Will a Space Gun Always Hit Something? (w/ THE EXPANSE)

[@kylehill]

*Oye beratna! Thanks for watching.* Huge thanks to Ty Franck for taking the time. If you want to see our full hour-long discussion featuring even more math (!), it drops tomorrow at [THE FACILITY]: www.patreon.com/kylehill

[@eldorados_lost_searcher]

*BELTALOWDA!*

[@Neontaster]

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson has an interesting discussion of how guns would work in a spacefaring society. The "bullets" would be slow-moving machines that would latch onto space suits and borrow in or do other things that didn't involve explosives and would be smart enough to avoid doing it to the hull. Some cool ideas there.

[@colechapman4963]

You absolutely have to try the foundation if you loved the expanse. It’s a genius adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s book by the same title

[@turkosicsaba]

The high-traffic areas Ty mentioned are mostly in the ecliptic plane, where the planets, asteroids and therefore the shipping lanes are. So any projectile that is more than a few degrees inclined to that plane is unlikely to hit anything, because it spends most of its life outside of the shipping lanes.

[@voidvoidvoid7274]

Oyé Beltalowda !

[@silvershades6689]

I remember a random encounter you can get in Stellaris, wherein one of your science ships can receive a glancing blow from an old mass driver round out of nowhere. Seeing no shooter, the ship scans and dates the shell and concludes that it is millions of years old and was likely a missed shot, fired from a ship in a different galaxy. I thought it was really cool

[@rmsgrey]

What? No! Math! ... Rebooting... The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5+ million light years away. A shell less than a quarter billion (with a b) years old would have to be travelling at at least 1% of the speed of light in order to reach anywhere vaguely central in the Milky Way from somewhere vaguely central in Andromeda. That's not a survivable galncing blow.

[@Cavemanner]

There's a similar random encounter in one of the mass effect games. You find a planet or....maybe a moon, that is just tore up and it turns out they got hit by ordnance from a far flung war thousands of years ago.

[@commandzomb430]

@@rmsgrey That would be true if it weren't for the fact that silver shades got the time wrong. It says billions of years old in the event script. Givin that, in game, ships survive blows from cannons that traveled the distance from pluto to the sun in an in-game day and shugs it off no problem, I think that it is very possible for the ship to survive the hit.

[@Neteruk]

@@rmsgrey You're talking about a civilization that has the capacity to reach andromeda in much less time than that. Meaning they have engines that can be slapped behind mass, and fired at light speed at enemy planets. They definitely have shields capable of defending against that.

[@atigerclaw]

Blame serviceman Chung. He decided to Eyeball it. Like a cowboy, shooting from the hip.

[@artbyjennyray]

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” ― Douglas Adams

[@Kytako]

Pure poetry, I fucking love that book

[@hokuhikene]

A wizard strolled along the Beach, but no one seemed to need his help.

[@nelsonclub7722]

The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. ‘Make it evil’ he’d been told. ‘Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sorts of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.’ (Quoted from page 172 of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams. Ballantine Books, 1995.)

[@Kevin-jb2pv]

Guys, if you keep quoting Douglas Adams we're gonna have problems because polygamy is still illegal in most states.

[@nelsonclub7722]

@@Kevin-jb2pv 'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. DA

[@forceoflazy]

So basically if humanity is firing enough shots to be worried about the space stray projectiles, then we should probably worry waaay more about the reason of all this shooting.

[@travcollier]

In Mass Effect, habitable planets are rare (very valuable) and the standard defense tactic is to put such a planet behind you. It sort of makes sense... Attackers are extra careful because a miss likely damages the thing they are fighting to control, and defenders don't really need to be all that careful.

[@evilbeardedman]

Great summary.

[@robertnett9793]

For a sci fi homebrew my friends an I writing on, there is an unwritten rule for all space faring factions. No projectile weapons, that can pierce the ships inner hull. It's a mixture of tradition, superstition and very real concern. So on board of ships or stations you may carry a gun - but with explicit non-piercing ammunition like SecuGlass (tm) which is brittle enough to fragment when hitting something hard. Well... and carrying explosives of any kind is .... frowned upon. You know that kind of frowning where less civilized crews might stuff you and your explosives in the next airlock....

[@kumiq17]

Honestly i was more focused on the fact not mentioned enough that space is done already littered with hundreds of thousands of projectiles traveling many times the speed of a bullet the size of a house in our own galaxy alone. Its called asteroids and they come in a size range from sand sized to bullet sized to house sized to the size of a island and they all travel at high speeds, yet despite the fact the each literally gets hit by thousands of the smaller ones a year bigger ones are rare and the ISS has survived as long as it has

[@BadSageAdvice]

@@robertnett9793 why did this read like a movie intro for a space movie in the vein of zombie world

[@theletsplayer9503]

Reminds me of a Stellaris random event where your ship takes a few glancing blows from random projectiles fired from another galaxy. A funny, serious, and practical issue

[@LivelyGhost42]

This is exactly what I thought of too! Would be funny/painful if there was a chance it just directly hits your ship and makes it go B O O M

[@swordmastersam483]

Something else to consider is this: in the codex in Mass Effect, there is mention of a common strategy in warfare where an occupying force of ships at a conquered planet will defend it from being liberated by putting the planet at their backs, meaning that any prospective liberators will be running the risk of hitting their own planet when trying to attack the occupiers. That sort of thing is much more likely to cause harm than randomly firing into deep space.

[@ridesq]

And then in 3, the reapers back up to Earth and the combined fleets of the galaxy fire directly toward Earth. I still love the game and series but that’s a little problem.

[@darryljones3009]

​@@ridesqAs did the Quarians above Rannoch.

[@SangokuKing]

It's a detterent, not a definitive way of discouraging all attempt to fight. I think that in those 2 cases, they chose to go ahead anyway. What is the risk of killing a bit of civilian on one side of the planet if it gets you your entire planet back. So I don't think it is a problem at all.

[@richardjalakas5190]

So save couple million civillians or let the Reapers purge the entire galaxy? I think they had no choice there.​@@ridesq

[@andrewmoore7014]

I always figured that the guy in Mass Effect is applying the same logic that we do to firearms we're shooting here on Earth. "Always be aware of your target and what's beyond it". If you recklessly fire off a gun and the bullet goes through a wall and hits someone, you are liable for that. It might not hit anyone or do any damage to anything of consequence, but for safety's sake you always have to maintain the mindset that it could do so if you discharge the weapon negligently. So the sergeant is saying that if there's any doubt that this massive slug is not going to hit what it's supposed to, assume it's negligent to shoot; even if it's not literally true that it will hit something, maintain the mindset that it will.

[@seldoon_nemar]

except rain gun rounds would still just sail though a target lmao

[@andrewmoore7014]

@@seldoon_nemar Yeah that's very possible too.

[@rainick]

@@seldoon_nemar Know your target and what's beyond it.

[@alexanderelderhorst2107]

That's actually a good point, and that's probably another point for cops. People say that the police should aim for the persons arm or hand or even the weapon they are holding to stop them safely, but that's completely irresponsible. They're taught that they have to shoot for the center of mass (body) to stop a person, because in a life or death situation when someone is about to be killed, you need to save that life, and banking on not hurting the assailant too much is too much of a risk to the other persons life. But not only are you highly likely to miss a flailing arm compared to a fairly large body, but you are also likely to hit whatever is behind that person, and with the liability for that you cannot risk something like that. Sure, if you're a sniper in a hostage situation or even in the army, you have calculations and highly trained shooters so going for a head-shot actually makes sense in this situation as you are much less likely to miss with such accuracy. But in most situations with a handgun, or in this case, a ships gun that you are controlling with a camera that could malfunction OR have some delay before showing on your screen, you cannot accurately rely on "eyeballing" it. And you will be liable for whatever it does hit if it comes to that, even if you have no penalties applied to you. You have to live with knowing that you might have killed an innocent person in a few months, or even hundreds, thousands or MILLIONS of years from now.

[@Starfloofle]

@@alexanderelderhorst2107 Or caused an extinction-level event and wiped out an entire would-have-been stellar neighbor

[@newbe1o1]

I can imagine this could spawn a level of space tourism. “Come see the bullets the rebellion fired against the empire in the battle of Jupiter, 200 years ago! They will be in our sky for one week only!” (I haven’t seen The Expanse, so I can’t use examples from the show). A whole ship of people who reenact space battles on a board, while visiting the bullets that missed.

[@jurassicpeter]

u should watch it, you're in for a treat. On the downside, after seeing it, all other sci-fi seems to lack something in comparison, its that good

[@newbe1o1]

@@jurassicpeter It’s on my to-watch list. There’s like 6 more shows in front of it.

[@not-a-theist8251]

You should watch it it's amazing

[@photoo848]

@@newbe1o1 Perform a slingshot maneuver. Bring The Expanse to the first position in your list.

[@newbe1o1]

@@photoo848 if JurassicPete is to be believed, it will ruin all other sci-fi for me. I want to enjoy the lesser shows for what they are before they are tarnished with the comparison of The Expanse.

[@DanPx8]

The Expanse is proof that a sci-fi show/movie can make action scenes based on reality and more intense and breath taking than other that are less reality based. Love this show!

