interesting damage question

[thedemonapostle]

lately i been reading some scifi by john ringo, namely the poslean series. so here's the question for everyone with more schooling than me.
what would be the damage on a weapon that fires a projectile at relativistic speeds? if i remember correctly in the books it was listed at around 4-5% the speed of light.
what would the star wars weg d6 damage be for a:
1mm tear drop round?
3mm tear drop round?

and if youre familiar with the series, thoughts of the high velocity missile launcher damage. or the SheVa guns.

and since i been wracking my brain bucket to finish my thorough write up for the halo conversion, what about the Gauss and mac rounds in the halo universe?
what would the star wars weg d6 damage be for a:
5.4mm round moving at 15,000 meters per second?
25mm round moving at approximately 13,611.6 m/s?
a 600-ton ferric-tungsten projectile moving at 30 kilometers per second?
a 3000-ton ferric-tungsten round moving at 12,000 kilometers per second? (roughly 4% the speed of light)
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[Naaman]

Hmmm.... if I remember correctly, certain IEDs were being launced at 22,000 feet per second... roughly 4 miles per second, and they punched straight through just about anything.

Though I'm inclined to believe that the "damage" would be no higher (at least not meaningfully so) just on account of the speed. Instead, I'd reason that there is some kind of armor piercing effect (ignores a certain amount of armor) while the lethality to the target remains similar to what a regular bullet would do.

Check out some videos on penetration tests: many times, the faster moving round is the one that punches through the most material, while the biggest round delivers more energy (shock/impact) to the target.

For example, I saw one experiment where a bunch of different rounds were fired at a frying pan. Of the pistol rounds, 9mm and. 40 punched through, while. 45 did not (I didn't think any of the rounds would penetrate, but was not surprised that the faster rounds were the ones that did it).

[jmanski]

Yeah, but against flesh high speed tends to equal more damage as it moves through the body. All that energy wreaks havoc against squishy stuff.
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[Whill]

[thedemonapostle]

still curious to see what peoples opinions on the damage rating for a 3 millimeter tear drop made of depleted uranium propelled by a tiny amount of antimatter to relativistic speeds would be. the 4-5% the speed of light was a guess, i couldnt remember the actual numbers and looking through several books trying to hunt it down would take nearly as long as it took to read them. but i can find numerous points where they are described as being fired at relativistic speeds.
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[jmanski]

You looking for stats, then?
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[JironGhrad]

[garhkal]

Wouldn't that qualify similarly to the magna caster??
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[Zarn]

Yup, I agree with garhkal - that's a magna caster. Any railgun / coilgun / MLA would be similar to magna caster.

However, the projectile is much bigger with the magna caster, and as the magna caster was "whisper quiet" a speed of 0.05c would at the very least sound like a howl or intense snap (rapid fire would be ... exciting).

If we were to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations - let's say that your 1mm teardrop is a sphere 1mm in diameter. DUC has a density of 19.1 g per cubic centimeter. If my calculations are correct, each projectile weighs in at ~0.01g. So that gives about 1 GJ energy for the 1mm teardrop, and a similar calculation gives 30 GJ energy for the 3mm teardrop.

With such a tiny cross section of the projectile and such a high speed, I'm having trouble seeing any energy transference to the target - but you'll likely get cavitation as the primary damage mode for the weapon.

I'm also unsure on how well this would work in an atmosphere. It would smash through atmosphere like a streak of plasma, and the projectile itself won't have much integrity either - sputtering would destroy it quite fast. There's a relevant XKCD, of course. https://what-if.xkcd.com/89/

If you time your rapid fire right, you might utilize the vacuum channel made by the previous shot on your subsequent shots, which means you might get further.

Star Wars, however, doesn't run on physics. It runs on plot. So if the 1mm is roughly equivalent to, say, a light repeater, it does 6D (energy) damage. If the 3mm is roughly equivalent to an E-Web, it does E-Web damage. And the ranges are similar.

[thedemonapostle]

[RedKnight]

I'd like to try and replicate the Armored Combat Suits but my brain is not meant for math.

[Naaman]

I'm still not really convinced there would be any more damage. If the relative "squishiness" or fragility of the target were a factor, then paper targets would be obliterated by 9mm, considering how much "damage" those rounds do to flesh. Firing supersonic rounds or subsonic rounds through paper, the hole looks the same.

The best I think you can get with more speed is more range, assuming the ballistics can support that kind of flight (cutting through wind becomes harder the faster you go).

I also think you'd get more penetration, but the bodily damage would not increase. Regular bullets already have enough velocity to punch through flesh. Once that barrier is broken, more speed does not somehow translate into a bigger hole.

Also, trauma is greater with slower slower rounds, as more energy is delivered to the target. But penetration is greater with faster rounds. But if 1100 feet per second is sufficient to overpenetrate flesh and bone, then why would 2000 feet per second be more or less deadly? And then, 100,000 feet per second?

Here's my take: rhe size/caliber of the projectile determinsles its damage. And the speed determins its penetration (ignore armor).

[Savar]

also look at the verpine shatter gun.

also the note about atmospheric effects a shock wave could do damage also vs soft targets.

[MrNexx]

https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/

Larger than a theoretical man-launched projectile, but worth noting.
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[thedemonapostle]