Will a Space Gun Always Hit Something? (w/ THE EXPANSE) 

*BELTALOWDA!*

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson has an interesting discussion of how guns would work in a spacefaring society. The "bullets" would be slow-moving machines that would latch onto space suits and borrow in or do other things that didn't involve explosives and would be smart enough to avoid doing it to the hull. Some cool ideas there.

You absolutely have to try the foundation if you loved the expanse. It’s a genius adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s book by the same title

The high-traffic areas Ty mentioned are mostly in the ecliptic plane, where the planets, asteroids and therefore the shipping lanes are. So any projectile that is more than a few degrees inclined to that plane is unlikely to hit anything, because it spends most of its life outside of the shipping lanes.

Oyé Beltalowda !

What? No! Math! ... Rebooting... The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5+ million light years away. A shell less than a quarter billion (with a b) years old would have to be travelling at at least 1% of the speed of light in order to reach anywhere vaguely central in the Milky Way from somewhere vaguely central in Andromeda. That's not a survivable galncing blow.

There's a similar random encounter in one of the mass effect games. You find a planet or....maybe a moon, that is just tore up and it turns out they got hit by ordnance from a far flung war thousands of years ago.

@@rmsgrey That would be true if it weren't for the fact that silver shades got the time wrong. It says billions of years old in the event script. Givin that, in game, ships survive blows from cannons that traveled the distance from pluto to the sun in an in-game day and shugs it off no problem, I think that it is very possible for the ship to survive the hit.

@@rmsgrey You're talking about a civilization that has the capacity to reach andromeda in much less time than that. Meaning they have engines that can be slapped behind mass, and fired at light speed at enemy planets. They definitely have shields capable of defending against that.

Blame serviceman Chung. He decided to Eyeball it. Like a cowboy, shooting from the hip.

Pure poetry, I fucking love that book

A wizard strolled along the Beach, but no one seemed to need his help.

The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. ‘Make it evil’ he’d been told. ‘Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sorts of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.’ (Quoted from page 172 of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams. Ballantine Books, 1995.)

Guys, if you keep quoting Douglas Adams we're gonna have problems because polygamy is still illegal in most states.

@@Kevin-jb2pv 'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. DA

This is exactly what I thought of too! Would be funny/painful if there was a chance it just directly hits your ship and makes it go B O O M

I had wondered if a cosmonaut in orbit around earth fired a projectile if it would escape earth's gravity or set off debris hitting all those satellites.

@@christinaw9807 Using some super quick math, Googling and my limited understanding of orbital mechanics (and math, and...) - I don't think it could escape Earth's orbit. For references: - The escape velocity for the Earth is ~11.2 kilometers per second. If I understand orbital mechanics well enough, that means that, no matter the angle or location you're launching from, you need to be travelling at least that fast to avoid orbiting around Earth. - The moon's orbital velocity around the Earth is ~3.7 km/s. So anything orbiting Earth closer than the moon will be traveling slower than that. - The highest velocity ("commercially available") bullet is apparently the ".220 Swift" at ~1.4 km/s. So, adding all those together, even if you were orbiting at the same distance from Earth as the moon (but _not on the moon_, as that has it's own escape velocity of ~2.4 km/s), and fired the fastest commercially available bullet, you would only end up at ~5.2 km/s total velocity. That's ~6 km/s too slow to escape the Earth's orbit. So barring weird orbital slingshots and other fun interactions, a bullet fired anywhere in Earth orbit will remain in Earth orbit until it hits something (the moon, a satellite, another piece of debris, or the Earth's atmosphere once its orbit decays enough). How long that takes, and whether the thing it hits will be something we care about, is way above my pay grade. If I had to guess, I'd say if you fire it from the same orbit as the moon, it'll eventually crash into the moon - it'll start off orbiting farther out than the moon, but every time the bullet laps the moon, the moon will slow it down and mess with it a bit, until eventually the bullet is traveling in the same rough orbit as the moon, but faster or slower enough to hit the moon. The hilarious version of that would be that the moon finally catches up to the bullet, so the moon hits the back of the bullet at a relative velocity of only a few meters per second... Again, this is all based on my super weak understanding of...everything...so I'm open to corrections, feedback and criticism. Have a good day.

Kessler syndrome, I could understand the implications -- the caviat being that these objects (slugs, ships, satellites, etc.) would basically have to be in a relatively steady and similar orbit. That is, if we would use logic almost directly from the original application of the Kessler syndrome. Hoever, from what I read on the wikipedia page, the Birthday Paradox (aka the Birthday Problem) doesn't seem to be directly applicable to this. That particular scenario seems to be more geared towards very specific (and *finite*) similarities between one thing and another (thus forming a pair). There are only *so many days in a year*, therefore only so many birthdays are possible. Thus, theres a good chance for a group of 25 people that a pair of people share a birthday. But with space being friggin huge (for lack of a better descriptor), I'm not sure if "finite" can describe all that much. If you were able to apply the Birthday Problem to this scenario, I'd be very curious to hear/read about your logic and constraints, as I'd love to learn more!