[@jakepalmer1747]

Though for accuracy they could mute (boring) sounds or muffle combat sounds (i.e. underwater) which could still be cool!

[@mulando5232]

Well.. not really. Kyle had another video on his old channel how "boring" space battles would really be. The Expanse is a good show and just tries to be as physically correct as it is entertaining. But man ... that scene where someone (don't want to spoil to much) is freezing in space ... that is the last thing that would happen to your body ... I think kyle also had an episode about that ... thanks to that episode (I never had though about that before) this mistake in that scene has really spoiled things for me for a while. Good that this was the end of one episode :)

[@reichstein011]

I have tried a few times but always find myself falling asleep from boredom after only 2 or 3 episodes. I should try again because I have heard it gets really good but those first few episodes do almost nothing to keep my attention :(

[@ThaBeatConductor]

@@reichstein011 Yeah, episode 4 is where things go off. Episode 4 is nuts.

[@DanPx8]

@@reichstein011 I felt the same the first time I tried to watch, the first episodes didn't rally hook me into the series. So I heard lot's of good things, specially from Kyle, and o gave it another shot and forced a little bit more and ended up falling in love with the series!

[@VorpalGun]

Counterpoint to this: Kessler syndrome. Also, consider the birthday paradox: It might be incredibly unlikely for any specific thing to hit something. However, with enough objects it is much more likely for something to hit something else. Most of these will be debris hitting other debris of course.

[@christinaw9807]

I had wondered if a cosmonaut in orbit around earth fired a projectile if it would escape earth's gravity or set off debris hitting all those satellites.

[@joshuawills5242]

@@christinaw9807 Using some super quick math, Googling and my limited understanding of orbital mechanics (and math, and...) - I don't think it could escape Earth's orbit. For references: - The escape velocity for the Earth is ~11.2 kilometers per second. If I understand orbital mechanics well enough, that means that, no matter the angle or location you're launching from, you need to be travelling at least that fast to avoid orbiting around Earth. - The moon's orbital velocity around the Earth is ~3.7 km/s. So anything orbiting Earth closer than the moon will be traveling slower than that. - The highest velocity ("commercially available") bullet is apparently the ".220 Swift" at ~1.4 km/s. So, adding all those together, even if you were orbiting at the same distance from Earth as the moon (but _not on the moon_, as that has it's own escape velocity of ~2.4 km/s), and fired the fastest commercially available bullet, you would only end up at ~5.2 km/s total velocity. That's ~6 km/s too slow to escape the Earth's orbit. So barring weird orbital slingshots and other fun interactions, a bullet fired anywhere in Earth orbit will remain in Earth orbit until it hits something (the moon, a satellite, another piece of debris, or the Earth's atmosphere once its orbit decays enough). How long that takes, and whether the thing it hits will be something we care about, is way above my pay grade. If I had to guess, I'd say if you fire it from the same orbit as the moon, it'll eventually crash into the moon - it'll start off orbiting farther out than the moon, but every time the bullet laps the moon, the moon will slow it down and mess with it a bit, until eventually the bullet is traveling in the same rough orbit as the moon, but faster or slower enough to hit the moon. The hilarious version of that would be that the moon finally catches up to the bullet, so the moon hits the back of the bullet at a relative velocity of only a few meters per second... Again, this is all based on my super weak understanding of...everything...so I'm open to corrections, feedback and criticism. Have a good day.

[@jazermano]

Kessler syndrome, I could understand the implications -- the caviat being that these objects (slugs, ships, satellites, etc.) would basically have to be in a relatively steady and similar orbit. That is, if we would use logic almost directly from the original application of the Kessler syndrome. Hoever, from what I read on the wikipedia page, the Birthday Paradox (aka the Birthday Problem) doesn't seem to be directly applicable to this. That particular scenario seems to be more geared towards very specific (and *finite*) similarities between one thing and another (thus forming a pair). There are only *so many days in a year*, therefore only so many birthdays are possible. Thus, theres a good chance for a group of 25 people that a pair of people share a birthday. But with space being friggin huge (for lack of a better descriptor), I'm not sure if "finite" can describe all that much. If you were able to apply the Birthday Problem to this scenario, I'd be very curious to hear/read about your logic and constraints, as I'd love to learn more!

[@AngzarrArquebusier]

@@joshuawills5242Sorry to necrocomment, but there is one inaccuracy here, based on my KSP knowledge. The escape velocity varies based on altitude, I think the 11km/s is at the surface. In this case, I don’t think it matters as 1.4km/s won’t be enough velocity even firing prograde at LEO

[@bangbootz2878]

@@joshuawills5242 "The moon's orbital velocity around the Earth is ~3.7 km/s. So anything orbiting Earth closer than the moon will be traveling slower than that." And based on my KSP knowledge, wouldn't something orbiting earth closer than the moon have a higher orbital velocity than the moon? I was under the assumption of the closer the faster.

[@fallenhobbit6554]

Cixin Lou covers this very thing in The Three Body Problem. The assassin in question even uses handmade ice rounds so the bullet will thaw and make it look like an micro meteor impact during autopsy.

[@JacksonFromRadix]

Okay but imagine if the rounds you fire actually hit the ship you’re aiming at. Assuming they do their job and inflict damage on the ship, they’re likely going to cause fragments of debris from the impact to fling out into space at all different directions. While maybe not at the same velocity as the rounds, a bunch of hunks of metal flying through space in different directions seems just as dangerous if not more than a single stray round

[@Gilleban]

Depends on what the bullets are hitting. If a bullet exists...that is, someone actually loading it into a weapon, pointing it at an enemy, activating the firing mechanism...it is by definition harder than the stuff it's being fired at or no one would bother pointing it at an enemy and activating the firing mechanism. Granted, your idea might be nasty as hell for the meatbags inside a spacecraft (cue up videos on tanks being hit by A-10 Warthogs), but any shrapnel kicked loose by the bullet passing through will NOT have the same energy as the bullet...it'll have the "leftovers" (sans cranberry sauce) of energy after the bullet's already passed, modified by the weight of the material itself. Assuming that one spacecraft is shredded by bullets but the bullets themselves miss another spacecraft downrange, which itself is then showered with shrapnel from the first, the second spacecraft will not be torn apart by the first even if they're the same material...it'll simply be pelted like a Honda Civic in a hailstorm.

[@berthulf]

@@Gilleban Underrated comment. the images you're bringing to mind with your descriptions are award winning! "the leftovers (ssans cranberry sauce)" "Honda Civic in a hailstorm" just, perfection.

[@TheCuteZombie]

@@Gilleban not exactly. A bullet is not necessarily harder or more resistant than the target. That is why most bullets are made of lead alloy covered by copper. And yet capable of transfixing steel and other resistant materials. It is all about acceleration and mass. If a small fragment is accelerated by a secondary explosion (explosive materials, depressurizing, collision of structures and so) it can have the same or more energy as the original projectile.

[@shoopoop21]

imagine pieces getting slingshot through gravity wells until it actually melts down into a sphere, and hits something out of atmosphere at mach 15. Imagine this happens because of an accidental oxygen explosion. In fact, they've happened before in our solar system, and debris did make it out. This is not a responsibility you can avoid by acting snoy. This video is crap.

[@aleisterlavey9716]

Imagine missing and hit yourself in the back.

[@romanwiller2180]

A good rule of thumb when firing projectiles in space would be to assume that if you miss, you ARE going to hit someone and probably kill them. I would count that as the same level of gun safety as "Always treat every gun you ever handle as loaded. Even when you know for sure there is no ammunition in the gun and the magazine is in your hand."

[@Starfloofle]

Even if you don't hit someone (space is big, and breaking out of orbit is hard and/or takes a long time of unstable orbits) you're still causing unnecessary navigational problems by introducing more space debris to avoid. Particularly if you're nearby a planet. We already to take extra precautions to get our own ships out of earth's atmosphere thanks to our stupid satellite graveyard, after all.

[@Diggy_Ornos]

If you miss your target in space, you'll hit something it just won't be the intended one.

[@MVargic]

For every bullet there will be a trillion micrometeorites of same size.

[@donsample1002]

@@MVargic And your bullet is much more likely to hit one of those random rocks, than anything anyone would care about.

[@superluminalsquirrel9359]

@@MVargic wouldn’t they by definition already be in an atmosphere?

[@HenrikoMagnifico]

I think a fun way to look at this problem is to assume that the NPC did *not* actually expect the bullets to ever hit something, but that rather it's a way to make the trainees more likely to take their time to aim their shots properly.

[@blackonammo6720]

Sort of. He likely estimated a lead on the target, shooting at where *he thought* the target *would likely* be. What he was supposed to do was have the computer do the estimation for him, the "firing solution". Basically, it's a calculation done by the computer to increase hit probability and reduces user error. When considering normal gun safety, you are responsible for each round you fire. "Know your target and what's beyond it." In space, that's exponentially more intense, because the shots you miss aren't limited by gravity or a backstop. Just as important, shooting when/where the targeting computer tells you rather than determining it yourself alleviates some legal responsibility. Going off of real life military, if a gunner on a ship fires a stray round and it hits something it's not supposed to, it's more than their ass on the line. It's their supervisor, their supervisor's supervisor, basically their leadership all the way up to the ship's commander. ALL of them have to answer why that round went where it did. It's much easier to find it was due to the computer telling him to shoot there rather than figuring out where the leadership failed to train the gunner properly. TL;DR: the GySGT was chewing him out for not using the computer to aim for him, because moral and legal responsibility, and covering your ass.

