kinetic energy = mass x velocity squared

Bullets kill by punching holes in vital organs, fracturing bones into the blood and slicing veins and arteries - not by impact shock.
More like poking a thin metal rod into someones body than hitting them with a heavy object.

Only in hollywood do they throw people off their feet.

Sometimes they get it right:

http://youtu.be/f8j4GIRYbZw

Thanks for translation, very much appreciated.

That's some high velocity explosive that's been used if it can beat a rocket in the last 2m.

If I threw a baseball at that target, it would probably beat them all out. It's not so much about the velocity of the object as it is about the mass.

He went through the entire vid without mentioning Williams Hybrid Power, the spin-off from the flywheel storage developed for the Williams F1 car in 2008/2009:



Unfortunately it couldn't be scaled up to the increased KERS output required for the 2011 season, at least not in a way that fit in an F1 car, so Williams now run the same electric KERS as everybody else. The flywheels are used in other racing series and in road cars though, as mentioned in their vid.

One very obvious difference between the prototype bicycle system in this vid and the WHP version is that they are using relatively lightweight composite flywheels and then spinning them to speeds that would tear apart the car flywheel from this vid, typically 20,000 to 50,000 rpm. This greatly increases the amount of energy storage available which increases linearly with mass, but with the square of rotational velocity.

http://rpm2.8k.com/basics.htm

Um, well, if that's your only complaint . . Wings can actually be useful for a ship that does both atmosphere and space flight. Like the shuttle. It has wings. And it's a space ship . . . of sorts.

Let's see . . . Lasers. Yeah, we've already had lasers debunked as a weapon in space. Unless there's some breakthrough later on. But, that said, it wouldn't be visible as there's no atmosphere to reflect it back to us. It would be traveling at the speed of light.

Explosions would be limited to the amount of oxygen in the ship being destroyed. They wouldn't create sonic waves or sound, or cause the nearby camera to rattle.

Ships wouldn't fly in arcs. That's atmosphere. In space, a ship can turn 180° and still be going the same direction. Babylon 5 is a good example of newtonian physics in action while in space.

Humans wouldn't be flying small ships. It'd kill us. Literally. Unless we have inertial dampeners like in Star Trek, making those turns and twists would destroy our bodies. Just ask a pilot.

Lastly, anyone advanced enough to do FTL and navigate massive star clusters with pinpoint precision who DOESN'T have a targeting system that can predict a ships movements and then fire a at speed of light weapon and destroy it, well, failed somewhere.

Not to mention, we'd use missiles that would self-destruct. Fire a physical projectile at near speed of light velocities and it not hit it target? Well, you may have just fired a bullet that would take out your space base in 1,000 years. It's be fruitless, require tons of energy and end up killing yourself with your own bullet.

But I'm glad we focused on wings. The only thing that has a real legitimate use in space travel.

A 100 yard suppressed subsonic 22lr shot killed Archbishop Oscar Romero
in El Salvador during the Regan/Ortega years, it was a direct hit to the heart. High-velocity 22LR round up to 50yards would do the job consistently. Also very little clean-up from ancillary damage, bullets are cheaper than drywall.

Escape-velocity extractions are part of the new dental plans under Obamacare

@kulpims - Yes, the physics of it suggest that even shooting fairly heavy depleted uranium shells at very high velocities at a fairly high rate of fire can't really put much of a dent in the momentum of a *very* heavy plane moving at a pretty high velocity.

Still, the pilot at the time told me in person (and some research I've done since then also suggests it may be true) that angling the gun off of perfectly straight alignment was deemed necessary due to shear forces that would require fairly dramatic pilot correction when firing the weapon.

Definitely nothing like dramatically slowing the airspeed of the plane, but I still found it impressive that the recoil of the gun became a design challenge even in such a large aircraft.

Actually, doing the math for the tangential velocity of a falling rigid rod, I think we were both wrong. (An exercise left for the reader...)

Actually, he wouldn't fall straight down, he would get a lot of horizontal velocity and ultimately hit at about the same speed as a 6-7 ft fall. With a good tuck-n-roll, maybe a broken bone worst case, pulled ligaments probably.

I assume he's ridden (and presumably fallen off of) bikes like this before, only shorter. There are several people riding around him on bikes that are in the 5-6ft tall range.

Yes, but they restricted the types of firearms for all of those groups in nonsensical ways.

Example: IPSC shooters can only own up to a .38 caliber handgun. Anything larger is not allowed - even though larger calibers are what most IPSC shooters world-wide use (it has to do its scoring system). But if you do Steel Target Shooting or Western Re-enactments you can have up to a .45 caliber.

If you buy a .22 rimfire rifle it is classed as a Category A rifle, but if you buy a .17 rimfire it jumps into the more dangerous Category B category (because they forgot to specify other rimfire calibers in the legislation).

They made .22lr semi-automatic rifles Category C and D firearms (very restricted dangerous firearms), effectively banning them - even though a .22lr high velocity round only has as much energy as a fast ball in cricket.

You can have a .308 pump action rifle with a 30 round magazine, but you can't own over a 10 round magazine for your much, much less powerful handgun.

Interestingly, firearm owners in Australia are the most law abiding group of people in the nation. Everyone with a serious criminal offence is automatically barred from owning firearms and other criminal offences are considered on a case by case basis (e.g. you did have an assault charge from when you were 18 years old - you'll be waiting 5 to 10 years before they let you own a firearm - if ever). If you commit a serious offence while owning a firearm, expect a knock on the door to take them away.

I thought I was finally going to learn the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.

I guess he could at least slow down the 13 to a non-terminal velocity in the water. Also, sunglasses are very loud. Can't wait for this diamond.

Skipping off the atmosphere or perhaps colliding with the many many tons of garbage spinning around the earth at incredible velocities? Have you seen the high-res radar scans of all the crap up there? I'm amazed the ISS doesn't get pelted more often...

Yeah I get annoyed by this and I'm gonna call you out on it especially since we had a major former NFL star in Junior Seau die from playing Football. Rugby is a very tough sport, made for very tough men, but they're not tougher than NFL football players because they don't wear pads. Players wearing pads hit eachother with a much greater velocity than Rugby players normally hit themselves...and they hit eachother in the head which is causing deaths.

I think you can make a similar comparison to boxing and bare knuckle fighting. In over 100 years of bare knuckle fighting no one has died from it, but an average of 4 people die from boxing related injuries in the US alone. The reason is because when you fight bare knuckle you don't go for the head as much...it hurts. In boxing you basically trade blows to the head for rounds and rounds severely damaging a brain.

So no, rugby players are not tougher than NFL players...or even soccer players. We should all do well to remember that we have similar DNA and sports with differing sets of challenges. I would say the toughest athletes in the world are ultra-marathon runners. Because nothing is more suggestive than the voice in your head telling you to stop.

So skinny little runners in short shorts that run over 100 miles in 120 degree temperatures are tougher than all of you. Have a nice day.