@@joshuawills5242Sorry to necrocomment, but there is one inaccuracy here, based on my KSP knowledge. The escape velocity varies based on altitude, I think the 11km/s is at the surface. In this case, I don’t think it matters as 1.4km/s won’t be enough velocity even firing prograde at LEO

@@joshuawills5242 "The moon's orbital velocity around the Earth is ~3.7 km/s. So anything orbiting Earth closer than the moon will be traveling slower than that." And based on my KSP knowledge, wouldn't something orbiting earth closer than the moon have a higher orbital velocity than the moon? I was under the assumption of the closer the faster.

In Mass Effect, habitable planets are rare (very valuable) and the standard defense tactic is to put such a planet behind you. It sort of makes sense... Attackers are extra careful because a miss likely damages the thing they are fighting to control, and defenders don't really need to be all that careful.

Great summary.

For a sci fi homebrew my friends an I writing on, there is an unwritten rule for all space faring factions. No projectile weapons, that can pierce the ships inner hull. It's a mixture of tradition, superstition and very real concern. So on board of ships or stations you may carry a gun - but with explicit non-piercing ammunition like SecuGlass (tm) which is brittle enough to fragment when hitting something hard. Well... and carrying explosives of any kind is .... frowned upon. You know that kind of frowning where less civilized crews might stuff you and your explosives in the next airlock....

Honestly i was more focused on the fact not mentioned enough that space is done already littered with hundreds of thousands of projectiles traveling many times the speed of a bullet the size of a house in our own galaxy alone. Its called asteroids and they come in a size range from sand sized to bullet sized to house sized to the size of a island and they all travel at high speeds, yet despite the fact the each literally gets hit by thousands of the smaller ones a year bigger ones are rare and the ISS has survived as long as it has

@@robertnett9793 why did this read like a movie intro for a space movie in the vein of zombie world

You dislike the stuff that gets uploaded by my fingers clicking upload? Are you just a h8er boi? I say see you l8er, boi. Don't watch the stuff that gets uploaded by my fingers clicking upload anymore. Your dislikes are damaging my good good GOOD reputation. I am a superstar, dear miko

Yea is it really the future if you can’t be a broke spaceman with a gun?

Don't forget the blues/jazz vibbing, without it it's just the space sitcom of Netflix

I don't want to live in a future without space cowboys.

First we place weapons in space, then we build around those weapons ships and after that we meet Covenant and space horror creatures.

And then in 3, the reapers back up to Earth and the combined fleets of the galaxy fire directly toward Earth. I still love the game and series but that’s a little problem.

​@@ridesqAs did the Quarians above Rannoch.

It's a detterent, not a definitive way of discouraging all attempt to fight. I think that in those 2 cases, they chose to go ahead anyway. What is the risk of killing a bit of civilian on one side of the planet if it gets you your entire planet back. So I don't think it is a problem at all.

except rain gun rounds would still just sail though a target lmao

@@seldoon_nemar Yeah that's very possible too.

@@seldoon_nemar Know your target and what's beyond it.

That's actually a good point, and that's probably another point for cops. People say that the police should aim for the persons arm or hand or even the weapon they are holding to stop them safely, but that's completely irresponsible. They're taught that they have to shoot for the center of mass (body) to stop a person, because in a life or death situation when someone is about to be killed, you need to save that life, and banking on not hurting the assailant too much is too much of a risk to the other persons life. But not only are you highly likely to miss a flailing arm compared to a fairly large body, but you are also likely to hit whatever is behind that person, and with the liability for that you cannot risk something like that. Sure, if you're a sniper in a hostage situation or even in the army, you have calculations and highly trained shooters so going for a head-shot actually makes sense in this situation as you are much less likely to miss with such accuracy. But in most situations with a handgun, or in this case, a ships gun that you are controlling with a camera that could malfunction OR have some delay before showing on your screen, you cannot accurately rely on "eyeballing" it. And you will be liable for whatever it does hit if it comes to that, even if you have no penalties applied to you. You have to live with knowing that you might have killed an innocent person in a few months, or even hundreds, thousands or MILLIONS of years from now.

@@alexanderelderhorst2107 Or caused an extinction-level event and wiped out an entire would-have-been stellar neighbor

u should watch it, you're in for a treat. On the downside, after seeing it, all other sci-fi seems to lack something in comparison, its that good

@@jurassicpeter It’s on my to-watch list. There’s like 6 more shows in front of it.

You should watch it it's amazing

@@newbe1o1 Perform a slingshot maneuver. Bring The Expanse to the first position in your list.

@@photoo848 if JurassicPete is to be believed, it will ruin all other sci-fi for me. I want to enjoy the lesser shows for what they are before they are tarnished with the comparison of The Expanse.