[@AFlameofVengance]

I remember where I worked years ago, a guest got hit by a falling bullet on new years. Apparently they had just stepped out from under the trajectory and their trailing leg got hit. We had to call the ambulance and shut down that area until the police figured out what happened.

[@ghimmy47]

Only way someone can actually be seriously injured by a falling bullet is if the bullet has a ballistic trajectory other than STRAIGHT up. If fired straight up the bullet will hit zero velocity and fall back with gravity. That's zero propellant. Will be a heck of a sting, but not deadly. See "Hatcher's Notebook" by the director of the wartime Springfield Arsenal, the real one.

[@FastEddy396]

A key point you have to know from the game lecture you played: The Chief was talking to soldiers. You have to keep things very simple, particularly in combat.

[@mikotagayuna8494]

We totally need guns in space. No guns = no Cowboy Bebop. This would be totally unacceptable.

[@AxxLAfriku]

You dislike the stuff that gets uploaded by my fingers clicking upload? Are you just a h8er boi? I say see you l8er, boi. Don't watch the stuff that gets uploaded by my fingers clicking upload anymore. Your dislikes are damaging my good good GOOD reputation. I am a superstar, dear miko

[@wishcop9187]

Yea is it really the future if you can’t be a broke spaceman with a gun?

[@yuritrasimaco5201]

Don't forget the blues/jazz vibbing, without it it's just the space sitcom of Netflix

[@queelude9]

I don't want to live in a future without space cowboys.

[@joxerd]

First we place weapons in space, then we build around those weapons ships and after that we meet Covenant and space horror creatures.

[@happyslapsgiving5421]

Title: "Should Guns Be Illegal in Space?" Me: "Isaac Netwon speech from Mass Effect?" Kyle, 3:04 : "I could go through all of the physics..." Me: "Isaac Newton speech from Mass Effect."

[@Mrnumber]

I thought the exact same thing

[@AsbestosMuffins]

there's a couple hard scifi books I've read where they brought up the concept, usually the issue regarding it hitting someone someday is because there's traffic somewhere in their path, especially in the settings where railguns are more walls of dense projectiles instead of the big heavy shot flying at a fraction of C

[@algreen13]

Sad story: "In 1961, my grand father was a soldier during the Algerian independance war. One day, him and his buddies went out in the desert to "test" some of the weapons they took from the insurgents, shooting at sand dunes, and one of the guys shot an M1 Garand in the air "for fun". The bullet ended up killing a 6 years old girl that was herding goats with her father 1 kilometer (~0.6 miles) away." The Mass effect NPC speech is not about the theorical chance of hitting something in a thousand years, it's about shit happens and you never know what you are going to hit if you miss your target.

[@gustavedelior3683]

Are you 100% absolutely sure a bullet can free fall at lethal speeds?

[@algreen13]

@@gustavedelior3683 It was not in freefall, more like a parabolic shot. And yes a bullet near terminal velocity would probably be lethal.

[@dopamine6571]

@@gustavedelior3683 Yes. "Bullets fired into the air usually fall back with terminal velocities much lower than their muzzle velocity when they leave the barrel of a firearm. Nevertheless, people can be injured, sometimes fatally, when bullets discharged into the air fall back down to the ground. Bullets fired at angles less than vertical are more dangerous as the projectile maintains its angular ballistic trajectory and is far less likely to engage in tumbling motion; it therefore travels at speeds much higher than a bullet in free fall. A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 80% of celebratory gunfire-related injuries are to the head, feet, and shoulders.[8] In Puerto Rico, about seven people have died from celebratory gunfire on New Year's Eve in the last 20 years.[timeframe?] The last one was in 2012.[9] Between the years 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight of them died.[10] Firearms expert Julian Hatcher studied falling bullets in the 1920s and calculated that .30 caliber rounds reach terminal velocities of 90 m/s (300 feet per second or 186 miles per hour).[11] A bullet traveling at only 61 m/s (200 feet per second) to 100 m/s (330 feet per second) can penetrate human skin.[12] In 2005, the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) ran education campaigns on the dangers of celebratory gunfire in Serbia and Montenegro.[13] In Serbia, the campaign slogan was "every bullet that is fired up, must come down."[14]"

[@bmxriderforlife1234]

@@gustavedelior3683 it's actually a pretty common occurrence. It's got a few famous examples in the states one from Texas and a dude dumping 2 magnum revolvers in the air. The problem is its not just a falling bullet. Usually it's like an arc and the bullet while slower then when first fired is usually still accelerated faster then base gravity by the time it hits someone or something.

[@justarandomtechpriest1578]

@@gustavedelior3683 yes

[@Elitistb616]

Hah, as the opening monologue was running, I pulled up the "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space" quote from Mass Effect. Then it pops up in the video itself.

[@LtCaveman]

Was hoping you'd just MENTION the Expanse. **Has one of the creators on the show** A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!

[@DorifutoRabbit]

I think it will be interesting to see a future with a lot of privately owned spaceships, where the engines are arguably usable as weapons in their own right, like in The Expanse

[@AsobiMedio]

Arguably? The only difference between a rocket and a missile is that one sometimes has a living payload in it. Any ship capable of space travel can be considered a weapon.

[@Cheezicows]

Just like in the Last Jedi. The Holdo Maneuver

[@JessBoolin]

I imagine it won't be too much different from the 2 ton projectiles that are driven now, just with more risk when something goes wrong.

[@MarkusAldawn]

In the words of Isaac Arthur, there is no such thing as an unarmed space ship. Much as I love the series, the Palladium Wars books commit this same mistake- without spoiling too much some characters are like "god. The destructive power of a one hundred kilotonne nuclear bomb. Terrifying." They're in a space ship that can, at its best, pull enough gees that travel from one world to another could end in an impact going fast enough to release 200 megatonnes of force.

[@cheeseninja1115]

@@AsobiMedio exactly and with how big the ships needs to be for humans, you can get objects that are more massive than the tungsten rods from Project Thor. All I'm saying is kinetic weapons and object defense is gonna need a bigger budget in the near future with how space is going right now

[@MarlinMay]

The Kessler Syndrome - this is a great subject for a deep probe by Kyle. Especially Kessler type effects after a space battle with kinetic weapons.

[@joostvisser6508]

Kessler syndrome is pretty much only a concern in LEO or LMO or whatever. The difference between the volume of low orbit and the volume of the solar system is insane lol

[@andreabindolini7452]

@@joostvisser6508 In the Solar System, almost all practical orbits are on the same plane, the ecliptic. It is required a tremendous amount of Delta V to abandon the ecliptic. And once you do that, you reach volumes of space with no planets-sized destinations, hence not suitable for most applications. I can imagine that virtually all the space traffic in the Solar System will be relegated on the ecliptic, along with all the other stuff (planets, moons, asteroids, space debris, wandering projectiles). In this scenario, I think that the chances of a fortuitous collision, albeit still absolutely infinitesimal, cannot be completely ruled out if you imagine a space-faring civilization that holds up for a sufficiently long time.

[@galilea78]

Solar-system wide Kessler Syndrome would be such a catastrophe

[@KingNisch13]

The fact that you not only talked to one of the creators of The Expanse series, but also used that awesome training speech from Mass Effect....I am IN LOVE with this channel!!

[@SeleneRoseRM]

Here's the real question; do earth gun permits work in space, or do you need a special space gun permit?

[@zackberry6729]

Well in space you’re still bound by the laws of the country you departed from (I believe, it’s like maritime laws). So as long as you legally own the gun and are able to carry it in the states you both take off and land in (or the state you enter after returning from an ocean splashdown) then really I don’t see any legal issues. And this is probably how it will stay, while in space you’re in a US vessel in “international waters” basically

[@Razor-gx2dq]

@@zackberry6729 For example a person who has a permit in Florida would be fine as long as they landed in Florida or a state that recognizes a Florida permit.

[@ImmaSaveUFromMe]

@Kiril Belikov "Nyet! No permit is fine!"

[@ContactDeadAhead]

I'm in space, I don't need no goddamn permit! What are you gonna do, send the space-feds?

[@Balthorium]

Probably the same as ships.

[@nousernameinputed]

For a back of the napkin guess, would it be worth expanding the “size” of your target in your equation to the size of the sphere of meaningful influence of gravity of that object? That might help address the chance of the projectile in question settling into an orbit.

[@13KuriMaster]

Well he did ramp the size up to the size of the Sun........ with I am pretty confident in saying is larger then the "Sphere of Gravitational influence" around that fictional planet. So I think that calculation still get's what you want done.

[@nousernameinputed]

@@13KuriMaster Yeah, but they were also discussing the orbits in a solar system, so I kinda meant the average gravitational sphere of the average size solar body. I’m not trying to invalidate his thought experiment, I was just trying to find the most conservative possible variation that still sounded reasonable for non-astrophysicists to attempt to solve for. It likely doesn’t change the outcome of “space is so vast it still isn’t likely to happen”. I was just curious.

