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#1
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Has anyone ever fired a gun in space or on the moon?
Inspired by This thread on whether or not the Space Shuttle can defend itself, it's gotten me wondering: Has anyone ever fired a gun in space or on the moon? I can't imagine it would be possible to actually hold or operate a firearm in a conventional space suit, but surely it would be possible to mount a gun on a moon buggy or rover vehicle for scientific purposes (measuring ballistic effects, gravity, etc).
Anyone know if it's ever been done or attempted?
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Note: Please consider yourself and/or your acquaintances excluded from any of the author's sweeping generalisations which you happen to disagree with or have different experiences of. |
#2
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I misread the title as "Has anyone ever fired a gun in the space of a room" and I was going to tell the story about the time my dad was cleaning his .45 while on his 3rd espresso. If you just want to know the end, my mom cried.
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#3
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That said, I'm pretty certain the answer is "no" and 100% certain it's "no" for the on-the-moon part of your question. The followup question is "why would anyone have wanted to?" It's a bizarre way to measure gravity. I'm pleased we didn't immediately get someone posting "but a gun can't fire in a vacuum, where would the oxygen come from." You usually get that at least once in these threads. |
#4
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You're Americans, it's what you do!! (You have the right to bear arms (on the moon)) |
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#5
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Here's an interesting FAQ on the subject. I'm still curious where the oxygen comes from; I looked up gunpowder in Wikipedia expecting it to be oxidized but I'm still unclear on whether it is or not. |
#6
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I likewise don't know how much oxygen is in the bullet (and I'm a bit dubious on the idea that a thing can't burn in space without oxygen*), but obviously there is enough. * Burning is just atoms that have been excited. Now I can imagine the amazing cold of a vacuum immediately damping out this excited state, but I don't see why you would need oxygen given as that anything which has atoms can become excited just the same as oxygen can. I suspect that oxygen is just a good ingredient for continued thermic reactions that don't burn themselves out. |
#7
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It's the sort of question that most people familiar with ammunition or guns would regard as too obvious to answer - let's face it, if firearms relied on sucking air down the barrel past the bullet, or through holes into the firing chamber, it would be pretty noticeable. |
#8
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#9
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haha... i have a priceless mental picture right now ![]() |
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#10
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The Soviets launched a Salyut with a 30mm Nudelman cannon. I don't know if it was ever test fired in orbit.
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#11
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#12
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Wouldn't a fired round stick around in orbit? That might be one reason. Unless they're powerful enough to break orbit, that loopback would be a bitch.
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#13
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#14
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I've fired a gun at the moon (it pissed me off), does that count?
![]() At $10,000/pound or so for LEO, the price for hauling up my beloved Colt could buy me a new car. Wasn't there a probe that fired a projectile at an asteroid? Probably didn't use gunpowder... Wait a minute, didn't Bond do it in Moonraker? I think Dirk Pitt did it once as well. |
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#16
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Well, assuming you can fire it (what with the bulky space suit and all), then at least it would be pretty accurate since there would be no bullet drop (ignoring gravity from nearby planetary bodies).
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#17
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#18
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I haven't laughed this hard in months. |
#19
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#20
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We've had this discussion before about weapons being fired in space. AFAWK, no crew has carried a firearm into space, much less test fired one. It could be done, however. One of the problems for someone in orbit would be the recoil, every action having an equal reaction and all that. One science writer once theorized that a scimitar would be a better weapon for astronauts to carry than anything else. |
#21
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![]() Moreover a vacuum can't dampen out anything. A vacuum is an absence of matter. With no matter to absorb energy or combine with reactants there is no dampening process possible. |
#22
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#23
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![]() Using a gun on the moon was included in a lateral thinking test Dad got from work. The idea was that you'd point in the opposite direction you wanted to move in and shoot to propel yourself across the surface of the moon without having to walk this saving energy. |
#24
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Maybe if they were to carry sawed off shotguns loaded with slugs. Great, now I have images of Gangsta Astronauts in my head. There goes production for the rest of the day. |
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#25
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Why bring along firearms?
Bend over, pick up a rock, jump, throw rock in the opposite direction of where you want to go, land, repeat. Probably easier to just bounce along. Last edited by Rysdad; 03-22-2007 at 09:10 AM. Reason: cuz |
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#28
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Stranger |
#29
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If not a gun, do explosives count?
Apollo active seismic experiments Too bad the rover cameras were deactivated before the mortars were set off. I would have liked to have seen those fireworks. |
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#30
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Firing a bullet from a handgun in space is a pretty extreme step. You are going to tumble, for sure, and the bullet is going to be a navigational hazard as well. It will have a new orbit, that intersects with your orbit once each orbital cycle. So, from any useful orbit, it becomes a big problem for you. If you hit your target, the orbital mechanics of hazards change, but mostly just the number of projectiles from your shattered target.
There is way too much trash in orbit already. Target practice doesn't seem warranted. Tris |
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#33
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This question might completely display an ignorance of the scope of the moon, but could a bullet fired from the surface of the moon enter moon orbit? Say from the highest powered rifle we have available?
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#34
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Ditto for the Moon. The speeds and momentum at orbital velocities are truly beyond anything we experience in everyday life. Stranger Last edited by Stranger On A Train; 03-22-2007 at 02:06 PM. Reason: Added reference to Moon |
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#35
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Thanks for the answer, that's surprising (to me at least). I would have thought the bullet would just head out on it's merry way.