Kessler syndrome is pretty much only a concern in LEO or LMO or whatever. The difference between the volume of low orbit and the volume of the solar system is insane lol

@@joostvisser6508 In the Solar System, almost all practical orbits are on the same plane, the ecliptic. It is required a tremendous amount of Delta V to abandon the ecliptic. And once you do that, you reach volumes of space with no planets-sized destinations, hence not suitable for most applications. I can imagine that virtually all the space traffic in the Solar System will be relegated on the ecliptic, along with all the other stuff (planets, moons, asteroids, space debris, wandering projectiles). In this scenario, I think that the chances of a fortuitous collision, albeit still absolutely infinitesimal, cannot be completely ruled out if you imagine a space-faring civilization that holds up for a sufficiently long time.

Are you 100% absolutely sure a bullet can free fall at lethal speeds?

@@gustavedelior3683 It was not in freefall, more like a parabolic shot. And yes a bullet near terminal velocity would probably be lethal.

@@gustavedelior3683 Yes. "Bullets fired into the air usually fall back with terminal velocities much lower than their muzzle velocity when they leave the barrel of a firearm. Nevertheless, people can be injured, sometimes fatally, when bullets discharged into the air fall back down to the ground. Bullets fired at angles less than vertical are more dangerous as the projectile maintains its angular ballistic trajectory and is far less likely to engage in tumbling motion; it therefore travels at speeds much higher than a bullet in free fall. A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 80% of celebratory gunfire-related injuries are to the head, feet, and shoulders.[8] In Puerto Rico, about seven people have died from celebratory gunfire on New Year's Eve in the last 20 years.[timeframe?] The last one was in 2012.[9] Between the years 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight of them died.[10] Firearms expert Julian Hatcher studied falling bullets in the 1920s and calculated that .30 caliber rounds reach terminal velocities of 90 m/s (300 feet per second or 186 miles per hour).[11] A bullet traveling at only 61 m/s (200 feet per second) to 100 m/s (330 feet per second) can penetrate human skin.[12] In 2005, the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) ran education campaigns on the dangers of celebratory gunfire in Serbia and Montenegro.[13] In Serbia, the campaign slogan was "every bullet that is fired up, must come down."[14]"

@@gustavedelior3683 it's actually a pretty common occurrence. It's got a few famous examples in the states one from Texas and a dude dumping 2 magnum revolvers in the air. The problem is its not just a falling bullet. Usually it's like an arc and the bullet while slower then when first fired is usually still accelerated faster then base gravity by the time it hits someone or something.

@@gustavedelior3683 yes

Even if you don't hit someone (space is big, and breaking out of orbit is hard and/or takes a long time of unstable orbits) you're still causing unnecessary navigational problems by introducing more space debris to avoid. Particularly if you're nearby a planet. We already to take extra precautions to get our own ships out of earth's atmosphere thanks to our stupid satellite graveyard, after all.

If you miss your target in space, you'll hit something it just won't be the intended one.

For every bullet there will be a trillion micrometeorites of same size.

@@MVargic And your bullet is much more likely to hit one of those random rocks, than anything anyone would care about.

@@MVargic wouldn’t they by definition already be in an atmosphere?

Though for accuracy they could mute (boring) sounds or muffle combat sounds (i.e. underwater) which could still be cool!

Well.. not really. Kyle had another video on his old channel how "boring" space battles would really be. The Expanse is a good show and just tries to be as physically correct as it is entertaining. But man ... that scene where someone (don't want to spoil to much) is freezing in space ... that is the last thing that would happen to your body ... I think kyle also had an episode about that ... thanks to that episode (I never had though about that before) this mistake in that scene has really spoiled things for me for a while. Good that this was the end of one episode :)

I have tried a few times but always find myself falling asleep from boredom after only 2 or 3 episodes. I should try again because I have heard it gets really good but those first few episodes do almost nothing to keep my attention :(

@@reichstein011 Yeah, episode 4 is where things go off. Episode 4 is nuts.

@@reichstein011 I felt the same the first time I tried to watch, the first episodes didn't rally hook me into the series. So I heard lot's of good things, specially from Kyle, and o gave it another shot and forced a little bit more and ended up falling in love with the series!

Sort of. He likely estimated a lead on the target, shooting at where *he thought* the target *would likely* be. What he was supposed to do was have the computer do the estimation for him, the "firing solution". Basically, it's a calculation done by the computer to increase hit probability and reduces user error. When considering normal gun safety, you are responsible for each round you fire. "Know your target and what's beyond it." In space, that's exponentially more intense, because the shots you miss aren't limited by gravity or a backstop. Just as important, shooting when/where the targeting computer tells you rather than determining it yourself alleviates some legal responsibility. Going off of real life military, if a gunner on a ship fires a stray round and it hits something it's not supposed to, it's more than their ass on the line. It's their supervisor, their supervisor's supervisor, basically their leadership all the way up to the ship's commander. ALL of them have to answer why that round went where it did. It's much easier to find it was due to the computer telling him to shoot there rather than figuring out where the leadership failed to train the gunner properly. TL;DR: the GySGT was chewing him out for not using the computer to aim for him, because moral and legal responsibility, and covering your ass.

