03-24-2016, 12:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-24-2016, 03:28 PM by Smith.
Edit Reason: Was still too graphic (for an E game rating)
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(03-24-2016, 12:10 PM)JoeStrout Wrote: ...
But that still leaves the question of what the hole would look like. If it doesn't actually penetrate, I'm pretty sure I know the answer: it would look like a crater. But if it goes through? I think it would simply be a crater that's torn through on bottom. I doubt the 1 atmosphere or less of air pressure would make much difference over the split-second that the metal was hot enough to flow. But I'm only guessing. I still hope we can find a more definitive answer!
The absolute way to know is to find a way to test a mock. Yeah, a really good computer model can go pretty far but seems to me that some companies and agencies learned a lesson from scrapping their actual wind tunnels in a rush to embrace the power of the simulation.
There's that NASA guy who is in every documentary showing his giant NASA impactor slamming a pea into a dish of salt to demonstrate craters and ejecta (if you collect documentaries you have seen him go from brown hair to white and still that same machine is doing the tests and making the most understandable images).
O'Neill started with the Math but then moved to bending tin and seeing the Mass-Drivers working said a whole lot more than just reading the equations. I know, it's not the answer you wanted... but that IS the answer you will usually get from O'Neill's Space Studies Institute: "Make it!" Let us all see it! :-)
One good real world mock that can be touched would answer your needs and the questions of so many others.
If you're not worried about explosive decompression effects - darn - then I guess a quickie would be to point a .22 at a bent piece of layered sheet metals. Or, if your structures are from lunar slag then using a some type of simulant or even a brick or carbon fiber ... or layers of them perhaps with some spacers for air pocket shielding. Testing that (safely kids, use lots of goggles and keep a far distance and best to leave it to an expert on a safe shooting range) would of course put heat on the bullet impactor due to air molecules in it's travel, but if you want to test with "rocks" of various types that won't melt like lead then you can use a "wrist-rocket" professional slingshot instead of a gun.
My wife was working on a game a few years back and they wanted to know some certain things so they went to doctors and asked "let's just say someone's face... what would that look like?" Some doctors took the consulting fee but in the end they just delivered photos. Maybe instead of using a shooting range and renting a high frame-rate camera you could find similar images and videos already done ... but like Jack Whitesides Parsons use to say down in the arroyo: "It sure is fun to blow stuff up" :-)