4 ms·
Is it? More mass means more kinetic energy. If the core of the satellite is extremely heavy, it only has to lose a tiny percentage of velocity to send a light
by admax88q 6y ago
Is it? More mass means more kinetic energy. If the core of the satellite is extremely heavy, it only has to lose a tiny percentage of velocity to send a lightweight piece off at 90 degrees at extremely high velocities.
Taken to the extreme I'd rather hit a feather than a bowling ball at 14 km/s.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> Taken to the extreme I'd rather hit a feather than a bowling ball at 14 km/s. But what matters here isn't what you would rather do, it's what both you and the feather/bowling ball would rather do, in context of minimizing the size of the resulting fragmentation. Intuition tells me that a hypervelocity bowling ball will barely notice you, much less have time to deposit lots of energy into you.
- admax88q 6y agoSure not a great example, but fire two bowling balls at eachother and fire two feathers at eachother at equal speeds, how big do you expect the debris fields to be in either case? The bowling ball collision has a lot more energy involved, it can eject more debris at high velocities in various directions.