Depends on what the bullets are hitting. If a bullet exists...that is, someone actually loading it into a weapon, pointing it at an enemy, activating the firing mechanism...it is by definition harder than the stuff it's being fired at or no one would bother pointing it at an enemy and activating the firing mechanism. Granted, your idea might be nasty as hell for the meatbags inside a spacecraft (cue up videos on tanks being hit by A-10 Warthogs), but any shrapnel kicked loose by the bullet passing through will NOT have the same energy as the bullet...it'll have the "leftovers" (sans cranberry sauce) of energy after the bullet's already passed, modified by the weight of the material itself. Assuming that one spacecraft is shredded by bullets but the bullets themselves miss another spacecraft downrange, which itself is then showered with shrapnel from the first, the second spacecraft will not be torn apart by the first even if they're the same material...it'll simply be pelted like a Honda Civic in a hailstorm.

@@Gilleban Underrated comment. the images you're bringing to mind with your descriptions are award winning! "the leftovers (ssans cranberry sauce)" "Honda Civic in a hailstorm" just, perfection.

@@Gilleban not exactly. A bullet is not necessarily harder or more resistant than the target. That is why most bullets are made of lead alloy covered by copper. And yet capable of transfixing steel and other resistant materials. It is all about acceleration and mass. If a small fragment is accelerated by a secondary explosion (explosive materials, depressurizing, collision of structures and so) it can have the same or more energy as the original projectile.

imagine pieces getting slingshot through gravity wells until it actually melts down into a sphere, and hits something out of atmosphere at mach 15. Imagine this happens because of an accidental oxygen explosion. In fact, they've happened before in our solar system, and debris did make it out. This is not a responsibility you can avoid by acting snoy. This video is crap.

Imagine missing and hit yourself in the back.

I'm mildly concerned... I mean, the space junk we've already left "floating around" up there is already posing one of the greatest threats to our continued space-faring... The solar system we live in is also already described as a "shooting gallery"... SO I'd hate the be "that guy" who accidentally wiped out a lunar base or something, but I doubt I'd be so concerned when I was weighing out whether or not to squeeze the trigger in such circumstances where I'd consider squeezing a trigger... ;o)

@@gnarthdarkanen7464 Who describes the solar system as a "shooting gallery"? First I've heard of it, and if you take Kyle's findings into account that's a pretty weird thing to back. Similarly, if I were actually considering pulling a trigger in a scenario where such consequences even could be of concern, it would be for a reason good enough to not be concerned about the risks of missing (only the risks of failing to hit).

@@JarieSuicune Almost everybody refers to the solar system as a shooting gallery when they get a full count of "Near Earth Objects" that we've actually tracked alongside the actual amount of technologically advanced searching we've done on the matter... meaning there's likely plenty more such things we haven't even noticed yet.... On the point of actually pulling a trigger, I agree. It's likely I'd be more concerned with whatever I was shooting AT than whatever consequences might sneak up later... AND we DO already have safety issues with a veritable cloud of debris we've put into orbit around the earth as it is... It interferes with launch times and protocols fairly constantly. SO it's worth mild concern but certainly not outright fear. ;o)

The problem are all the bullet sized objects humanity already sent whizzing around Earth.

@@gnarthdarkanen7464 thats only becaise it is on low orbit around our planet.

Let's all be entirely honest, we all know deep down that a space faring civilization will be essentially true anarchy in the deep space, and whatever else in stations and planets. Gun control is already impossible on Earth, where we measure population density in people/km^2, just imagine when it's "people/ly^3". Even ignoring the obvious consequences of banning guns in a place police essentially don't exist...

@@goodguyjohn4625 Ok Antifa. 😂

@@Firefox1189 bruh, this guy is not antifa. I am.

@@swenmcheath1798 A criminal*

How is that a stupid question? He’s completely right, no one can enforce Russia or China to do anything in space…. Let alone on the planet

Yes, besides are we really worrying about whether it would hit "something" or "someone"? Those are two completely different things. If some lifeless planet, or asteroid or sun gets hit it doesn't really matter, there is no real damage done. If they are worried about spaceships being hit, they would first have to decide how many spaceships are gonna be in that galaxy

@@zakosist One point Kyle made in the beginning (@4:40) was about the pains NASA goes through trying to reduce and mitigate any potential of contamination or destruction of potential life or pristine existence on the other solar bodies we've managed to touch. In fact, early on in the Spirit an Opportunity mars rover missions, there was considerable pushback on the design of creating a landing crane system which was disposable, as "disposing" a device containing explosives and fuel on a planet that at best might only have minuscule remnants of microbial life has enough uncertainty to make the probability of destroying evidence we're spending all this effort attempting to study very high. While I think your point is realistic, I also think much of the question is more about ethics than it is about probability and statistics. To put it another way using another example from the video, shooting a gun on Earth without a proper backstop or directly into the air might not have a high likelyhood of hitting anything or anyone in a sparsely populated region, yet it is still considered an unsafe practice in many cultures. It's less about a single bullet being fired and more about establishing a culture that allows for unsafe firing of projectiles.