[@rmsgrey]

Yeah, the phrase you're looking for is "effective cross section" - which comes up when looking at collisions between charged particles.

[@JarieSuicune]

Then why not use the system Kyle used and just make your target size the solar system? Of course, saying "orbit" is badly generic in this case, as there are at least "stable orbit", "unstable orbit", and "slingshot & bye bye! orbit" to take into account. Stable orbit, the least likely case, is the one that is of greatest concern, as the other two I named result in the item no longer being an issue as soon as it either interacts with the orbited body (whether by impact or incineration) or is launched into the big, wide, almost-nothingness beyond.

[@aarondavis5386]

Typically an outside object entering a gravity well will not "settle into an orbit" usually such an object will only enter a closed orbit if it enters the gravity well at a LA grange point.

[@francoislacombe9071]

There are already trillions of bullet size objects whizzing around the solar system at bullet speed. I'm not too worried by the comparatively small number of projectiles humans can realistically add to that.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

I'm mildly concerned... I mean, the space junk we've already left "floating around" up there is already posing one of the greatest threats to our continued space-faring... The solar system we live in is also already described as a "shooting gallery"... SO I'd hate the be "that guy" who accidentally wiped out a lunar base or something, but I doubt I'd be so concerned when I was weighing out whether or not to squeeze the trigger in such circumstances where I'd consider squeezing a trigger... ;o)

[@JarieSuicune]

@@gnarthdarkanen7464 Who describes the solar system as a "shooting gallery"? First I've heard of it, and if you take Kyle's findings into account that's a pretty weird thing to back. Similarly, if I were actually considering pulling a trigger in a scenario where such consequences even could be of concern, it would be for a reason good enough to not be concerned about the risks of missing (only the risks of failing to hit).

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

@@JarieSuicune Almost everybody refers to the solar system as a shooting gallery when they get a full count of "Near Earth Objects" that we've actually tracked alongside the actual amount of technologically advanced searching we've done on the matter... meaning there's likely plenty more such things we haven't even noticed yet.... On the point of actually pulling a trigger, I agree. It's likely I'd be more concerned with whatever I was shooting AT than whatever consequences might sneak up later... AND we DO already have safety issues with a veritable cloud of debris we've put into orbit around the earth as it is... It interferes with launch times and protocols fairly constantly. SO it's worth mild concern but certainly not outright fear. ;o)

[@marcoasturias8520]

The problem are all the bullet sized objects humanity already sent whizzing around Earth.

[@Crazmuss]

@@gnarthdarkanen7464 thats only becaise it is on low orbit around our planet.

[@Sotanaht01]

12:35 If you have a colony on an airless rock, you MUST have some kind of meteor defense system in place. I don't know what that system would be, but it's very very likely that if it can stop a meteor, it can also stop a bullet. Long term orbiting bullets are a similar issue, as ships generally need some way to avoid meteor strike damage as well and if they can do that, they can probably do the same to the bullets.

[@stevenswitzer5154]

Now we are getting into the size discussion. Its much easier to see a football field sized object than a bullet. Therefore much easier to respond to. I am still waiting on the sci-fi movie where a "lesser species" destroys the far superior technologically advanced group by getting through the space defense system by saturating the area with fast moving radioactive sand particles.

[@anepicotter4595]

I like to simply think about the emptiness of space as “if you take a magic super telescope and look towards a random point at the very edge of the observable universe, you might see something.” If the sightline is, instead, a bullet, then the chance that it will never hit something means that it probably isn’t something to worry about

[@zakosist]

Yes, besides are we really worrying about whether it would hit "something" or "someone"? Those are two completely different things. If some lifeless planet, or asteroid or sun gets hit it doesn't really matter, there is no real damage done. If they are worried about spaceships being hit, they would first have to decide how many spaceships are gonna be in that galaxy

[@integralsuspect]

@@zakosist One point Kyle made in the beginning (@4:40) was about the pains NASA goes through trying to reduce and mitigate any potential of contamination or destruction of potential life or pristine existence on the other solar bodies we've managed to touch. In fact, early on in the Spirit an Opportunity mars rover missions, there was considerable pushback on the design of creating a landing crane system which was disposable, as "disposing" a device containing explosives and fuel on a planet that at best might only have minuscule remnants of microbial life has enough uncertainty to make the probability of destroying evidence we're spending all this effort attempting to study very high. While I think your point is realistic, I also think much of the question is more about ethics than it is about probability and statistics. To put it another way using another example from the video, shooting a gun on Earth without a proper backstop or directly into the air might not have a high likelyhood of hitting anything or anyone in a sparsely populated region, yet it is still considered an unsafe practice in many cultures. It's less about a single bullet being fired and more about establishing a culture that allows for unsafe firing of projectiles.

[@nitrocharge2404]

As soon as you said you interviewed a sci fi leviathan, I knew. Dude's a legend, and I always love seeing people getting others interested in the expanse

[@Pscribbled]

15:14 Imagine if you had a space battle in orbit of the moon or some planet with no atmosphere. where hundreds of thousands of 2kg slugs got stuck in various elliptical orbits. I think that’s be the worst case scenario

[@Ethereal_BmZ]

Or it could become an awesome duel planet where it's pretty much space wild west. Could be some cool lore

[@CarlosAM1]

around a moon like our moon would be really bad. Especially because the bumpy surface makes the orbit decay, so eventually all of those slugs would literally rain across the moon

[@Sgt.Crawler1116]

That actually happens in the show/book they are talking about. Battle on Ganymede

[@AngzarrArquebusier]

Watching both of them talk about mean free paths like the bullets would ignore orbital mechanics gave me physical pain. Why does no one get that they end up in elliptical orbits?

[@ezoni8438]

orbit decay

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

A long long time ago I was playing with a gravity simulation and was trying to achieve stable orbits. Let's just say that those are pretty hard to achieve intentionally, and even an orbit that looks pretty stable tend to degrade within a decade. Once that happens they either drift slowly outwards from the gravity well, end up spiraling donw inth the well or occasionally they will manage to miss whatever causes the gravity well and be slingshot at ridiculous speed out of the gravity well. Spreading a huge number of objects in the general direction and at speeds that were about right it was very few orbits that could be considered stable for more than a few years, and I don't remember ever seeing one that survived the hundred year mark. Now I'm not claiming that the simulation I used was perfect, none of them are. But it was interesting to see just how hard it was to place something approaching the size of the earth in a stable orbit around a star analogue mimicking our sun. Let's just say there's a reason the sun is so much more massive than the planets and asteroids combined.

[@kedrednael]

If a lonely planet is only orbiting one star, and spirals inward or outward over multiple orbits, then something is really wrong with the simulation. Some of the simulations are super good.

[@KanuckStreams]

As soon as I saw the title of this video, I knew that there would be that absolutely iconic scene from Mass Effect. I absolutely love that officer. I can only imagine the fun the voice actors had doing these scenes.

[@ExecutorQ3]

3:00 Tbh totally honest with you i remember this peptalk everytime i see some space battle in any movie/series since i played that game (when it released). But i also believed they were talking about big railgun type of gun with a "tom weighting" projectile, not some "gatling peashooter"... At least that wqs the feeling i've got from it back then.

[@PBCSandMarci]

I love how in the expanse they dont have any anti laser shields, or really tough hulls or anything, it just shoots straight through the ship

[@iphail4733]

The thing about relative motion means that the combination of the vectors of the projectile and your ship would really make a difference in the event of collision with an errant projectile. Simply put, if your relative vector is low in comparison to the projectile, damage will be minor but if you collide with it in a more "head-on" impact, the results could be devastating

[@michaelhowell7678]

Kinda crazy that space is so big compared to us that particle physics can be used to calculate the probability of objects colliding in space.

[@andrewbloom7694]

The one thing I would take into account is that battles aren't really fought over empty space, they are pretty near to planets. If you are trying to get through a blockade or something you are gonna fire a LOT of rounds straight towards the planet, cause that's where the defending fleet is orbiting.

[@arkvoodleofthesacredcrotch6060]

The rounds would have to be huge to get through an atmosphere. A place with no atmosphere would have to have some kind of similar level of protection, otherwise it's not very likely for there to be a large number of settlements because they would already be getting bombarded with natural space debri.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

Yes, it's hard enough to blockade an entire planet, trying to blockade a patch of space only really works if the planetary bodies in the region force ships to travel through a narrow path. Otherwise, they can just go around.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@arkvoodleofthesacredcrotch6060 The rounds themselves are probably not that much more of a threat than the other bits of dust and pebble flying around. As long as they either fall to the earth quickly, or have the necessary trajectory to leave orbit, there's no real problem. It's the ones that orbit that would eventually be an issue.

[@dylanh8163]

I am so glad that this video includes the exact scene that made me interested in this subject, because that is my favorite speech from the game as well.

[@RocketDragons]

Not only the best speech in video games, but one of my top moments in the ME franchise. I get giddy every time I come to that part.

[@TheMusicalFruit]

I believe Kyle can now add "Technical Consultant for The Expanse (uncredited)" to his resume.

