Would SC Marine's guns penetrate stormtrooper armor?

[NecronLord]

Note to DW & Sea Skimmer, this is assuming the stormtrooper's armour stands up to it. Indeed against unarmoured people, a C18th cannonball will do more damage than an assault rifle bullet, despite having a lower velocity... (And we could start on the likes of alpha particles. However, I am actually talking about total KE against an armoured person

No, I mean provide your fucking analysis to prove this. I assume that you based your conclusion on some degree of comparative analysis, even though you have yet to specify an actual mass for the projectile in question (which is a key component in figuring kinetic energy and momentum)

OK, shall we try and work it out?

The projectile is almost cetainly a ferrous material for it to be acellerated, so, we'll make it iron. It apparently has an 8mm diameter apparently. I'll give it a 3Cm length.

8^2 pi = 67.14 mm^2

67.14*30 =2014.2 mm^3/ 2.0142 Cm ^3

Density of Iorn ~= 7.9 g/cm^3

Mass of projectile ~= 15.91218g (I would expect them to use some denser materials in there as well, and this is untreated iorn.) Though for simplicity I'll use 16.g

Hydrostatic shock is not the same thing as imparting lethal acceleration to a person. Hydrostatic shock is created when a bullet strikes the body (there are two kinds actually, detailed here: http://www.geocities.com/eqocg/day_with ... shock.html)

What you are describing is more akin to exceeding the human gee tolerances of the body by imparting a large degree of momentum (or the use of a large-momentum object like a boulder)

I know all about it, it is, mostly, mythical.

Neither of which is relevant to a bullet penetrating SW armor, unless you are arguing the SC marine bullets have a far greater momentum than those rocks (in which case this brings us back to why you refuse to provide any sort of comparative analysis, which your statements suggest you have done.)

I'll do better than that, as you insist, I'll give you both Momentum and KE.

At 21 degrees C (70°F), a ready figure (Normal sea level pressure etc.) for the speed of sound is 344 m/s

Mach 5 = 1720 m/s

0.016 Kg travelling at 1720 m/s has an approximate KE of 23.667 KJ

Now for the rocks. a 30 cm diameter rock (a little generous) falling from 2 meters (Again, a hair high in my estimation) at what seems to be about 1G. (Though the stormtroopers were hit by several)

Shall we assume the rocks are made out of limestone (and not expanded polystyrene) and that they are dry.

With a radius of 15 Cm the Sphere volume = 14137cm^3

Density of limestone is 2.7 g/cm3 (According to this document (It's a hard figure to find without a suitible geology book)

14137 * 2.7 = 38,169.9g/38.1 Kg (Strong for their size those ewoks are)

Assuming 10m/s^2 (Which is slightly higher than G I know, but won't hurt the calcs much)

Distance traveled in 0.63 seconds: 1.9845 meters

Final Velocity: 6.3 m/s

38.1 Kg travelling at 6.3 m/s has an approximate KE of 756 J, according to this calculator Feel free to check it.

KE of projectile = 23,667 J
KE of rock = 756 J

Now for the momentum (Though as a rule, KE is more important than momentum in this kind of thing. A 1,000 Kg object at 1 m/s has the same Momentum as a 1 KG object at 1,000 m/s. I know which i'd rather be in the way of.);

Projectile Mass 0.016kg *1720 m/s has a momentum of 27.52 kg m/s
Rock Mass 38.1 Kg * 6.3 m/s = 240.03 Kg m/s

Clearly the projectile has far more KE, but almost 1/10th the momentum. Which do you think is more important?

If we assume the stormtrooper has a weight of 100 Kg, then which will acelleterate him most?

The projectile would acellerate him to 21.8 m/s
The rock would acellerate him to 3.9 m/s

You didn't really crunch any numbers on this at all, did you? Making vague claims (especially when they have no relevance to the original topic) does not prove your point in the slightest.

Actually, I did, however without a mass for the projectile it is almost pointless. In esscence, no, I don't consider this topic nearly important enough to waste my time doing calculations that are a) wholly irrelevant to the question, as said weapon doesn't exist. b)It's not a topic I'm all that interested in.

I do not refuse to do comparative ananlysis, I was refusing to waste my time and do it on this topic. However, as you seem to have totally set yourself on it, I have done some... just to please you. Thank you for wasting my time.

[Darth Wong]

If your figures are to be believed, then why isn't the Marine hurled backward and/or killed by the recoil? And don't give me some "conservation of momentum doesn't apply in this sci-fi universe" nonsense; you're perfectly content to invent mass figures for the projectile based on various assumptions grounded in both real physics and guesses about how the weapon works.

[NecronLord]

Because that weapon doesn't exist. I never claimed it did, I've played starcraft. They are definitely not gauss rifles they're firing. They seem more like a version of the aliens pulse rifle than a magnetic rifle. Indeed, in one of the cutscenes, I could have sworn I saw cases fly out of the side of the thing. Hang on half an hour and I'll see if I can't use smacker to get a screenshot.

[NecronLord]

Not only does the spiel in the manual contradict the cutscenes, it even crontradicts its own visuals. This is a background shot of the rifle extraced from the PDF of the manual. Gauss gun my ass. It clearly has cased ammunition, indicating that it works the same way any real rifle (Bar the G-11) works.



Then again, that manual is complete BS. 1000 'apocalypse class' nukes can glass a planet, yet the tac nukes barely blow up buildings. Internal consistency is clearly alien to these people... In any case, visuals > written background details.

[Seggybop]

Then again, that manual is complete BS. 1000 'apocalypse class' nukes can glass a planet, yet the tac nukes barely blow up buildings. Internal consistency is clearly alien to these people...

The manual explains this by saying that the use of full size nukes was fully banned after that incident. Whether you think something like that is smart or not doesn't make any difference. The nukes used in the game are purposely weak. Saying that since those are weak means they can't have stronger weapons is like saying USA has no 25MT bomb because they have 2kt tac nukes.

[NecronLord]

They're banned from using the 100 Gt (or whatever) nukes so they immediately switch to using 0.020 Kt nukes? That both sucks and blows simultaneously.

[Singular Quartet]

They're banned from using the 100 Gt (or whatever) nukes so they immediately switch to using 0.020 Kt nukes? That both sucks and blows simultaneously.

Actually, it does have some logical reasoning behind it:

The nukes, when fired, can be within a very small distance of your own forces. I suspect that it woudl bea good idea to fire smaller nukes so that you don't kill your own men.

[SirNitram]

If by some miracle the concept art we were shown turned out to be accurate, one could resolve the KE issue by remembering that huge suit would dissipate the recoil better than a single guy. Of course, it wasn't, so it can't. This, of course, is going to bring out those who also believe a Zergling couldn't have been killed by a simple impact with a truck. I loathe SCers. Too many fanboys in their numbers, and they seem to snort more powdered fantasy than B5ers.