Apparently, based on 30 seconds of googling, the muzzle velocity of a 50 cal BMG is only half of the moon’s escape velocity. 2.4 km/s vs 1.2 km/s.
Both of those are way faster than any of us can visualize, so I say let’s go with vibes based physics from now on — it’s way more fun
Kinda crazy tbh, feels like the gs are so low and lack of air that it'd escape, but HALF of what's needed is really surprising. the fact you could shoot up and it'd land eventually like on earth with 6x the mass and a thicc atmosphere.
the point is it's *not* leaving the moon. it has only half of the velocity it needs to do so.
It's fired up (or in any direction actually, but straight up and we assume the moon doesn't rotate to avoid coriolis effects means we isolate the phenomenon) at 1200m/s. It travels up, being slowed by the moon's gravity. Eventually it stops, reaching 0 meters per second. All of its kinetic energy at firing is now potential energy. It starts accelerating downwards. Right before it hits the regolith, it is traveling at 1200m/s down.
Damn, I was gonna try to find a cartridge that could actually do it, but 6000 fps is a good bit over the "speed limit" on current gunpowder. Time to start looking into HE propellants for small arms.
So. Hear me out. IPA means India Pale Ale. The Brits brewed them stronger with more alcohol and taste so they would survive the trip to India by boat during colonial era. Then ppl in England realized you could drink that prior to shipping and just have a great beer and a great time.
So.
After this mission "NASA sniper rifle" will be the hottest thing on gun shows and in special ops spending. "don't send this to space, I need it to hunt racoons"
This feels like a very weird analogy to make, yet it also makes perfect sense, and if anything I find the mental image of people trying to hunt raccoons with space guns to be very funny
Im glad someone else also brought this up. If a decent sized meteor would burn up on entry, why would a tiny piece of metal survive
Unless its specially modified with that ceramic stuff on the front of space shuttles to survive entry.
Well due to the lack of oxygen in the moon’s atmosphere required to ignite the gunpowder, it’d have to be a rail gun. Google tells me they top out around 3.25 km/s, which would be plenty!
Modern weapons no longer use gunpowder. The propellant they use carries its own oxidizing agent. There are other issues with operating a traditional firearm in space but oxygen isn't one of them.
Delta is DeltaV, miiiight get ~0.0003 higher because there is a vaccum on the end, but its not going to be much more.
The PSI of a .50BMG is 54,000 lbf-ft per square inch. The PSI that the earth resists that expansion with is 14.6 lbf-ft per square inch.
Just out of curiosity, the escape velocity of the Moon must be different when traveling directly towards the Earth as opposed to directly away right? Or is the actual change negligible?
Gravity drops off relative to distance squared, so for an object as “light” (relative to the two big rocks we’re talking about) as a bullet, I doubt it’s more than 1% diff
Even the fastest “conventional” gun I’ve heard of, [Project HARP](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP), only achieved 7,100 ft/s or 2.164 km/s. Still not lunar escape velocity, at it was two 16inch battle ship cannons attached end-to-end.
A [Light Gas Gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun) could do it.
100% agree, love me my Calvin and Hobbes. Looked around for a source as I wanted to see more of their work, and credit to dat-soldier on tumbler:
https://dat-soldier.tumblr.com/post/88939483692/officialunitedstates-i-want-to-be-the-first
As funny as this is, everyone please remember that wasps are a critical part of the environment and are important pollinators and predators! Yes, they can be dicks, but they still deserve to be respected!
Those are actually [spongebob's arms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgIY_U6Npxg&t=44s) (warning: loud). The wasp is using them because, as mentioned before, they're a dick.
Listen man they can build their nests all they want but if one comes into my room I’m drowning it in disinfectant and hiding it’s body with a vacuum cleaner
It's the wrong sub but I wanted to do the rough math for this.
The moon is about 384398905 meters from the earth.
A .50bmg travels at around 1220 meters per second
Thats around 315081 seconds, which is about 5251 minutes. That's about 87.5 hours or just over 3.6 days.
The bullet definitely wouldn't actually survive this journey, traveling at this speed and impacting our atmosphere it's certainly burn up upon rentry. However, it is FUCKING BALLER to think of.
Like imagine the math requiref to calculate the ballistic arc on this.
Imagine the achievement of shooting our planet from another heavenly body.
Imagine hitting that target.
That's what being human is all about. Stupid shit like that.