[@northwesternbelle]

You sure did get me hooked on The Expanse. Please talk about Leviathan Falls in your next live stream.

[@Just_another_goober]

1:29 Dang we really got rayguns before gta 6

[@twsteele1977]

A couple of solutions I've thought of for this problem is firing extremely small shot such that it has an extremely slow spread. So for example if it hits a ship within 100 km its as if its a solid slug but once it travels 100,000 km in orbit its spread out enough to be just a dust cloud. The other solution could be again using metal or ceramic dust but bound with some UV sensitive polymer so after a certain number of years orbiting the sun it again breaks down and spreads into a harmless dust cloud sort of like a comet.

[@done.8373]

That second solution is very innovative!

[@misadate8688]

that assumption that that projectile will hit something kinda reminds me of gun safety

[@rolfs2165]

Yeah. A lot of misses will probably never hit anything - but you don't want to be the guy who fired the one that did wipe out an entire colony hundreds of years later. So it's safer to assume that you will hit something you didn't want to even on a miss.

[@RadzPrower]

Yeah, the odds may well be in your favor, but depending on the slug size, you're looking at essentially nuking something that's an innocent bystander. That's a big responsibility and should be taken serious regardless of the odds.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

In the Navy, being trained for the "Ship's Self Defense Force" we were taught to use shotguns because the buckshot (000 buckshot, specifically) can bounce around corners rather than punch right through the bulheads and hit someone "sheltering in place" behind them. I've long held a personal preference for shotguns in personal defense for the exact reason that they don't penetrate very well in comparison to rifle or pistol rounds (aka... bullets)... It further gives advantage that each single shot-shell throws 9 separate projectiles versus a single "slug" from the rifle or pistol... Moving into the Space question, it would then make sense to issue shotguns for internal defenses and likely develop further in the technology of ballistic frangibles and the like for better penetration but with the fracturing upon impact so they can only penetrate a single layer of "armor" for whatever it's worth. Since 2001 and the rise in concerns for aircraft security, a LOT of R&D has already been done to be able to use a firearm in a contained and pressurized vessel without the hazard of rupturing it, even in the case of missing. It stands to reason that similar arms races would be based on what we've already done historically (including the recent history) in order to improve upon the innovations from somewhere... Just because the gun "fires" by electromagnetism (gauss or rail-guns for instance) doesn't change the physics of the projectiles being used.,.. only some of the materials... and even with that we've got "sabot" technology as old as firearms, themselves... to let a given material projectile fit AND seal to the barrel of choice caliber or gauge. ;o)

[@jakepalmer1747]

Its exactly gun safety rules...just in space lol

[@cmykrgb1469]

As self defense lawyers always point out: "you are personally responsible for everything that comes out the end of your gun."

[@Jonbp629]

It’s been insanely cool watching Kyle go from his previous job to this one. He gosh darn loves it and uses it to broadcast some great topics I wouldn’t necessarily have access to at any other time. Thanks for all the existential crisis moments Kyle. Keep it up!

[@YouCallThataKnife253]

I'm surprised they never put Kyle on the show, if only because it seems like he really did get a lot of people interested in the Expanse. I know he's the reason I started watching it

[@grahamstrouse1165]

I know, right? Adam Savage got a cameo…

[@T-Even_phage_destroyer]

I’m so glad you used that mass effect clip lol. Every play through i do of mass effect i love to sit there and listen to those guys

[@joshuawargo6446]

The Pure just...excitement of kyle doing the math on this was such an enjoyment to watch. Its so nice to see others enjoying learning and solving problems.

[@FlagCutie]

"Now if you know me, you know I'm something of a The Expanse evangelist." I KNEW IT! You're all starting a religion around the show! 😂

[@qwertyferix]

And Chrisjen Avasarala is our goddess.

[@aetherial87]

The Expansionists

[@achillesa5894]

@@qwertyferix We worship the queen of the fucking earth

[@vennom14]

As soon as you posited the question, I immediately thought about gravity wells. Then I thought about micro asteroids and how they'd essentially be the same issue as random rounds shot through space This can be interpreted as: micro asteroids are projectiles from ancient (or not) alien civilizations

[@danieljensen2626]

Yeah, but there are a LOT of microasteroids in the solar system, it's not really reasonable to think you're going to significantly increase the number of them by firing projectiles.

[@vennom14]

@@danieljensen2626 dude, let's say we have a small skirmish in space, only 2 sides. Most likely, this will occur in or around a planet's orbit. Just talking about rounds, a single vulcan cannon can fire roughly 6000 rounds a min. That's not the biggest issue though. Most military doctrine follows the 'spray and pray' method, the more rounds fired, the more likely you'll hit the target. But missiles and explosives will also be used, look at naval battles. Now quantify that with as many ships as both sides can muster. All of this occurring inside of a planet's gravity well... That's a lot of space debris

[@angrymeowngi]

@@vennom14 Will probably form something similar to Saturn's rings...but instead of ice it would be metal shards.

[@000Dragon50000]

I'd say gravity wells also give the positive benefit of drawing projectiles into things that're ok to hit like Stars so it's ok to ignore their impacts.

[@inthefade]

More likely they’ll orbit a star for a long long time.

[@deathsheir2035]

I know this is an old video, but I would like to point out: That speech made by the video game character, is only making the assumption of it hitting someone or something, to prove a point. When he first mentioned it hitting something, he didn't make that assumption he just said "it will keep going until it hits something," and then lists things it could potentially hit. This falls back to the 4 basic rules of firearm safety: 1. Always assume the firearm is loaded. 2. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 3. Do not point the firearm at that which you do not intend to destroy. 4. Be sure of your target, and what is beyond the target. As a result: YOU MUST assume it will hit something. It is part of firearm safety.

[@wolfpacksix]

It's called "Big Sky, Little Bullet" and it is definitely a consideration. No matter how low the odds, there is still a possibility that you'd hit something that you don't intend to hit if you miss your target. And even if you hit your target, a hypervelocity railgun round could go right through a target and keep on going forever/until it hits something that stops it. Rules of engagement definitely make sense in this scenario unless you simply don't care if a stray round hits something else.

[@smexehcougah3]

I think that at the very least there should be some sort of regulation or treaty regarding maximum muzzle velocity and/or penetration profile. Like, if I'm on a ship and the person sitting next to me is dumb enough to carry a weapon that can penetrate the hull, I WANNA KNOW! There should be some sort of system in place to try to prevent or at least deter someone from secretly endangering their crewmates by making such a reckless choice of weaponry.

[@VexChoccyMilk]

Just carry a small piece of duct tape with you, a quarter-inch hole is not going to blow up the ship.

[@bipolingdaco1607]

@@VexChoccyMilk Clearly you don't own an air fryer

[@bipolingdaco1607]

@@Avarus-Lux bro it's space.

[@VexChoccyMilk]

@@bipolingdaco1607 The pressure differential between space and the ISS is less than 5 PSI, and even if the sun were shining directly on it, it would not melt. Sure you could be extra safe and have some aluminum tape, but duct tape would work.

[@bipolingdaco1607]

@@VexChoccyMilk oh that makes sense okay you right

[@MaxRovensky]

Space guns present a lot of interesting challenges Book 1 of The Expanse very early mentions that firing what amounts to a common Glock handgun on a surface of an asteroid would give you escape velocity

[@whatelseison8970]

If you fired a 50 cal just right on the moon the round could potentially make a full orbit and then hit you. As unlikely as that is (even the moon is very big in this context) it would be far FAR more likely than a friendly fire incident across the solar system.

[@devinfaux6987]

Some things to keep in mind whenever the subject of whether something should or shouldn't be illegal: Who's going to enforce it? Who's going to hold those enforcers accountable? Who gets to decide what is or isn't illegal? We have enough trouble with law enforcement planetside; taking that paradigm into space without examining the problems in it is a recipe for trouble.

[@goodguyjohn4625]

Let's all be entirely honest, we all know deep down that a space faring civilization will be essentially true anarchy in the deep space, and whatever else in stations and planets. Gun control is already impossible on Earth, where we measure population density in people/km^2, just imagine when it's "people/ly^3". Even ignoring the obvious consequences of banning guns in a place police essentially don't exist...

[@Firefox1189]

@@goodguyjohn4625 Ok Antifa. 😂

[@swenmcheath1798]

@@Firefox1189 bruh, this guy is not antifa. I am.

[@Firefox1189]

@@swenmcheath1798 A criminal*

[@bf1255]

How is that a stupid question? He’s completely right, no one can enforce Russia or China to do anything in space…. Let alone on the planet

[@billysgeo]

You should run that calculation with the milky way is as the volume. Keeping in mind that it is a disc. Also keep in mind that during an all out war (that would use kinetic ammo) there could be thousands upon thousands projectiles lunched from each side.

