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"Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiraling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile."
by noblethrasher 15y ago
"Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiraling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile."
Wouldn't it be more like a ballistic missile?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rdtsc 15y agoCruise missile sounds more sensational to the average Joe. Now they could have said "like a nuclear warhead" or a "dirty bomb" to invoke that easily accessible pre-programmed fear of terrorism as well. Also I think they should emphasize the word "blasted" more times. I feel 4 times wasn't enough. Maybe another 12 times would really demonstrate how dangerous science can be.
- freehunter 15y agoThat quote made it seem like the ball changed course. "Spiraling back toward Dublin". I'm not a cannonball expert, but wouldn't it just be "heading toward Dublin"? "Spiraling back" makes it sound like it turned around and went the other way.
- damoncali 15y agoprojectiles in flight actually do some surprising things -curving or literally spiraling through the air are just some of them. I have no idea what this thing was doing, but at speed and with spin, weird things happen.
- freehunter 15y agoI could see it spiraling or even curving, but it still seems highly unlikely that it would turn around 180, pass by a point where it previously flew over, and cause that much damage after passing through a concrete wall. "back towards" implies just that.
- T-hawk 15y agoFrisbees and boomerangs in flight can certainly turn around way more than 180°. Or with sufficient wind, any projectile can turn 180° and come back the way it came. I'd doubt a spinning cannonball would actually manage that, but it probably only takes a curve of 90° or even just 45° for some sensationalist journalist to exaggerate that into "spiraling back".
- daemin 15y agoThere was a recent analysis of soccer shots that seem to curve quite considerably, and it was deduced that the soccer ball in flight would actually form a spiral on to a point. Only that the ball hit the net or the ground did it stop its spiral trajectory.
- tlb 15y agoPerhaps "spiraling" in the sense of a football. If the cannon was rifled.
- cbr 15y agoCannon have been rifled since at least the time of the civil war, so that would make some sense.
- zeteo 15y agoThat's a really funny quote considering the iron cannonball is the size of a softball and a 17th century technology. It's a bit like saying "the horse sped by like an 18-wheeler".
- dredmorbius 15y agoNo, like a cruise missile. Fired out of a cannon.
- URSpider94 15y agoAt the risk of taking the bait, a cruise missile is powered through its entire flight to the target. A ballistic missile is powered only at the beginning of the flight, and then it arcs unpowered (ballistically) to its target. A cannonball is not like a cruise missile.
- dredmorbius 15y agoHumor. Have you heard of it?