Shooting in Space

[ShaiVong]

Ill tell you what the whoosh is! Ah HA! I've thought about this myself!

Naturally there is no sound transmission in the form of compression waves of a gas; buuuuuuut, consider the sound that of ions striking the hull of the ship your viewing from emitted by the fusion drive of the starcraft, and the large magnetic field and shields it creates! HA!

 

[Mal H]

Vic - yes there is sound in space. Lots of things will make sound that you can hear if you are in a position to hear them and the sound can be conducted to your ears. You don't need air in every situation for there to be sound. If an asteroid hits your spacecraft, I can guarantee you will hear it. You won't hear it for long since you will be vaporized, but you will hear it hit asuming you are in a normal atmosphere inside the craft. On second thought, maybe you won't hear it since there is a very good possibility that the asteroid will be traveling much faster than the speed of sound, but it won't be because of a lack of air outside the craft.

ShaiVong - I had a very similar thought after I posted the Star Trek whoosh thing. There has to be several different fields that would be generated by a spacecraft passing nearby at extremely high speed. In fact, meteors will create sound on earth, even though they are anywhere from 30 to 100 miles up. They create an electromagnetic field that tends to affect things on earth if you listen carefully. Some who have heard it describe it like the rustling of leaves. The sound has definitely been attributed to the passing meteors.

 

[SelfProclaimedExpert]

Sound and air have no connection. Sound can, and does travel through any matter that is either a fluid (liquid or gas) or a solid. The denser the material, the better sound travels.

There is no sound in space. A gun is not "space". The astronaut is also not made of space. Therefore, anything that is composed of a material that can produce sound IS making sound, and if a listener is in fluid or solid contact with it they will hear that sound.

Space doesn't cause sound to not happen, it just insulates one sound making object from another.

No astronaut has ever reported the lack of sound they experienced. Everywhere they were was just as noisy as any other man made place.


On the bullet velocity/astronaut velocity thing: The recoil of the astronaut is directly proportional to his mass relative to the bullets mass and velocity. If the astronaut masses one thousand times the bullet, he will recoil at 1/1000th the speed of the bullet. That simple.

 

[Mal H]

Vic - It sounded like you thought there would be no sound in space no matter what due to the lack of air. In every instance we were talking about things (clips, expanding gases, ions, etc.) impinging on your spacecraft, spacesuit, helmet, etc. You implied that we were incorrect and that those things could not be heard. You are correct that a sound producer cannot be heard by the ear or a microphone if there is absolutely no conducting material to carry the sound.

I haven't reread every post, but I don't recall anyone suggesting that they would be able to hear sounds that travel through empty space.

 

[280PLUS]

ummm,,,

would the expanding gases of the round create an impulse that could be felt and/or heard by the shooter as well as others floating nearby? theres your fluid

i had another thought, what would the anti gunners think of introducing a handgun to space, where, at one time, space was considered "off limits" to weaponry

imagine the debate as to whether we should put a handgun on the next shuttle flight to test our theories and calculations...



oh and while where at it, has anyone here ever figured out how many angels really DO fit on the head of a pin?

 

[SelfProclaimedExpert]

Vic,

Are you asserting that if an asteriod hit the Enterprise, and you were IN the Enterprise, you wouldn't hear it? You would be in space, after all.

Of course there is no sound in a vacuum. There's nothing in a vacuum except radiation. However, if there is matter (the stuff that can make noise), there is going to be noise in that matter and any adjacent matter.

And if noise is identified by the ability to observe it, you will observe sound in space due to the listening device's ability to produce its own. A man will hear his pulse, a microphone will measure its own AC current vibration.

From the beginning, we have been talking about making noise with objects in space (guns, as it so happens). If you want to argue that one can't make noise out of a vacuum, you're right, but that's not what anyone was saying.

 

[benEzra]

i had another thought, what would the anti gunners think of introducing a handgun to space, where, at one time, space was considered "off limits" to weaponry

Actually, I believe there's already a handgun in space. It's in the emergency survival kit on board the Russian Soyuz "lifeboat" docked to the International Space Station. (Mostly for defense against wolves if they land off course; the gun was added after a pair of cosmonauts spent a cold night in the spacecraft due to a wolf pack outside . . .)

 

[telomerase]

> at one time, space was considered off limits to weaponry

No, only to "weapons of mass destruction", and then only if they were based in space (the Soviet FOBS was an orbital weapon, but was allegedly only based on the ground). ICBMs and even IRBMs pass through space on their way to their targets. And there have been many generations of anti-satellite and anti-missile weapons which operate in space.

Anyway, the idea of everywhere in the universe (except Earth!) being off limits to weapons is hilarious anyway... wouldn't it make more sense the other way around?

 

[Mal H]

Vic -

But I still believe you will not hear an astroid hittiing your craft because the craft and the asteroid are in a vacuum. You will certainly feel the collision, but sound? Nope, you won't hear it.

I guess you and SPE and I will just have to agree to disagree on that one. I know that you are an intelligent gentleman, so I think we are just not getting our point across sufficiently. Besides it is getting us further afield from the original "shooting guns in space" query.

 

[Andrew Wyatt]

Vic: what happens if ia bounce a rock of a car while you're in it?


you'll hear the thunk of the rock hitting the windshield.



same thing with spacecraft.