[@shewdz26]

I think an important point to consider in this matter is that the solar system already has a considerable meteoroid population which would function similarly to any projectile fired from a PDC or railgun, the size population is from nanometer scale to asteroid size, and the velocities typically range 10-72kms-1, which is already sufficiently fast to fuck a ship up. Even after thousands of space battles the population of meteoroids would significantly outweigh the population of projectiles, so the actual contribution by these projectiles would be near insignificant. I think the real danger is posed by Amos' self propelling wrench

[@TheByQQ]

The difference is that the objects in solar system are just the ones that didn't hit anything, so this is basically survivorship bias. We didn't avoid getting hit, everything that was going to hit us already did. (Which isn't exactly true since Earth keeps getting hit by small stuff)

[@shewdz26]

@@TheByQQ Well that's not strictly accurate, there's an incredible amount of material impacting every day, and it doesn't just impact and then it's settled, Each impact itself will create ejecta, some of which can escape into the sporadic background population. Nothing about impacting is "finished". The Earth alone is hit by 72000 tonnes of material every year

[@doomgod314]

Not an answer to "should", but I believe the how will resemble laws from international waters. Today, pirates do not mess with armed ships and often ignore ships faster than 26 knots. I'm an American with a sailboat capping out at 12 knots. I'm bringing aboard firearms. And look at the US air force with their survival firearms.

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

Humans should keep their guns. They may need it. When "I" complete my obligation to this dimension. But will anything exist by then? Nothing rarely does... The others will find Terra once more.

[@specialagentdustyponcho1065]

At some point we're going to have enough manned and unmanned traffic in space that piracy will be a real concern. Asset owners will absolutely arm their ships to protect against said pirates, and the cat's out of the bag.

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

Me, as my completed whole: "The dismantlement of this dimension has begun. Of every species to try. Mankind are of the few to finally make it here, this time around. So, mortals... How shall Fate end in this future?"

[@shoopoop21]

@@absolstoryoffiction6615 Weavile is stronger and has a better design.

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

@@shoopoop21 The Multi Dimensional Guns can slay more than just one Dimension. Especially when it can alter Existence at a fundamental level.

[@shoopoop21]

@@absolstoryoffiction6615 I stand by my statement. BTW, this is not how actually crazy people talk, I've listened to enough of CWC rambling to know the difference. You're just a social leper having a laff.

[@carljoosepraave2102]

Yeah..... Which either means control dystopia, or wild wild space ,

[@DemitriVladMaximov]

Before video even starts I'm already packing my bolter, my heavy flamer, my pulse rifle, my smart gun, my magnum pistol, my phaser, and covering my power armor in Beskar. After seeing this video, I would like to point out that entire exchange in Mass Effect is based upon a sequence in Starship Troopers where they went around firing mininukes. Also with all the micrometeors, space junk, and other various stuff floating out there ships will need some sort of defense to protect them from what is zipping around there already much less a missed shot. Plus unless you are firing some large projectile or explosive ordinance on the level of a MOAB the atmosphere should burn up all that junk anyway.

[@axell964]

Since there IS drag existing in space, even it is rather low, so an object will not go forever and it will motion energy over the time. It may take thousands of years or much more depending of mass and shape of the object, but at some point is will slow down enough to not be a danger anymore. Gravity wells will also effect the projectile, either slowing or speeding up the bullet, depending on if the protectile is fired in the rotation path of the galaxy or in the opposing direction. Voyager satilies loose about 5 cm/s per day on velocity from drag and overcoming the tiny amount of gravity from the sun.

[@excrubulent]

One thing I remember reading about the density of galaxies is that they are so incredibly sparse that it's similar to a handful of tennis balls spread across a continent. It's actually possible for entire galaxies to merge and have no stellar collisions whatsoever. The Globular clusters that orbit off the galactic plane pass through the disc twice per orbit and they don't appear to affect one another at all. It's possible the disc does leech some of the globular clusters' atmosphere away, however. Also for the gravitational attraction tending to pull objects together, it's actually kind of a non-issue as well. If you think about it, the strongest direction changing force that an object will feel will happen when it's already alongside the target, so it's already too late to hit. On the way in, the closer it is to an impact, the smaller a component of the gravitational attraction will be perpendicular to its motion, to the point that it makes almost no difference. It would expand the effective target size ever so slightly, but not that much. If you're approximating Ganymede's 2,634 km radius as "two and a half thousand km", then I'd say the difference gravity would make would be negligible. Ultimately kinetic weapons aren't that specially deadly compared to other objects in space, especially if they're slow enough for a solar orbit. The thing that makes them deadly in context is that they are being fired directly at you and are likely to hit you. The moment they miss you that property stops being relevant.

[@dogofwar6769]

We're already at the point where people are building homemade pistols, SMGs, and ammo. The question isn't _'should guns me illegal in space.'_ The question is _'is it even possible to ban guns weapons in space?'_ And that answer to that is an obvious and flat out *'NO'.*

[@radioanon4535]

The Sten MKII can be readily built from hardware store parts, for example, and shotguns have built from hardware store parts for near forever. And it's not just pistols, it's every concievable gun you can build at home, including bowling ball cannons!

[@mistermaestersirthomas9164]

“Make Illegal” and “ban” doesn’t mean “prevent the existence of” rather “if caught with, penalize “; and that is flat out “yes, very possible “

[@Ahrpigi]

Is your argument that if a law doesn't prevent 100% of crime it shouldn't exist?

[@dogofwar6769]

@@mistermaestersirthomas9164 humans, as a whole species, are a messy and violent. Right now we're only sending 'the best' of us out into space. If, or perhaps when, there's significant population out there you've going to have some level of crime. Including violent crime. Trying to somehow control that violence with total bans or heavy regulation of weapons don't work now and it will not work in deep space. Best case scenario you might have no weapons allowed in certain spaces and you had you have to check your BFG 9K or whatever in a locker at the entrance to a habitat your visiting. And even that wouldn't be a 100% fail-safe.

[@mistermaestersirthomas9164]

@@dogofwar6769 controlling whether or not gun went up in a spaceship would be rather simple as would capturing and punishing violators. Airfilters would detect explosives and cargo weight must all be factored for. Spaceflight itself would be highly observed making it hard to smuggle and way easier to regulate. Crew of any spaceflight would be dependent on a port for survival any lack of compliance would result in no go on landing/supplies (like air) til they authorities recover the dead crew. It would be simple to regulate, easier than any regulations on Earth now, in fact.

[@BuildinWings]

The physics of firing a gun in space are hilarious. Go ahead, fire away. Enjoy being hurdled, spinning backwards through space until you finally hit something.

[@mr.stargazer9835]

Brace against the hull?

[@BuildinWings]

@@mr.stargazer9835 As in, the vacuum of space.

[@brandongreenland9632]

The game Heat Signature actually plays with this idea; you can use a shotgun to increase your speed in space, which is used at the start of an especially difficult mission to board a ship.

[@BuildinWings]

@@brandongreenland9632 It would work. Without anything acting against the motion of the player character, a shotgun blast would propel them.

[@antongrahn1499]

It would have to be a big gun to have such an effect. If you are out in space you likely have a jet pack of some description anyway.

[@Escher99]

One consideration for the calculation, you are considering a volume that it is a cube (I think, I didn't hear it specified). When I think galaxy I think of a disc shaped galaxy like the milky way. That would mean you could functionally ignore an entire dimension in your calculation for the escape velocity calculation. Though considering the magnitude of space I bet you would come to the same conclusion.

[@PhilmannDark]

Counter argument: Space (and the Solar System) is empty but ships are not randomly distributed. They fly between points of civilization on paths that are driven by economics. So most ships (and that will include military ships) will move along certain paths (which slowly change over time because both the start and end of the path move). That means battles will take place close to those paths and it means that certain firing directions are parallel to those paths. Those bullets will almost certainly hit something unless someone does something about it. On the other hand, space is big. It would be a cool addition to The Expanse to have a Bullet Weather Report which tells you how to evade the expanding cloud of all battles that have happened in the past. It would be an additional cost on space travel but not impossible by any means. Military ships know pretty well in which direction they fired, how many bullets missed, etc. There is only a few things in space that influence the bullets after they have been fired. Another cool idea would be Bullet Cleaning Ships which are basically sandbag-tipped ships which fly into bullet clouds to collect the most dangerous ones.

[@isaacnewton8983]

One thing in was thinking about that was not mentioned, is the presence of large gravity wells could be a positive attracting the projectiles and destroying them in its atmosphere. So my question is what is the ods of any given projectile escaping the solar system, vs settling in a orbit, vs getting destroyed by an atmosphere.

[@Donnerwamp]

I'm at the sponsor break, so here's my guess: Shooting a gun in space probably results in the rounds either getting into an orbit around something heavier or falling into a planet or other gravity well. Even if a projectile is fast enough to leave a given solar system, it'll probably get caught by another, heavier object and either fall into that or orbit around it. Hitting something specific seems close to impossible, but as far as I understand the nature of space, until it can travel at unaltered speed and never hit anything, it has to keep moving at least until the universe expands as fast as it travels.

[@excluseive9769]

Space isn't completely empty. There are still enough hydrogen atoms to eventually slow it down (but then the speed is still relative to what ever it hits)

[@Donnerwamp]

@@excluseive9769 Yes, that's right, but then, how many hydrogen atoms does for example a 115 grain bullet traveling at 360m/s (average 9x19mm fired from a 4.65" barrel) need to hit before slowing down significantly? Also, accounting for hitting stray atoms kinda breaks the whole argument because that happens pretty easily, I'd say.