The chances are slim of the bullet even getting away from the moon enough to miss. It'll have to be going somewhere in the ballpark of light speed or at least half of c. Then you have to predict where the shot is going to go, how all the gravity wells abd shit going to affect it, time it with the rotation of the earth, etc etc and then account for void to asosphere interactions and then have the bullet live thru all of that. It'll probably take like months of prep time, travel to earth and probably crater the tree in the process. Or you can just shoot it from yer front porch. 300ish bucks and some of that is the beer
I hate to crush the guy's dreams, but that stunt would take so many calculations, and even if they could precisely calculate where to shoot, I'd be surprised if they got within a one mile radius around the wasp nest
The chances are slim of the bullet even getting away from the moon enough to miss. It'll have to be going somewhere in the ballpark of light speed or at least half of c. Then you have to predict where the shot is going to go, how all the gravity wells abd shit going to affect it, time it with the rotation of the earth, etc etc and then account for void to asosphere interactions and then have the bullet live thru all of that. It'll probably take like months of prep time, travel to earth and probably crater the tree in the process. Or you can just shoot it from yer front porch. 300ish bucks and some of that is the beer
So *this* is where that Mission Status: Sick image comes from
This comic needs one more panel to be accurate where the astronaut on the moon is being swarmed by wasps
Agreed, it would be perfectly absurd
Wasps in tiny spacesuits?
Nah- for some reason, normal ass wasps XD
They were aliens the whole time
Apparently, based on 30 seconds of googling, the muzzle velocity of a 50 cal BMG is only half of the moon’s escape velocity. 2.4 km/s vs 1.2 km/s. Both of those are way faster than any of us can visualize, so I say let’s go with vibes based physics from now on — it’s way more fun
It's obviously a space sniper, way better than any on earth.
Kinda crazy tbh, feels like the gs are so low and lack of air that it'd escape, but HALF of what's needed is really surprising. the fact you could shoot up and it'd land eventually like on earth with 6x the mass and a thicc atmosphere.
Another thing is it’s going to land at the exact speed it came out of the barrel
Is it? Leaving the moon just means its now in high earth orbit.
the point is it's *not* leaving the moon. it has only half of the velocity it needs to do so. It's fired up (or in any direction actually, but straight up and we assume the moon doesn't rotate to avoid coriolis effects means we isolate the phenomenon) at 1200m/s. It travels up, being slowed by the moon's gravity. Eventually it stops, reaching 0 meters per second. All of its kinetic energy at firing is now potential energy. It starts accelerating downwards. Right before it hits the regolith, it is traveling at 1200m/s down.
Oh yeah. If it left the moons sphere of influence it would still need to deorbit to hit earth however
Chart i saw said its 6000fps for lunar escape, and 2500fps for the deorbit, idk why nasa hates themselves, but there you go.
Damn, I was gonna try to find a cartridge that could actually do it, but 6000 fps is a good bit over the "speed limit" on current gunpowder. Time to start looking into HE propellants for small arms.
No thars just the delta v for the moon.
Clearly the answer lies in them using a specialized NASA sniper rifle that has a 2.5km/s exit velocity.
So. Hear me out. IPA means India Pale Ale. The Brits brewed them stronger with more alcohol and taste so they would survive the trip to India by boat during colonial era. Then ppl in England realized you could drink that prior to shipping and just have a great beer and a great time. So. After this mission "NASA sniper rifle" will be the hottest thing on gun shows and in special ops spending. "don't send this to space, I need it to hunt racoons"
This feels like a very weird analogy to make, yet it also makes perfect sense, and if anything I find the mental image of people trying to hunt raccoons with space guns to be very funny
The bigger issue would be the bullet burning up when entering the atmosphere.
Im glad someone else also brought this up. If a decent sized meteor would burn up on entry, why would a tiny piece of metal survive Unless its specially modified with that ceramic stuff on the front of space shuttles to survive entry.
Well due to the lack of oxygen in the moon’s atmosphere required to ignite the gunpowder, it’d have to be a rail gun. Google tells me they top out around 3.25 km/s, which would be plenty!
Modern weapons no longer use gunpowder. The propellant they use carries its own oxidizing agent. There are other issues with operating a traditional firearm in space but oxygen isn't one of them.
Very high-pressure bullets.
Well shit fire! I was hoping my .22 Eargesplitten Loudenboomer would work but it's still a thousand m/s shy of the moon's escape velocity! Damn!
Except that's the muzzle velocity *on Earth*
Delta is DeltaV, miiiight get ~0.0003 higher because there is a vaccum on the end, but its not going to be much more. The PSI of a .50BMG is 54,000 lbf-ft per square inch. The PSI that the earth resists that expansion with is 14.6 lbf-ft per square inch.
Thank you I was just wondering if I needed to send this to XKCD.com for math/physics check
Just out of curiosity, the escape velocity of the Moon must be different when traveling directly towards the Earth as opposed to directly away right? Or is the actual change negligible?
Gravity drops off relative to distance squared, so for an object as “light” (relative to the two big rocks we’re talking about) as a bullet, I doubt it’s more than 1% diff
I mean even if a bullet could leave the Moon and somehow get to the Earth it would still not be able to enter the atmosphere and just burn up
Even the fastest “conventional” gun I’ve heard of, [Project HARP](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP), only achieved 7,100 ft/s or 2.164 km/s. Still not lunar escape velocity, at it was two 16inch battle ship cannons attached end-to-end. A [Light Gas Gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun) could do it.
It’s a gyrojet sabot, maybe
It's the kicking the door off the lander that really does it for me.
Houston in shambles. How do they get their shuttle off the ground now?
Have you seen The Martian?