Well in space you’re still bound by the laws of the country you departed from (I believe, it’s like maritime laws). So as long as you legally own the gun and are able to carry it in the states you both take off and land in (or the state you enter after returning from an ocean splashdown) then really I don’t see any legal issues. And this is probably how it will stay, while in space you’re in a US vessel in “international waters” basically

@@zackberry6729 For example a person who has a permit in Florida would be fine as long as they landed in Florida or a state that recognizes a Florida permit.

@Kiril Belikov "Nyet! No permit is fine!"

I'm in space, I don't need no goddamn permit! What are you gonna do, send the space-feds?

Probably the same as ships.

Arguably? The only difference between a rocket and a missile is that one sometimes has a living payload in it. Any ship capable of space travel can be considered a weapon.

Just like in the Last Jedi. The Holdo Maneuver

I imagine it won't be too much different from the 2 ton projectiles that are driven now, just with more risk when something goes wrong.

In the words of Isaac Arthur, there is no such thing as an unarmed space ship. Much as I love the series, the Palladium Wars books commit this same mistake- without spoiling too much some characters are like "god. The destructive power of a one hundred kilotonne nuclear bomb. Terrifying." They're in a space ship that can, at its best, pull enough gees that travel from one world to another could end in an impact going fast enough to release 200 megatonnes of force.

@@AsobiMedio exactly and with how big the ships needs to be for humans, you can get objects that are more massive than the tungsten rods from Project Thor. All I'm saying is kinetic weapons and object defense is gonna need a bigger budget in the near future with how space is going right now

The rounds would have to be huge to get through an atmosphere. A place with no atmosphere would have to have some kind of similar level of protection, otherwise it's not very likely for there to be a large number of settlements because they would already be getting bombarded with natural space debri.

Yes, it's hard enough to blockade an entire planet, trying to blockade a patch of space only really works if the planetary bodies in the region force ships to travel through a narrow path. Otherwise, they can just go around.

@@arkvoodleofthesacredcrotch6060 The rounds themselves are probably not that much more of a threat than the other bits of dust and pebble flying around. As long as they either fall to the earth quickly, or have the necessary trajectory to leave orbit, there's no real problem. It's the ones that orbit that would eventually be an issue.

imagine god knows how many millions of years in the future, space battles have come and gone and Jupiter has realised it's ultimate dream: To become solid, it's core forged by countless rounds of ammunition :P

What about *retrograde* rounds?

@@rubeniscool That just sounds badass!

@@andrewpast1959 unless the ship that fired then was actually traveling retrograde (can't think why this would ever happen), I would think the slugs wouldn't be going fast enough to actually orbit the sun the other direction. They would just orbit in the same direction but slower

@@rubeniscool and then, when after so many millennias of being fired at, capturing uncountable arrays of projectiles, the great day finally arrives, the moment to be solid... Only for it to explode in a mess of plasma and so many other states of matter and become yet again a non solid conglomerate of gases doing strange noises in the silent vacuum.

Well he did ramp the size up to the size of the Sun........ with I am pretty confident in saying is larger then the "Sphere of Gravitational influence" around that fictional planet. So I think that calculation still get's what you want done.

@@13KuriMaster Yeah, but they were also discussing the orbits in a solar system, so I kinda meant the average gravitational sphere of the average size solar body. I’m not trying to invalidate his thought experiment, I was just trying to find the most conservative possible variation that still sounded reasonable for non-astrophysicists to attempt to solve for. It likely doesn’t change the outcome of “space is so vast it still isn’t likely to happen”. I was just curious.

Yeah, the phrase you're looking for is "effective cross section" - which comes up when looking at collisions between charged particles.

Then why not use the system Kyle used and just make your target size the solar system? Of course, saying "orbit" is badly generic in this case, as there are at least "stable orbit", "unstable orbit", and "slingshot & bye bye! orbit" to take into account. Stable orbit, the least likely case, is the one that is of greatest concern, as the other two I named result in the item no longer being an issue as soon as it either interacts with the orbited body (whether by impact or incineration) or is launched into the big, wide, almost-nothingness beyond.

Typically an outside object entering a gravity well will not "settle into an orbit" usually such an object will only enter a closed orbit if it enters the gravity well at a LA grange point.

That second solution is very innovative!

Yeah. A lot of misses will probably never hit anything - but you don't want to be the guy who fired the one that did wipe out an entire colony hundreds of years later. So it's safer to assume that you will hit something you didn't want to even on a miss.

Yeah, the odds may well be in your favor, but depending on the slug size, you're looking at essentially nuking something that's an innocent bystander. That's a big responsibility and should be taken serious regardless of the odds.