[@OverlordQ]

I'm at the break and this video is about 18 minutes too long

[@goodguyjohn4625]

Ran some numbers, the longest recorded shot is 2.2mi, let's assume a bullet will stop after 100x that, so 220 miles, or some 350km. Air has a density of 1225g/m^3, and vacuum is roughly 4 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, iirc. will cut to the chase, that is around 7e-24g/m^3. So a bullet in space would travel roughly (1225/(6.5e-24)*) times more than in atmosphere, or roughly 6,972,140,116,739,290 lighyears, or enough to cross the entire universe (minimum estimated unknown ~ 7e12ly) some 996 times, before stopping. *I checked before posting, apparently I was quite close to the actual density of vacuum, which is roughly 6.5e-24g/m^3, not 7e-24g/m^3;

[@marcusborderlands6177]

@@goodguyjohn4625 you are so off it's not even funny. The round that shot was taken with LITERALLY LOSES HALF ITS VELOCITY at about 1700y... it won't make it past 10 miles let alone 220...

[@TheHornedKing]

You pretty much already answered this question in another one of your videos, were instead of a bullet, it was about a space ship just picking a random direction in space, and just keep going. It was based on Han Solo in Star Wars stating that you have to carefully put in coordinates or risk flying into something and dying. As you can guess, the chance of actually doing that is abysmal, though that does still mean you have to be careful about the coordinates, not to avoid hitting something, but to make sure you actually get close to anything at all, and don't end up lost in space with no fuel.

[@Bob5mith]

You have to get close to your destination without hitting your destination or anything near your departure point. Kyle's calculations are based on starting in some random location, which is almost certainly going to be interstellar and going in some random direction, which is also almost certainly interstellar. If you're in low orbit, the odds of smashing into the planet are near 50% in some random direction. Obviously you wouldn't intentionally choose a direction right through the planet, but these calculations are based on any random direction. And what about the planet where you are going? You really want to be sure you are stopping on this side of it, or a little left or right, or flat out outside the solar system.

[@adamtennant4936]

It's OK, the Fuel Rats will save you. 😏

[@Starfloofle]

Even though such objects, despite being *enormous* relatively speaking, are pretty tiny on a spatial scale, I also am surprised by how rarely rogue planets or even rogue *black holes* get acknowledged as a navigational danger that you just have to kind of accept exists. At least a black hole a hyper-advanced nav system could theoretically figure out the location of from gravitational waves, but a planet? No way, that's probably not happening until you're dangerously close. Of course... You'd have to be at the perfect unfortunate time to ever crash into/be caught by/be thrown off course by any of these objects, since *they* are moving too, of course. But it is a bit odd to me that the consideration never comes up when talking about interstellar travel.

[@ungrave5231]

Question for the folk smarter than me: Could one of these projectiles just fall into an orbit opposite to everything else? Wouldn't that make it far more dangerous to crash into with your ship? Right now according to my understanding the solar system is full of objects orbiting (almost) all in the same direction, so if you started fighting a whole bunch in space you'd have bullets going in weird orbits at a much higher rate than what we have currently. Maybe there's an aspect of solar system scale gravity that would slow down the bullets, such as the spin of the sun itself that would take a lot of that energy out of any bullets going in an anti orbit, but I'm not actually well versed in this field so I'd like some clarification.

[@tonyh6194]

No less dangerous than any other space junk

[@whatelseison8970]

What you're talking about is called a _retrograde_ orbit. You're right that all of the significant objects in the solar system orbit _prograde_ and in the plane of the _ecliptic_ however there are still objects (comets mostly) that can orbit any which way. Probably there's plenty of asteroids whipping around too but mostly comets are what we see on account of the trails they leave. You also asked about the rotation of the sun maybe influencing the stability of retrograde orbits. The answer is no. As stars go, the sun actually spins at a pretty chill pace - once every 25 days or so but even if it was spinning as fast as a star of it's type could it still wouldn't matter to this discussion. That said, there is an effect called frame dragging that does work that way but it's only really significant for objects in close orbits around extraordinarily dense objects that spin extremely fast like neutron stars and in particular, black holes. The precession of Mercury's orbit is related to frame dragging but the effect is very small, taking 100 years to change by 43 arcseconds; an arcsecond being 1/3600 of a degree. I hope that helps!

[@LoriH2O]

For a planet, It would have to be a very fast and precisely aimed projectile! Earth has an orbital speed of around 29.78 km/s. If you were sharing earth's orbit, then your bullet would have to be fired at 59.56 km/s in the opposite direction. Also, for reference, Sol escape velocity (from earth) is about 42.1km/s. Bullets aimed in other directions at this speed would just leave the solar system. I have no idea how fast the projectiles in The Expanse aught to be going, but a current day military railgun is going to do 2-3km/s. Looks like you aught to be able to do this with our moon with a modern rail gun though! It has a velocity (around the earth) of about 1km/s.

[@humanistwriting5477]

Honestly I think even the idea of a non guided projectile will be considered ludicrous. Even being fired from rail guns. There are simply too many "tells" of a projectile, and even a directed light attack! (Trig is a pain) and too much inaccuracy stacking up for a macro scale projectile to be useful un-guided

[@yurkoflisk]

@@tonyh6194 and no more dangerous either (except maybe in very close neighbourhood of the shooting position)

[@Blasharga]

The thoughts i had on this while reading, was that the PDC would fire backwards towards torpedos fired by ships coming from stations or just stations firing torpedos. So its basically like raining blanket fire in the general direction of a planet/stations (previous location). Then settling in that stations general orbit around the planet or hitting something on the planet. A thing i would imagine some of the ship computers doing would be to avoid areas of old ship battles. I think a lot of the pondering by fans comes from our real life, where space garbage in our planets orbit is disrupting communication/misc satellites operations.

[@bluexeyedxpassion]

The Expanse IS THE BEST. Shows Space travel with better science (like gravity in space and how we would generate a field like that).

[@austinmitchell2652]

All that said, I think if an analysis had to be made for legislative purposes we could totally simulate the trajectories of projectiles sampled at different angles, speeds, and starting locations to see how often they collide with objects

[@liz-js7xc]

Wow never seen something say “posted 27 seconds ago” before. Love seeing your vids pop up tho Kyle

[@timothymims3754]

Danggggg i got it 20 minutes later. 😢

[@somebody7205]

Imagine aliens finding us because someone fired a pistol in space and they found out from where it came

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

Aliens: "Oh... It's the humans... Didn't the Greens communicate with them earlier?"

[@Gilleban]

Man, gettin' harassed by the po-po 4 million years later...

[@Peppysgirl]

Honestly my answer to this was always 'it's probably gonna end up getting sucked into a sun or black hole or something else big with a massive gravitational pull' cause yeah, sure, theoretically if it moves within the universe for eternity, it /should/ hit something /eventually/. But that something is much more statistically likely to be big and therefore the collision is inconsequential. The chances of hitting tiny little ships flitting around is... really unlikely, comparatively speaking. So glad to see the math backs that up hahaha

[@Texsoroban]

it also depends upon what direction you fire the gun in relation to the vector of you ship. in orbit if you fire ahead of your ship the bullet will take up a higher orbit. behind, lower orbit in any direction transverse to your ship will create an elliptical orbit

[@geinerelizondo2019]

Humans: "We should ban guns from space?" Aliens: "We should ban humans from space."

[@marcogenovesi8570]

ban human guns from space

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@Michael Skinner if aliens came from another planet or another solar system, it's more like a one-sided genocide than a real war.

[@JarieSuicune]

@Michael Skinner War? How? What could we even DO to them? Seriously, almost every aliens-meet-humans story has the same pure-idiot premise that we could actually DO something against them. We don't have a way to deliver a nuclear payload at a fast enough speed for it to affect them before they could just destroy it from plenty a safe distance. We don't have enough/any(?) ballistic firepower set in open space (because no one is stupid enough to think a bullet fired from the Earth's surface will matter) to just litter their ship(s) with bullet holes... nor enough force behind it to overcome their definitely otherwise bullet-proof armor (or possible other defenses). And they aren't going to be as stupid as to just come down to the surface with their entire force and just stand there as we blast them. No, they are going to be out of range, using far more powerful weaponry than we have, and LAUGHING as they watch streams of our many videos of "war" with aliens. If people want a most-realistic example, go read (NOT WATCH) War of the Worlds. Well's inspiration: his disgust with the eradication of native people using the superior warfare available to the military at the time. I'm only disappointed that he also took into account the theoretical potential danger of microorganisms to an alien biology if they didn't take appropriate precautions... though of course, just like not all diseases a dog can suffer can affect humans, it could be that no earth disease could infect them (same applies in reverse too! Even a peaceful race could theoretically accidentally exterminate us with a microorganism that is harmless, or even necessary, to them and they just forgot about that danger to us). Then just take that concept and apply it to the advances we've made since then. Seriously, if we are as advanced as we are and still only gotten so far, try to comprehend what a true space-faring race could be capable of and how very-not-stupid they would be in warfare.

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

Me: "It's been eternities since I returned. This dimension has not changed one bit. How are the human race?... Precursor of Worlds."

