In today’s episode of Schlock Mercenary the story involves some long-range shooting. Credomar is a rotating space station which is what complicates things. My question, though is the part about a five-meter drop at 500 meters. Despite the lack of effect on the good sergeant, the sniper’s round has to be high velocity, .25 to .30 caliber or so. If I’m recalling right, we’re talking more like 30 to 60 inches, not the 200 or so of 5 meters.
Schlock’s weapon is a “shortbarrel rotary fifty” (see the 14th comic). Bigger slug, lower velocity, I’m assuming
OK, a five-meter drop in Earth’s gravity means an air time of just a hair over a second, meaning that the first shooter’s rounds are going at nearly 500 m/s (the formula is drop = 1/2 gt^2). I don’t know typical muzzle speeds, or whether that would be considered “high-velocity”, but it’s at least faster than sound (which is 340 m/s, under standard conditions).
Meanwhile, Schlock’s return fire, with a 9 meter drop, would have an air time of 1.36 seconds, for a speed of about 370 m/s, also supersonic.
And “curves wide and falls short” is certainly one possible failure mode, for shooting inside a rotating space station. Schlock is apparently firing somewhat in the same direction as the station’s rotation, but at an angle to it. If he were firing against the rotation, his shot would go long, and needn’t ever even hit the ground at all (neglecting air resistance).
Thank you for the math, Chronos. Today’s strip has the hand cannon’s muzzle velocity at 610m per second. Somebody’s off, then and I’d put my money on the cartoonist.