In the Navy, being trained for the "Ship's Self Defense Force" we were taught to use shotguns because the buckshot (000 buckshot, specifically) can bounce around corners rather than punch right through the bulheads and hit someone "sheltering in place" behind them. I've long held a personal preference for shotguns in personal defense for the exact reason that they don't penetrate very well in comparison to rifle or pistol rounds (aka... bullets)... It further gives advantage that each single shot-shell throws 9 separate projectiles versus a single "slug" from the rifle or pistol... Moving into the Space question, it would then make sense to issue shotguns for internal defenses and likely develop further in the technology of ballistic frangibles and the like for better penetration but with the fracturing upon impact so they can only penetrate a single layer of "armor" for whatever it's worth. Since 2001 and the rise in concerns for aircraft security, a LOT of R&D has already been done to be able to use a firearm in a contained and pressurized vessel without the hazard of rupturing it, even in the case of missing. It stands to reason that similar arms races would be based on what we've already done historically (including the recent history) in order to improve upon the innovations from somewhere... Just because the gun "fires" by electromagnetism (gauss or rail-guns for instance) doesn't change the physics of the projectiles being used.,.. only some of the materials... and even with that we've got "sabot" technology as old as firearms, themselves... to let a given material projectile fit AND seal to the barrel of choice caliber or gauge. ;o)

Its exactly gun safety rules...just in space lol

As self defense lawyers always point out: "you are personally responsible for everything that comes out the end of your gun."

The bullets going straight through the hull though is iffy, to say the least. If they're not at hypervelocity, standard armor plating should protect the ships. If they are at hypervelocity, then that damage should look WAY different.

@@khadenallast4495 I believe they're extremely dense slugs with armor-piercing tips, and in the case of the most recent episode where the PDC rounds did that much damage, keep in mind it's being fired backwards into an accelerating ship. There's a whole lot of delta-v there.

@@Hudson316 Don't forget to subtract the firing ship's velocity from the target ship's velocity.

@@Hudson316 With armor design, thickness, and densities being what they are, a simple dense projectile with a hardened penetrator is increasingly ineffective. I'd imagine this would be more so the case by the time of the Expanse, since warships would, at least in theory, at minimum be armored to withstand some of the more basic/weaker weaponry used by other warships. Of course you can increase velocities further, but eventually you'll reach that hypervelocity threshold where the round will vaporize on impact, and penetration will be achieved via the spalling/shrapnel that results from the impact (rather than punching straight through, as seen multiple times in the series, such as the Rocci vs Osiris battle).

It's worth note somewhere that the U.S. military started phasing out DPU rounds for Tungsten, since the penetration was determined roughly similar... With the DPU round, it would punch through an Abrams M1A1 and bury itself 6 - 8 feet into the ground... on average, while the same in Tungsten would punch through the same tank and bury itself on average 4 - 6 feet into the ground... Another note worth mention is that "legendary" spiegenstahl, of the Nagant 7.62 x 54R mm round, developed in 1891... Yes, the Germans called them "steel spike" bullets, because the Russians cheaped out and put steel slugs in the center of each bullet to save money... turns out the reinforcement made them penetrating rounds much more effectively than even the copper jackets that were intended to make them better at penetration... The Eastern Bloc liked it so much they did much the same with Tokarev or 7.64 x 25 mm rounds for many of their pistols... which is why you should be warned NEVER EVER try to make a "dum-dum" out of Eastern Bloc ammunition, including some of the cheap stuff you can get from China... BTW... just for those not in the know... A "dum-dum" is made by cutting a cross into the nose of the bullet. The resulting grooves encourages "mushrooming" as the round enters a target, and in simple lead projectiles it's a cheap way to make a gunshot wound much more dangerous... via a wider wound track. They're called "dum-dum" because the first known munitions site that did this horrible thing was in a place called "Dum Dum" in India I believe... AND you shouldn't do it with Eastern Bloc' ammo because the steel sliugs have a bad habit of squirting right out of the jackets... leaving a piece of shrapnel in the barrel... SO the next shot fired is going to be a REAL bad day for the shooter... I'm not of the opinion that it should be done to any round, frankly... BUT in the situation where it might be excusable, the warning is safety-conscious, not ethics. In any case, just buying hollowpoints would make better sense... It's finally worth note that the worry about most bullets falling back to the ground somewhere is that they're gyroscopically stabilized by the rifling of the barrel, and they don't lose that stabilizing effect in their path until they hit something... Shotguns, on the other hand, can be safely discharged into the air, since they don't stabilize anything... The resulting "fall out" is as dangerous as throwing the projectiles by hand... AND most of the time, they're subsonic AND entirely round balls... aside from the obvious "rifled slugs" ... but see that gyroscopic stability clause and caveat again. ;o)

Or it could become an awesome duel planet where it's pretty much space wild west. Could be some cool lore

around a moon like our moon would be really bad. Especially because the bumpy surface makes the orbit decay, so eventually all of those slugs would literally rain across the moon

That actually happens in the show/book they are talking about. Battle on Ganymede

Watching both of them talk about mean free paths like the bullets would ignore orbital mechanics gave me physical pain. Why does no one get that they end up in elliptical orbits?

orbit decay

The difference is that the objects in solar system are just the ones that didn't hit anything, so this is basically survivorship bias. We didn't avoid getting hit, everything that was going to hit us already did. (Which isn't exactly true since Earth keeps getting hit by small stuff)

@@TheByQQ Well that's not strictly accurate, there's an incredible amount of material impacting every day, and it doesn't just impact and then it's settled, Each impact itself will create ejecta, some of which can escape into the sporadic background population. Nothing about impacting is "finished". The Earth alone is hit by 72000 tonnes of material every year

Brace against the hull?

