4 ms·
Plugging some numbers into wolfram alpha, a 90,000 kg object (about 12 cubic meters of iron, for example) moving at the reentry velocity we'd expect from lunar
by ericbarrett 4y ago
Plugging some numbers into wolfram alpha, a 90,000 kg object (about 12 cubic meters of iron, for example) moving at the reentry velocity we'd expect from lunar orbit (10 km/s) would have about the equivalent kinetic energy of a 1kT nuke, which is quite small.
You'd have to lob a really big rock at those speeds to get to the megaton range. (Or from interstellar distances, since energy scales with v^2.) Seems infeasible for a near-future lunar mining op. But it also demonstrates how powerful nuclear weapons are.
- rbanffy 4y ago> at those speeds It all depends on how fast it can be pushed by the mass driver, but the weapon would need to ingest ~4e+15 Joules to impart a megaton of energy into something. I wonder if there wouldn't be a point where the impactor would be squashed enough to fuse some tritium, but, then, it's no longer just a kinetic weapon.