Could you catch a bullet in space after a gun has discharged? Do guns operate the same with little to no gravity?
In: Physics
This has me wondering about spacecraft like the Voyagers. It seems as if there might have been some advantage to lifting a vehicle like this beyond earth’s gravitational reach and then “firing it” on its trajectory, like a bullet. Yes? No?
This is covered in Randall Munroe’s book *What If?*, though that scenario uses shooting an arrow in low/no gravity.
You probably know him as the author of the webcomic XKCD.
I believe the arrow eventually slows to a stop, since there are some, rare, molecules in space.
“It’s happened to all of us. You’re in the belly of a vast space station and you’re trying to shoot someone with a bow and arrow.”
(I highly recommend this book to all of you at ELI5 – he tackles a lot of interesting hypothetical scenarios like the following scenario:
What would happen if a portal opened in the bottom of the ocean? What if that portal led to Mars? How would the worlds’ land masses change?)
First question: would a gun fire in the vacuum of space? I believe so. I believe the saltpeter in gunpowder is an oxidizer. I am not sure what they use for this, but the explosive bolts they use to separate used stages from a rocket works on this principle.
Second question: Could you catch a bullet in space? This totally depends on your relative velocities. If you and the shooter are traveling at the same velocity, then no. If you are traveling away from the shooter with sufficient speed, it should be possible. Of course it is tremendously difficult to get two bodies on a rendezvous course without doing some math or using other tricks. The bullet might be going the right speed, but if the orbit’s not right it will pass you too far to reach.
It just occurred to me: yes.
Somebody shoots the gun. You set out in your space ship, zipping along. You accelerate to faster than the bullet, catch up to it, match speeds, and then it’s not moving relative to you so you can just reach out and grab it.
Would it even shoot without an oxidizer added to the gunpowder?
Gravity has nothing to do with how guns work. It does have influence on the bullet path (it curves it). In space, far from any other source of gravity, the bullet would just go straight. You should not try to catch it…without air, it’s going faster and stays going fast “forever”.
I don’t know about in space. In water the gun would fire but the bullet goes nowhere. I would think in space some parts would mess up, but it would probably fire a round but depending on where you are in space the round could go on forever
Micro g does not affect how the gun shoots the bullet. The round contains all the reactants needed to explode so no atmosphere is needed to shoot. Guns use springs which take forces from either pushing/pulling things by your hand or from recoil action; exhaust gases back to load a new round. Gravity is not involved in any critical processes because the springs deal with forces that are much higher than the weight of the parts.
The bullet will leave the barrel at some speed and in the short term will continue at that speed with no air to slow it down. You can’t catch it if it was shot at you. You can catch it if you sit in a rocket and fire it to accelerate yourself and match the bullet’s orbit as doing this brings down your relative velocity to it.
It would actually be a lot harder (essentially impossible) to catch a bullet in space than on earth. There’s no atmosphere to slow the bullet down so it would be hitting your hand at the exact same speed as when it left the chamber. And there’s also a lot worse consequences since if it tears a hole in your space suit and you’re not close to an airlock you’re essentially fucked.
No. It will rip through your hand just as easily as on Earth.
The force from a gun comes from the explosion of gunpowder (and its modern counterparts) behind the bullet. This shoots the bullet out the barrel at high speeds. This will happen with or without gravity.
Whether a gun will fire in a vacuum is a different thing, but after it gets fired, it’s the same.
Once you have a moving bullet, it will just stay moving until another force hits it, aka, your hand, which will react in exactly the same way as it would on the surface.
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