@@mr.stargazer9835 As in, the vacuum of space.

The game Heat Signature actually plays with this idea; you can use a shotgun to increase your speed in space, which is used at the start of an especially difficult mission to board a ship.

@@brandongreenland9632 It would work. Without anything acting against the motion of the player character, a shotgun blast would propel them.

It would have to be a big gun to have such an effect. If you are out in space you likely have a jet pack of some description anyway.

And Chrisjen Avasarala is our goddess.

The Expansionists

@@qwertyferix We worship the queen of the fucking earth

Humans should keep their guns. They may need it. When "I" complete my obligation to this dimension. But will anything exist by then? Nothing rarely does... The others will find Terra once more.

I know, right? Adam Savage got a cameo…

The Sten MKII can be readily built from hardware store parts, for example, and shotguns have built from hardware store parts for near forever. And it's not just pistols, it's every concievable gun you can build at home, including bowling ball cannons!

“Make Illegal” and “ban” doesn’t mean “prevent the existence of” rather “if caught with, penalize “; and that is flat out “yes, very possible “

Is your argument that if a law doesn't prevent 100% of crime it shouldn't exist?

@@mistermaestersirthomas9164 humans, as a whole species, are a messy and violent. Right now we're only sending 'the best' of us out into space. If, or perhaps when, there's significant population out there you've going to have some level of crime. Including violent crime. Trying to somehow control that violence with total bans or heavy regulation of weapons don't work now and it will not work in deep space. Best case scenario you might have no weapons allowed in certain spaces and you had you have to check your BFG 9K or whatever in a locker at the entrance to a habitat your visiting. And even that wouldn't be a 100% fail-safe.

@@dogofwar6769 controlling whether or not gun went up in a spaceship would be rather simple as would capturing and punishing violators. Airfilters would detect explosives and cargo weight must all be factored for. Spaceflight itself would be highly observed making it hard to smuggle and way easier to regulate. Crew of any spaceflight would be dependent on a port for survival any lack of compliance would result in no go on landing/supplies (like air) til they authorities recover the dead crew. It would be simple to regulate, easier than any regulations on Earth now, in fact.

Yeah, but there are a LOT of microasteroids in the solar system, it's not really reasonable to think you're going to significantly increase the number of them by firing projectiles.

@@danieljensen2626 dude, let's say we have a small skirmish in space, only 2 sides. Most likely, this will occur in or around a planet's orbit. Just talking about rounds, a single vulcan cannon can fire roughly 6000 rounds a min. That's not the biggest issue though. Most military doctrine follows the 'spray and pray' method, the more rounds fired, the more likely you'll hit the target. But missiles and explosives will also be used, look at naval battles. Now quantify that with as many ships as both sides can muster. All of this occurring inside of a planet's gravity well... That's a lot of space debris

@@vennom14 Will probably form something similar to Saturn's rings...but instead of ice it would be metal shards.

Just carry a small piece of duct tape with you, a quarter-inch hole is not going to blow up the ship.

@@VexChoccyMilk Clearly you don't own an air fryer

@@Avarus-Lux bro it's space.

@@bipolingdaco1607 The pressure differential between space and the ISS is less than 5 PSI, and even if the sun were shining directly on it, it would not melt. Sure you could be extra safe and have some aluminum tape, but duct tape would work.

@@VexChoccyMilk oh that makes sense okay you right

Had the same concern, very glad he kept it open minded.

If a lonely planet is only orbiting one star, and spirals inward or outward over multiple orbits, then something is really wrong with the simulation. Some of the simulations are super good.

Me, as my completed whole: "The dismantlement of this dimension has begun. Of every species to try. Mankind are of the few to finally make it here, this time around. So, mortals... How shall Fate end in this future?"

@@absolstoryoffiction6615 Weavile is stronger and has a better design.

@@shoopoop21 The Multi Dimensional Guns can slay more than just one Dimension. Especially when it can alter Existence at a fundamental level.

@@absolstoryoffiction6615 I stand by my statement. BTW, this is not how actually crazy people talk, I've listened to enough of CWC rambling to know the difference. You're just a social leper having a laff.

Yeah..... Which either means control dystopia, or wild wild space ,

I think that'll make the problem worse. Self destroying projectiles just make more smaller particles go even faster and in multiple directions.

@@Awag-yj8bu I think if you're at the point of huge Expense-style ships (that can have hulls thicker than a sheet of foil), thousands or millions of ships (which would invariably mean a lot of space junk) and mining asteroids (which is invariably going to create a lot of free-moving debris), the problem of collisions with very small particles has been solved.