[@bill_and_amanda]

"the bullets have a little chip that self-destructs them after an hour" Problem solved

[@Awag-yj8bu]

I think that'll make the problem worse. Self destroying projectiles just make more smaller particles go even faster and in multiple directions.

[@bill_and_amanda]

@@Awag-yj8bu I think if you're at the point of huge Expense-style ships (that can have hulls thicker than a sheet of foil), thousands or millions of ships (which would invariably mean a lot of space junk) and mining asteroids (which is invariably going to create a lot of free-moving debris), the problem of collisions with very small particles has been solved.

[@Awag-yj8bu]

@@bill_and_amanda that's a fair point.

[@goodguyjohn4625]

@@Awag-yj8bu That will literally disintegrate on impact and cause no measurable damage.

[@goodguyjohn4625]

Timed charges, like we already used in WW2 to much more effectiveness against aircraft than straight contact rounds.

[@vir8956]

Ok but even just in a small earth war, ww2 had 41 billion bullets fired, a multiplanet war in space could have 100s if not thousands of times that, with more powerful and faster projectiles, and the bullets would be more centralized around one planet or solar system, not in the scope of the entire galaxy, i feel like that would drastically raise the chances of bullets being a problem, especially with gravity wellls, your answer feels a little incomplete, without even mentioning any of this

[@13KuriMaster]

Not hard to fill in the gaps though... as he did go over what may happen if a bullet were to be orbiting a planet and why it likely wouldn't do much if it hit you while you were landing on the planet (as the velocity you would have to match when landing is almost identical to the bullet... meaning that relative to you it ain't going fast at all). It sounded to me that the bullet's impact would be about as much as if you were standing still and the bullet was just thrown at you instead of shot (and it not hitting you in the eye or anything like that), So even if several billion of them were coming and they all hit the metal ship, it would likely just be an annoyance more then anything else.

[@kevin-lb9fi]

And also hitting the target would generate thousands of unpredictable fragments much more dangerous. So unless ur shooting hoping for a miss it's pointless to bother about that eventuality. (In my Useless opinion)

[@cornonjacob]

But there were that many bullets in WW2 because there were tens of millions of soldiers involved, with easily 100+ bullets shot per person on average. For a space war i can't imagine there being more than a few thousand ships, so even if each is firing 10000 projectiles that's only in the tens to hundreds of millions of projectiles

[@Amusia727]

@@13KuriMaster Depends on the eccentricity of the orbit of both objects

[@czaja995]

​@@cornonjacob firing that many bullets in low Earth orbit that will not reach escape velocity and remain in orbit for a long time could lead to Kessler syndrome quite quickly, so the answer to the question in video depends on what you are firing, at what speed and where, PDC is a type of large minigun that fires several thousand rounds per minute and you have many PDC on one ship, in WW2 no one fired with such rate of fire

[@PugsyP]

I loved that ME speech way back when i heard it myself, it was so, down to earth, compared to everything else in the game

[@drakemasta9655]

should do a vid about possible FTL space travel forms we have theorized about and potential pros and cons of them. like dimensional fold engines litterally folding the fabric of reality possibly not having limits on how close the fold can be and ripping giant holes in space time. or subspace drives failing to decelerate enough when dropping out of subspace that it rips planets into pieces.

[@powerfist80]

It’s just hilarious to think that humans think their laws actually mean anything; especially in space.

[@segnoggin]

What are ya an alien?

[@powerfist80]

@@segnoggin no, even better- a realist.

[@LightOffArchives]

They can still be enforced, if a government bans guns from use in space they could arrest any offending astronaut upon returning.

[@samgordon9756]

It's a basic tenet of law that a law that cannot be enforced is not a law. So, how do we enforce a weapons ban?

[@ledocteur7701]

@@samgordon9756 by.. using weapons ? but then it's not really a weapon ban if you still need the weapon to do it..

[@taiparker8379]

Guns possibly because of the infinite probability of collateral within space however we still do need something for personal protection when dealing with something as infinite which means an infinite amount of variables and threats.

[@Razor-gx2dq]

One of the advantages of fictional blasters

[@taiparker8379]

@@Razor-gx2dq I’d say give it 250 years before we have something that can feasibly be owned and carried by your average individual.

[@chinaunhinged1970]

When society expands into space, so will crime and those who would be willing to break the law. If a group of people smuggled firearms and landed on a space settlement, those people would be able to do whatever crimes they well want to since they wouldn't be afraid of anyone else using guns on them. If a law like that were to be passed, someone WILL break it.

[@durandol]

How could a multi-planet (or even potentially extra-galactic) human society even be effectively policed?

[@notme-bb3ir]

Loved the Expanse, watched it from the first episode. The rocket realism and the armament of the ships made it seem much more realistic than other space based shows

[@792slayer]

Same. Seems more likely we will be using CWIS and possibly some laser systems for a while. Kinda like modern naval combat now with anti ship missiles.

[@michaelrosenstock9187]

The bullet drifting through space forever, eventually stopped thinking

[@brandonspurlock8059]

By going to the size of the sun, it seems, you would almost account for much of the gravity well from a planet, wouldn't it? The gravity well would make the size of the planet target much larger, perhaps sun sized (maybe a little smaller than the sun). The biggest issue I see with this math is it assumes a random direction from a random point in space. If you miss a ship, the likelihood of you hitting a moon base increases the closer you are to the moon. I would almost say a cone of possibilities would be much better unless we are talking about a completely accidental discharge which could be in any direction. This math also assumes that everything would be randomly distributed in a roughly sphere like volume, but isn't the solar system more or less a flat disk. If fired parallel to the disk (from inside the disk), this would increase the likelihood of hitting something, whereas if fired perpendicular to the disk, it would be much less likely. Same for the milky way I belive, kinda disk shaped. Anyway thank you so much for all that you science, I'm gonna be an engineer, and it's partly your fault

[@nmxsanchez]

It's contextual like he said. But there no good (quick and easy to digest) way of including that in the calculation. If you wanted to do this calculation for a specific battle in a specific location it could be done. But in general like they've done here, this is not a bad back of the napkin solution.

[@Broetchen98]

How AMERICAN schould the Video be? Kyle: YES

[@lenorelestrange]

The problem isn't space, it's time, if space in infinite then at some point, at some time, in some degree it will always, without any reasonable doubt, will hit "something". There is a reason why it's generally frowned upon to shoot in the air, regardless of where you are on earth. Something is going to take the hit, probability is not the concern. Think of playing horseshoes and then you decide you want to play that with nukes and planets, just not a good idea.

[@aa-tx7th]

there are literally almost an infinite number of more dangerous chunks of metal hurtling through the universe there a massive comets and asteroids cracking moons and planets there are nuetron star farts that are ripping entire solar systems dozens of new assholes thousands of times every second i dont think our little bullets x100000000000000000000000000000000 add up to shit

[@lenorelestrange]

@@aa-tx7th talking large hypersonic projectiles. Yes. If you're talking about shooting a pistol, no so much. A ship sized mac cannon will hit "something" As as I said in OP, it's not on the infinite timescale, all projectiles will hit something at some point and if you are launching nukelear tungsten lances then you are very likly to kill something somewhere at some point.

[@scandalingmusic2160]

one slight oversight is that asteroids and other space debris would be flying around space at similar velocities and likely similar mass (which still cause just as much damage at such high speeds), these projectiles are posing just as great of a threat as a bullet in space would.

[@felixcaskey4193]

It seems like getting hit by a stray projectile like that would be so unlikely, it would be either an assassination attempt or an omen. Either somebody shot at you, or you have offended the gods.

[@Moxilock]

So you're telling me that the Soviets made the triple barrel sawn off shotgun pistol machete? Not the Americans?

[@LuvLikeTruck]

Just be glad that they didn't issue them to their bear cavalry

[@Moxilock]

@@LuvLikeTruck fortunately for the world, I don't think Russia has been in a war since the cold war

[@blockmaestro1]

@@Moxilockoh lord this aged like milk

[@roberthill5805]

I've always thought about this and realize that we really wouldn't care where we are shooting, but more of what we are firing. In the case of hitting a habitable dome would be a problem with almost anything, but if it were a large nuke then it would be a massive problem unless it hit a star or caught by a black hole. But other than that I can't think of a round that could travel at a rate in which it would be a problem to anyone before your existence would have ended.

[@MVargic]

For every bullet there will be a trillion micrometeorites of same size.

[@franksierow5792]

@@MVargic And those habitable domes should have been built with sufficient protection.

[@grantgardson]

Short answer: No. Longer answer: Regardless of nationality or planet of origin, it is a birth right to self defense, if firearms are the best means, then let it be so.

[@iamafish7]

More extensive training should be absolutely required before you can even hold a firearm in a spacefaring vessel.

[@TheStarMachine2000]

One of thw easiest ways to counteract this, is just to make all rounds fired explosive, then add a timer to detonate it aftwards. The time could even in the range of years, but that alone would mitigate most of these problems

[@EyeHeytEwe]

Replaying the trilogy now. There's so much sci-fi lore in this game, and the Citadel soldier's speech is a nice reminder that in space, no one can hear a bullet breaking atmosphere. Whatever you do in ME3, do NOT authorize the Asari huntress to have a firearm in the Spectre terminal. 😔 Feels bad, man.