They landed on the Planet of the Football Players?
Solve all those problems by bringing back the Gyrojet!
Well, momentum is M * V. Same projectile leaving the muzzle at much the same velocity; same man. How do you get 3 (or 9) times the effect?
It is true that the force needed to skid the man’s feet across the ground depends on local gravity, and will thus be roughly a third of what’s found on earth (assuming the same shoes, type of surface, etc.). How this “will land him on his manly behind halfway to the opposite horizon” is a mystery.
Please no… The Gyroget had major issues not the least of which was that the projectiles didn’t reach their maximum velocity until propellant burn-out
which happened 20-odd feet from the muzzle, which is perversely a greater range than most deadly encounters are…
Copious use of dry film lubricants on metal pieces of any modern firearm would reduce all previously mentioned issues to NIL.
Frankly fast moving dust Vs the lenses of typical optical sights is more of a concern than the functioning of the weapon.
the gravity would require an adjustment of shooting technique of handle recoil differently, but the recoil from say… an M16 is trivial anyway.
Why would you need a weapon? well carrying one indicates paranoia, but it’s been said that being paranoid and being wrong is far better than complacent
and being wrong… And perversely having a gun you don’t actually need
might make you less paranoid…
AllanD
I’m not going to claim that this is a fact, but the explaination for it makes sense, so if it’s not true, then it provides a possible use for bringing weapons. This comes from one of those “mind stretcher” tests, where you’re given a scenerio and a list of items, you’re supposed to guess which of the things would not be used. There was a question related to the survival gear that the Apollo crews carried to the Moon. Among the listed items were an inflatible raft and a gun. Naturally, you think that there’s no way they’d take them to the Moon (in the capsule, sure, in case they came down in the wrong spot and had to get to an island to await rescue), but according to the test, they did. Why? The idea was that if they had to get somewhere in an emergency (say to an awaiting rescue lander or something), each one of them would inflate their raft, get in, then fire the gun. The recoil would propel them rapidly in the opposite direction faster than they could run.
Oh, and IIRC, Robinson Cursoe’s gun was included in the standard survival kit, which means that it was designed to handle a crash on Mars or a crash on Earth. The gun could be used either for personal protection or to bring down game, while you waited for the idiots to find you.
I seriously hope you are kidding. :eek:
Look, if the natives have Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators and Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulators, I’m bloody well going to to want tactical nukes on my landing module, just 'cuz.
BTW, good job remembering Legacy of Heorot. It never dawned on me exactly how freaking well-armed those guys were until you mentioned it… of course if I recall correctly, they’d been fighting a small-scale war against the government back home before they got on the ship, which tends to explain why they’d have a handy arsenal.
Nope.
I assume the raft was for when the capsule splashed down on Earth in the wrong spot. Not for use in space, or on the moon…
According to the test, they were to use it on the Moon. Certainly if there was one in the LEM, it’d never make it to the Earth (since the LEMs burned up in atmosphere).
I can accept that someone put that in a “mind stretcher” test, but I’m sure it’s not based on facts. The recoil from a gun would push you back just as hard as it would on earth - which isn’t very hard at all. A raft would not slide across the rocky terrain of the Moon. And if you intend to jump high (propelled by the gun) and use the raft to cushion your fall like Indiana Jones - even if you don’t land on a big rock and puncture the raft, you’d bounce all over the place.
Besides, if they really thought a ground transportation was crucial for Apollo astronauts, they’d have developed the Lunar Rover a bit sooner.
An inflatable raft can be packed into a small bundle, so they could hand carry it back and forth between the capsules… Just like flashlights, pens, food packets, etc.
Do you have a link to the instructions were they tell the astronauts to use the raft on the moon? That’s gonna make for some funny reading…
Like I said, I make no claims for it’s accuracy. I can see the raft being carried to the Moon, though, at least on the early missions, since it would enable them (in theory) to haul something back to the LEM in an emergency. I know on some of the later missions the astronauts used a sled to move equipment and things around on the Moon.
mlees, no link, I’m afraid. It was something I read in VBS or Sunday school 20 odd years ago. (I remember it so well because I got the question wrong and was a bit shocked, me being a space geek and all.)
I’m not at home and don’t have the Apollo XXI Mission Reports at hand, but while the crew did carry a 3-man inflatable raft (memories of Mercury-Redstone 4 and Mercury-Atlas 7 no doubt influencing selection of survival gear) but no listing in the The Apollo press kit (look down the left sidebar for links to the PDFs) of a firearm. Nor does it make any sense that they would use one for propulsion on the Moon–even in the Moon’s gentle 0.16G of gravity this wouldn’t get you more than a few feet at best, and there’s no way you could get a finger of the glove of the pressure suit through the trigger guard of any pistol. And there was no “rescue lander”; even if there was another Saturn V and Apollo capsule on the pad ready to go, the LM environmental systems on the Eagle would have been long given out before another craft could make Lunar orbit. If the LEM ascent stage failed, or the LEM crashed while landing (which almost happened) then Armstrong and Aldrin were dead.
There were conceptual studies for an emergency ascent module (the LESS) but this never went past feasibility stage studies.
Stranger
The raft was to help them sail across the Sea of Tranquility. Duh.
If I remember the probes that found the planet also indicated that it had animal life, they were just being careful. There was no return trip planned.
Actually, Now that I think about it, they didn’t have guns at first, the guns were manufactured when they realized they’d need them, the spec were stored in the computor and they could manufacture durn near anything they needed.
The Martian atmosphere, while not a vacuum, is a pretty good approximation. IIRC it is the pressure-equivalent of 100,000 feet on Earth. So a 300-mph wind sounds fearsome, but it wouldn’t push you with anything like the same force that even a 50-mph wind on Earth would – there just isn’t enough ‘oomph’ behind it. A rough analogy is a 25,000 volt static charge – startling but non-lethal because of the lack of amperage.
However as wimpy as it is, there’s plenty of push to kick up sand and – worse – fines. Witness the planet-covering sandstorms. Your visibility is going to be zilch, and as you said, the fines will get everywhere, causing jams in close-tolerance weapons you can’t lubricate because of the cold…
Rocks and slings, maybe?
I don’t know that if they carried firearms (given that most of the Apollo astronauts were ex-fighter pilots and combat vets, they’d like such a thing as a survival item in case they wound up on a deserted island and needed to bring down game or found a couple of Japanese soldiers who didn’t know the war was over, yet) that NASA would make such information publicly known. They being a non-military operation and the whole “come in peace” business might cause people to look askew at any weapons carried, no matter what the purpose.
Were any of the astronauts stranded on the Moon, we know that NASA would have tried like hell to figure away to get them home. I suppose it might be possible, if the LEM had LOX propellant tanks that they could have cobbled together something to give them air while they waited.
Still, I’m fully willing to admit that whoever wrote the question was full of it.
Manifest weights were calulated down to the kilogram. Nobody was lugging on any extra firearms along. (Stamps, however, were another issue, as Jack Swiggart discovered.) It was not possible that the LEM would survive significantly longer than the mission capability planned in the batteries, a fact that any “space geek” should know. Should the Apollo XXI landing have failed in some way, Armstrong and Aldrin would be dead, a fact that was reality to the people at Mission Control–read Gene Kranz’s autobiography on the subject.
There were no firearms on the LEM, to be certain. Please check your errant suppositions against reputable sources before spouting urban legands and other nonsense.
Stranger