@@bill_and_amanda that's a fair point.

@@Awag-yj8bu That will literally disintegrate on impact and cause no measurable damage.

Timed charges, like we already used in WW2 to much more effectiveness against aircraft than straight contact rounds.

Aliens: "Oh... It's the humans... Didn't the Greens communicate with them earlier?"

Man, gettin' harassed by the po-po 4 million years later...

More likely they’ll orbit a star for a long long time.

If you fired a 50 cal just right on the moon the round could potentially make a full orbit and then hit you. As unlikely as that is (even the moon is very big in this context) it would be far FAR more likely than a friendly fire incident across the solar system.

ban human guns from space

@Michael Skinner if aliens came from another planet or another solar system, it's more like a one-sided genocide than a real war.

@Michael Skinner War? How? What could we even DO to them? Seriously, almost every aliens-meet-humans story has the same pure-idiot premise that we could actually DO something against them. We don't have a way to deliver a nuclear payload at a fast enough speed for it to affect them before they could just destroy it from plenty a safe distance. We don't have enough/any(?) ballistic firepower set in open space (because no one is stupid enough to think a bullet fired from the Earth's surface will matter) to just litter their ship(s) with bullet holes... nor enough force behind it to overcome their definitely otherwise bullet-proof armor (or possible other defenses). And they aren't going to be as stupid as to just come down to the surface with their entire force and just stand there as we blast them. No, they are going to be out of range, using far more powerful weaponry than we have, and LAUGHING as they watch streams of our many videos of "war" with aliens. If people want a most-realistic example, go read (NOT WATCH) War of the Worlds. Well's inspiration: his disgust with the eradication of native people using the superior warfare available to the military at the time. I'm only disappointed that he also took into account the theoretical potential danger of microorganisms to an alien biology if they didn't take appropriate precautions... though of course, just like not all diseases a dog can suffer can affect humans, it could be that no earth disease could infect them (same applies in reverse too! Even a peaceful race could theoretically accidentally exterminate us with a microorganism that is harmless, or even necessary, to them and they just forgot about that danger to us). Then just take that concept and apply it to the advances we've made since then. Seriously, if we are as advanced as we are and still only gotten so far, try to comprehend what a true space-faring race could be capable of and how very-not-stupid they would be in warfare.

Me: "It's been eternities since I returned. This dimension has not changed one bit. How are the human race?... Precursor of Worlds."

You have to get close to your destination without hitting your destination or anything near your departure point. Kyle's calculations are based on starting in some random location, which is almost certainly going to be interstellar and going in some random direction, which is also almost certainly interstellar. If you're in low orbit, the odds of smashing into the planet are near 50% in some random direction. Obviously you wouldn't intentionally choose a direction right through the planet, but these calculations are based on any random direction. And what about the planet where you are going? You really want to be sure you are stopping on this side of it, or a little left or right, or flat out outside the solar system.

It's OK, the Fuel Rats will save you. 😏

Even though such objects, despite being *enormous* relatively speaking, are pretty tiny on a spatial scale, I also am surprised by how rarely rogue planets or even rogue *black holes* get acknowledged as a navigational danger that you just have to kind of accept exists. At least a black hole a hyper-advanced nav system could theoretically figure out the location of from gravitational waves, but a planet? No way, that's probably not happening until you're dangerously close. Of course... You'd have to be at the perfect unfortunate time to ever crash into/be caught by/be thrown off course by any of these objects, since *they* are moving too, of course. But it is a bit odd to me that the consideration never comes up when talking about interstellar travel.

Danggggg i got it 20 minutes later. 😢

Space isn't completely empty. There are still enough hydrogen atoms to eventually slow it down (but then the speed is still relative to what ever it hits)

@@excluseive9769 Yes, that's right, but then, how many hydrogen atoms does for example a 115 grain bullet traveling at 360m/s (average 9x19mm fired from a 4.65" barrel) need to hit before slowing down significantly? Also, accounting for hitting stray atoms kinda breaks the whole argument because that happens pretty easily, I'd say.

I'm at the break and this video is about 18 minutes too long

Ran some numbers, the longest recorded shot is 2.2mi, let's assume a bullet will stop after 100x that, so 220 miles, or some 350km. Air has a density of 1225g/m^3, and vacuum is roughly 4 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, iirc. will cut to the chase, that is around 7e-24g/m^3. So a bullet in space would travel roughly (1225/(6.5e-24)*) times more than in atmosphere, or roughly 6,972,140,116,739,290 lighyears, or enough to cross the entire universe (minimum estimated unknown ~ 7e12ly) some 996 times, before stopping. *I checked before posting, apparently I was quite close to the actual density of vacuum, which is roughly 6.5e-24g/m^3, not 7e-24g/m^3;

@@goodguyjohn4625 you are so off it's not even funny. The round that shot was taken with LITERALLY LOSES HALF ITS VELOCITY at about 1700y... it won't make it past 10 miles let alone 220...