Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2465-2469 (10-14 June, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
mustang6172:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 12 Jun 2013, 23:53 ---How could Dora not have known there were that many spiders in her roasting area?
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They mostly come out at night... mostly.
mtmerrick:
This certainly does explain why there's military up on Station. :P it was kinda vague reasoning before, IIRC.
J:
--- Quote from: Emoroffle on 13 Jun 2013, 17:05 ---Kinetic munitions aren't very fiery, but I get your point. Still I can see the military having something like that at its disposal for bunker and cave clearing. All the power of a nuke with no radiation.
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well, i kind of imagine anything coming down through the atmosphere at mach 10 being fiery, due to friction.
ankhtahr:
--- Quote from: Emoroffle on 13 Jun 2013, 17:05 ---Kinetic munitions aren't very fiery, but I get your point. Still I can see the military having something like that at its disposal for bunker and cave clearing. All the power of a nuke with no radiation.
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At such high velocities? I think these tungsten rods are going to be really fiery when impacting. The air they compress in front of them is going to reach very high temperatures relatively quickly (once they reach the atmosphere of course. I guess they build up quite an impressive amount of kinetic energy before their acceleration gets slowed down by the atmosphere). Let's say the rod gets dropped from LEO (lower earth orbit), at approximately 400 km height. Usually atmospheric effects on reentry get noticeable at 120 km, so the rod accelerates for 280 km. That would result in approximately 2342 m/s which is 8431.2 km/h.
Here's a picture of a ballistic projectile of a railgun, made by the US Navy. It was a record shot, reaching a muzzle velocity of 2520 m/s. Comparable to the velocity of a tungsten rod, simply "dropped" from the height of the ISS.
That "fireball" is a cloud of plasma created by the pressure difference between the front and the rear. Near vacuum behind the projectile, incredibly high pressure in front of it.
Edit: More info: The temperature is not caused by friction, but the high pressures, same at reentrance of a space shuttle. And while this power of this rod might look impressive, remember that all the kinetic energy of the projectile needs to be invested as "potential energy" by getting it to that height. Also it's a wrong assumption that the gravitational pull is the same at 400km, but I didn't feel like calculating it more complex. Also due to the high density of tungsten I think these rods are not as much influenced by the atmosphere as, say, a spacecraft.
JohnTheWysard:
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 13 Jun 2013, 15:24 ---I wonder if there are any high ranking AIs in the US military.
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I would recommend against seriously investigating that question. ESPECIALLY online.
I've said too much... signing off!
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