with a bullet takes some aiming.
- YD.
-- Remove HAT if replying by mail.
Yes, that's what China is going.
- A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.
No, it would not orbit. Orbital speed is 8km per second. A bit above the speed of a bullet.
The bullets will have limited reach. Forget them.
Rene
Yes...An orbiting platform will want to go in the opposite direction when it's firing. This is predictable and probably wouldn't interfere with targeting. The gun just moves further away. An orbiting machine gun will probably use up thruster fuel to get into weapons range and to maintain an orbit. The thruster fuel usage and orbiting bullets are some of the drawbacks. The bizarre idea would be to have bullets firing at each end to compensate for reaction force.
I'd like to see a NOVA Regular Guns in Space documentary. It's probably going to be too boring for air. Flashy spacy stuff like DEW's and lasers capture more of an audience.. D from BC
I knew I should have spent more time on my post..It's a little vague... Not a gun fired from the surface..but a gun fired in space..Can the bullet be made to orbit at high speed?. But I have a better question from that.. How fast can small objects orbit the earth? D from BC
If by near the earth you mean from within the atmosphere, no, it wouldn't get launched into a stable orbit. It would reenter and burn up or crash back to the surface.
Above the atmosphere, you could fire a projectile horizontally at orbital velocity and get a stable orbit.
See above.
Sure.
*If* it's in an intersecting orbit that gets close to the target. At that point, just dumping a sack of rocks is about as good.Lasers don't have to catch the target, which is a major advantage. Rail guns have always been goofy.
The ideal satellite or missile killer is of course a nuke.
John
feynman 101
martin
"Mike Henry"
** Huh ????A gun will fire just fine under water or in a vacuum.
Only in space - no-one will hear the bang.
...... Phil
D from BC wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
At the right speed,yes.
Of course the orbit would decline.Gravity and air resistance(space is not a total vacuum,even less the closer to the Earth)
For every action,there's an equal and opposite reaction.
those other weapons don't leave all sorts of orbital debris to damage other spacecraft.The missed rounds would be very dangerous to spacecraft.
-- Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net
Or an old Chinese weather satellite. :-(
-- Keith
" snipped-for-privacy@bid.nes" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:
eventually,it will deorbit and reenter.("fall down") Everyone was upset because of the hazards to their boosters and satellites.
-- Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net
"Mike Henry" wrote in news:45fda0ad snipped-for-privacy@newsfeed.slurp.net:
gunpowder contains it's own O2. the "saltpeter" is the oxidizer.
and nobody uses gunpowder anymore(except history buffs with their blackpowder guns),they use smokeless propellant;a combo of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose(double-base).
-- Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net
An Elipse is the limit between a hyperbola and a parabola. A hyperbolic trajectory will escape. A widget in a parabolic trajectory will be fall back to the surface (think artillery shell).
There isn't. Any orbit must contain the point of last acceleration. A rifle shooting a bullet into an elliptical orbit shoots itself. ;-) A parabolic bullet strikes the surface before one orbit. A hyperbolic bullet escapes.
-- Keith
I thought a parabola was between an ellipse and a hyperbola. And that true parabolic orbits had a perigee and no apogee - a true parabolic orbit borderline escapes, with the widget's speed approaching zero as time progresses. If the widget escaped along a hyperbolic orbit, its speed approaches a constant nonzero speed as time progresses.
The path of an artillery shell is not a parabola, but an ellipse. If you take a small enough piece of the apogee region of that ellipse (or either end of the eellipse for that matter), it is approximated well by a parabola. But true parabolic orbit only has its vertex being the perigee.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
"Don Klipstein"
** News to Sir Isaac Newton and all his admirers for the last 300 years or so.( neglecting air resistance of course).
...... Phil
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