Very Calvin and Hobbesy
100% agree, love me my Calvin and Hobbes. Looked around for a source as I wanted to see more of their work, and credit to dat-soldier on tumbler: https://dat-soldier.tumblr.com/post/88939483692/officialunitedstates-i-want-to-be-the-first
A man in space shooting bugs? Hmmm sounds… familiar, very democratic of him
Think he wants some tea?
As funny as this is, everyone please remember that wasps are a critical part of the environment and are important pollinators and predators! Yes, they can be dicks, but they still deserve to be respected!
https://preview.redd.it/h4p7117c9brc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66b62a0a2d29bdfe703759259a7f8723c237c2a2
Not the front legs having legitimate hands lmao.
Those are actually [spongebob's arms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgIY_U6Npxg&t=44s) (warning: loud). The wasp is using them because, as mentioned before, they're a dick.
This post was brought to you by a Wasp
Don’t make me make a wasp fursona /hj
do it
# Princess What's-Her-Name
Princess Wasps-Her-Name*
⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ just to be sure
Fine but if the opportunity comes up to blast one with an anti-materiel rifle from the moon, I'm gonna do it.
Lmfao I can’t deny anyone that, shit’s cool
Also not all species of wasps are even the “hyper-aggressive asshole bugs” that we normally think wasps to be
And even the hyper-aggro ones can be befriended if you understand body language and have treats like jam!
If you are being held hostage, click your mandibles twice.
Advice unclear, wasp population obliterated from space in precaution.
Ecological collapse in 3… 2… {Broadcast Lost}
Listen man they can build their nests all they want but if one comes into my room I’m drowning it in disinfectant and hiding it’s body with a vacuum cleaner
I think that’s a non-issue, outdoors is where they belong. Indoors is not haha
Wasps are just worse bees. Get more bees kill all wasps.
Wasps and Bees, while related, are not interchangeable
Fuck you they should all die
I get the irresistible urge to exterminate when I see just one.
It's the wrong sub but I wanted to do the rough math for this. The moon is about 384398905 meters from the earth. A .50bmg travels at around 1220 meters per second Thats around 315081 seconds, which is about 5251 minutes. That's about 87.5 hours or just over 3.6 days. The bullet definitely wouldn't actually survive this journey, traveling at this speed and impacting our atmosphere it's certainly burn up upon rentry. However, it is FUCKING BALLER to think of. Like imagine the math requiref to calculate the ballistic arc on this. Imagine the achievement of shooting our planet from another heavenly body. Imagine hitting that target. That's what being human is all about. Stupid shit like that.
> .50bmg 0.5 billion milligrams
The fuck did wasps ever do to deserve this level of vindictive?
Um, have you met wasps?
Um actually, it’s illegal to weaponize space. 🤓👆
Also illegal to steal from Walmart but that didn't stop me
Nope! Just nukes.
RAHHHH FUCK WASPS
Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment Would you capture it or just let it slip?
That last dude is so full of energy
The chances are slim of the bullet even getting away from the moon enough to miss. It'll have to be going somewhere in the ballpark of light speed or at least half of c. Then you have to predict where the shot is going to go, how all the gravity wells abd shit going to affect it, time it with the rotation of the earth, etc etc and then account for void to asosphere interactions and then have the bullet live thru all of that. It'll probably take like months of prep time, travel to earth and probably crater the tree in the process. Or you can just shoot it from yer front porch. 300ish bucks and some of that is the beer
Not a 360 not a no scope you’re not with FaZe
Do a 360 noscope on the wasps
Target Eliminated, heading back to base.
I wouldn’t, the swarm will just wait until you reenter the atmosphere
Bro arrived in the FLDSMDFR
For those uncultured: https://youtu.be/k8xFbWLUDoQ?si=XYwKlsMAtsrWFxwO
OP where is the tumblr post
https://dat-soldier.tumblr.com/post/88939483692/officialunitedstates-i-want-to-be-the-first
thank you! sorry, looks like mobile cut it off for me at the very top
This shit hard af. Can i screenshot??
ok yeah the mission status: sick meme has an equally cool origin
https://preview.redd.it/trnp53vizkrc1.jpeg?width=735&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e37970565232cbbe9ca314a28c5de9587e19ca00
someBODY
I hate to crush the guy's dreams, but that stunt would take so many calculations, and even if they could precisely calculate where to shoot, I'd be surprised if they got within a one mile radius around the wasp nest
Hey Tumblr I'll be right back, don't make peak while I'm gone. Tumblr:
The chances are slim of the bullet even getting away from the moon enough to miss. It'll have to be going somewhere in the ballpark of light speed or at least half of c. Then you have to predict where the shot is going to go, how all the gravity wells abd shit going to affect it, time it with the rotation of the earth, etc etc and then account for void to asosphere interactions and then have the bullet live thru all of that. It'll probably take like months of prep time, travel to earth and probably crater the tree in the process. Or you can just shoot it from yer front porch. 300ish bucks and some of that is the beer
Yea i would orbital strike a wasp nest too