Calculate Rifle Bullet fired from Space Station at Sun:?

Question

This question is to determine the mathmatical process to calculate: Azimuth, Elevation, and Time of Firing of a hypothetical rifle firing a bullet (2500 FPS Muzzle Velocity - 180 Grain Copper Jacket Bullet) at the Sun from a theoretical orbiting space station (estimated fixed altitude 100 miles - stationary orbit over Cape Hatteras, NC). Please disregard the radiation and heating efects of the Sun and assume it is of planet like composition, possibly that of Mars. For purposes of this question we would like to have the bullet projectile attempt to strike the surface of the Sun to see the math involved. Please use Miles, Miles per hour, etc., and not metric units. I pose this question as a result of answering someone else's question and realized that I lacked the knowledge to complete the calculations necessary. Also, given the enormous pull of the Sun's gravity (in comparison with Earth's) would you estimate the changes bullet velocity during flight..

Answer 1

The speed of 2,500 FPS is way, way too slow to ever make it to the Sun. To hit the Sun, you first have to escape Earth's gravity, which requires about 36,000 FPS. After that you need to cancel out most of the Earth's orbital velocity, which is about 97,000 FPS, to prevent centrifugal force from making the bullet miss the Sun. So you need a muzzle velocity of about 133,000 FPS to hit the Sun. And to do it you must fire directly opposite the direction of the Earth's orbital motion, which is 90 degrees away from the direction to the Sun.

Answer 2

What you are saying is impossible. You'd need at least 72,000 fps, to do that, which is a really big gun. I don't know what explosive you could use, or what design - but if there is any then your bullet will vaporize. Don't even bother about melting, in space at those speeds any object rubbing against any other object will become a rapidly exploding invisible cloud of bullet gas.
If you can still call those gaseous lead molecules with a smattering of copper a bullet than I don't know what isn't.

That is why you'd need to use magnetic barrels, and a magnetic bullet, and a maglev-like spinning thing to act as rifling.. and pounds of gunpowder.
And the barrel might explode, and you'd need staged charges..
And an extremely long barrel, built like a tank.
All within maybe a millisecond of barrel travel

Which is why they use rockets instead. It may take an several minutes or an hour to get up to the desired speed but at least your projectile and projector won't explode.



Guns do work in space though, all the oxygen is in the powder.

And if you shoot your gun backwards outside of the space station
then you can easily hit the Earth, but you must shoot backwards, not down, and you'll never see your bullet again. It will orbit into the Earth and become a meteor.

!!Letting go of objects in space should be left only to professionals. Improperly let-go of objects can circle all the way around the world and come back to hit you in the a**.

Answer 3

That is an interesting question. The orbital velocity of the Earth
from a website I did not verify is 28.13 km/s which is way way over your 2.5km/s. I think there is no possible way to hit the Sun with a bullet because even if you aimed it directly opposite to the Earth's orbit the bullet will still have so much velocity it will simply fall to a lower orbit and not get any closer to the Sun.

This is just my opinion from what I remember from physics. If you have some huge computer you might be able to plot a very long orbit that would at some future time because of the influence of other planets deflect it to the Sun, but that would be pretty difficult by hand with Newton's laws.

This is a very complex question, but I do not think you can do it.
By the way I was even disregarding Earth's gravity as well.

Answer 4

First of all, you can't shoot a bullet at the sun and ever expect it to hit the sun. You are in a device orbiting the earth which is orbiting the sun. If you shoot directly at the sun, you will miss and the bullet will come back to the place you shot it from. You have to use orbital mechanics and I suspect the calculations would take a long long time by hand or a lot of of high power compute time.

Answer 5

#1 That speed is too slow. It will fall back to Earth!

#2 If you ignore Earth and everything else, then all you need is the speed of the bullet and tha distance to the sun, mass of the bullet and accelaration. Good luck!

Answer 6

It won't have enough velocity to escape Earth orbit. It will be slightly off geostationary orbit, and pass through it frequently enough to endanger all satellities in geostationary orbit.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

I so don't even care.