Re: Space station impact shielding.
- From: Fred J. McCall <fjmccall@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 09:27:36 EDT
delt0r <greg.ewing@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
:On Mar 30, 3:50 am, Fred J. McCall <fjmcc...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
:> "Jorge R. Frank" <jrfr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
:>
:>
:> True, but something similar to Blazer might actually save weight when
:> compared to metal or ceramic offering the same protection.
:>
:> I know that Blazer is actually intended to work against Munroe Effect
:> warheads, but it seems to me something similar could be used to help
:> slow down projectiles. Rather than explosive blocks intended to
:> disrupt plasma jets, perhaps a 'honeycomb' of small shaped charges
:> that would rapidly decrease particle velocity normal to the protected
:> surface, leading to generally smaller velocities of impact with the
:> spaced protection underneath.
:>
:> I believe there has been research done on explosive 'sandwiches' that
:> would cause rapid lateral displacement between two adjacent layers of
:> spaced armor to help protect against long-rod penetrators. That sort
:> of approach might work here, too.
:>
:> Probably be hideously expensive to fabricate, though, as well as being
:> a safety concern for anything outside the station. Not to mention
:> having to replace a section every time you get a strike and the
:> explosive is triggered.
:
:I think you are underestimating the differences. A long needle
:penetrator has a velocity in the 1.6km/s range. much faster and they
:tend to shatter or deform unfavorably for amour penetration. While in
:orbit we are getting up to 14km/s and even higher for objects with
:earth escape velocity. Forget reactive amour, that speck of paint or
:nut has a lot more energy than explosive per kg (23x TNT) and will
:have a lot more momentum than any reactive plate can hope to get.
:
But that's not necessarily so. An explosive with a sufficiently high
detonation velocity would radically reduce (or outright eliminate) the
velocity vector of the impinging particle normal to the bulkhead
surface. Explosives like Octanitrocubane have detonation velocities
above 10 km/sec.
:The advantage of such high velocity impacts is that you can break them
:up with a thin shield. A wipple shield in fact. The particle hits the
:shield and explodes into a hot jet of smaller particles that then
:impact a more solid shield over a larger area. Giotto used this to
:great effect in its very close flyby of Halley's Comet. The wipple
:shield in this case was 1 mm of Al.
:
:But otherwise there really is no equivalent with earth based amour.
:They do totally different things.
:
Not so much. 'Armor' is armor and the principles are quite similar.
There are reasons why 'Blazer' for spacecraft probably isn't a great
idea, but your objections are not among them.
--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw
.
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