Any idea what the (average diameter, I'm guessing it would start out eliptical)orbit would be for say a 180 grain bullet fired at 2500 fps from LEO? Could you hit the Moon with such a shot (or at least intersect its orbit) fired from LEO? |
#36
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At LEO (200-2000km altitude) escape speed varies from 11.0 km/s to 9.8km/s, and orbital velocities are 7.79 and 6.90 respectively, so in order to escape you'd have to make up the difference. (If you can come up with a man-fireable gun that can shoot projectiles at ~3km/s I can find you a multi-billion dollar defense contract.) At 2500 fps (0.762 km/s) you'd have to have an orbital radius of 118000 km, almost a third of the way to the Moon, and way higher than geostationary orbit (GEO, 42200 km orbital radius). The mass of the projectile is immaterial, assuming that it is significantly smaller than the bodies exerting gravitational influence upon it. We're used to seeing images of the Space Shuttle in orbit, slowly nudging its way toward a satellite, and thinking, "Boy, those things don't move very fast." But they're just not moving fast with respect to one another; relative to an observer on the ground, they're moving about an order of magnitude faster than a bullet. This is why talking blythly about the ease of "hit-to-kill" intercepts of ballistic missiles or launching the spacecraft too the Moon enjoins such scathing laughter among engineers and scientists. It's not impossible but it's very, very difficult, requiring a lot of energy and very precise guidance and control. When I look at the numbers, I'm amazed that we actually managed to seen Apollo capsules to the Moon, repeatedly, without getting lost or putting the astronauts in a deadly slow overshoot orbit. Stranger |
#37
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Thanks again, this is fascinating reading.
I suppose the lack of atmosphere in the gun barrel would have a insignificant effect on muzzle velocity? Last edited by Duke of Rat; 03-22-2007 at 04:12 PM. |
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Stranger |
#39
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So what would happen if you were on the ISS and fired a round towards the Earth? Would it drop to a lower orbit, or would it reenter the atmosphere and burn up?
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#40
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Stranger |
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#42
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#43
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Shooting a gun on the moon might knock you over more easily, but only because you're probably not experienced in keeping your balance at lower g. |
#44
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Hello from the future, oh Buck Rogers zombies.
Th ISS was but a twinkle in the eyes then. http://www.popularmechanics.com/mili...-space-cannon/ FTR, a GQ search on "guns in space" popped up three threads from 2007-2008, including a later one. Revived this because it had the most posts. Last edited by Leo Bloom; 04-08-2016 at 10:33 AM. |
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#45
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Leo, see posts #10 and #15 from 2007
![]() Last edited by Valgard; 04-08-2016 at 10:42 AM. |
#46
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Shit is it cited? I kind of thought maybe but the thread was tl;dr, and I didn't check the date of _my_ cite.
* flips upscreen * * checks Wiki cited in #15, which has many more and better references than this Pop Mechanics article, which should surprise no one considering its Pop M. * * finds no saving grace or redeeming value in thread revivification * My apologies to the quick among us. Rest, disturbed spirits of the underworld. |
#47
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Wow - ninja'd in a zombie thread. That's got to be some sort of record.
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#48
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Which are deadlier: ninja zombies, or zombie ninjas?
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#49
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One of the things I find amusing is that, while it would seem to be the height of idiocy to bring a gun on a space ship (if it goes off, nothing good can come of it, while LOTS of bad things can. And there's no easy way to fix a lot of them.), an awful lot of books and movies have people doing precisely that. Even worse, it's done by pretty respected science fiction authors and filmmakers. I guess there's something just too good about using firearms to advance your story and provide Action! and Excitement!
Rocketship Galileo by Robert Heinlein -- his intrepid Boy Explorers and the Scientist Uncle bring a couple of Garand rifles to the Moon ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Garand ) Of course, they come in mighty handy, against neo-Nazis who have bombs of various kinds on the moon (and their own guns), but there's no way they could've known that when they set out. Heinlein has them rationalizing the guns as possibly necessary if they set down in a dangerous area (on Earth, when they return) It! The Terror from Beyond Space -- 1950s movie scripted by Jerome Bixby, who ought to know better. Not only the Second Martian Expedition (the subject of this film) but also the First (which we hear about) brought firearms to Mars. The sole survivor of the first expedition is accused of murdering his fellow crewmembers with the gun (See? I told you -- nothing but trouble), but it turns out to be the work of a Mars creature, which ends up stowing aboard their ship for the trip back. When they learn about it they not only use the guns to try to kill it (On a space ship!), but they also try grenades! (ON A SPACESHIP!! Why do they even HAVE grenades on a space ship?) None of this is effective, of course -- they kill the Beast by opening the airlock. If this sounds familiar, it's because Ridley Scott's Alien owes a big debt to It!. Robinson Crusoe on Mars -- dumb title, but pretty decent SF film from 1964 about the lone survivor of the First Expedition to Mars surviving on the surface on his own (Did Andy Weir see this before he wrote The Martian? Somebody has undoubtedly researched that to death) when he sees something unusual, he pulls out -- A Gun! They provided this first Martian expedition with a gun, too! Fortunately, he avoids the fate of the guy in It!, and doesn't shoot what turns out to be the expedition monkey. Angry Red Planet -- interesting low-budget pic by Moe Howard's (of the Three Stooges) son-in-law (Who also directed some of the Stooge's later films, and started out drawing them for the comic books). The First Expedition to Mars (again!) encounters interesting things, all filmed in "Mars Scope" (Highly solarized prints tinted red). Of course, they bring a Gun, but at least it's some kind of futuristic sonic gun. It comes in useful for blinding a Rat-Bat-Spider, and doing in a cannibalistic plant . But it's useless against Giant Space Amoeba. |
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#50
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