Bolide Simulator Page?

[Diche Bach]

Hey Kerbalnauts!

Been quite sometime since I've visited these forums, and the look has changed a lot. I used to be pretty active right after the game was released.

I can recall (I think it was on this forum) someone posting a link to a page that allowed for "simulating" bolide impact events on Earth. It even allowed you to plug in values or mass, velocity and maybe even composition (if memory serves).

Anyone recall this?

[legoclone09]

Universe Sandbox 2 or ^2 maybe? Those let you simulate lots of things, including impacts on Earth.

[Green Baron]

http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

Have fun :-)

[Findthepin1]

On June 4, 2016 at 0:02 PM, Green Baron said:

http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

Have fun :-)

I gave it something the size of the moon and a density like Mars at 25km/s.  It said rails would be bent slightly and sand would shift on beaches. XD

[Diche Bach]

Yeah! I did eventually find that one by the UK university folks. The GUI version restricts you to like 72km/sec but the text version (you have to click around a bit to find it) allows speeds up to around light speed! 299,000km/s if memory serves!

This was all "in service" to a thread in the Stellaris forums over at Paradox, where there was a discussion about why "bombarding planets is too fast." I noted that, really there should be special weapons to bombard planets from orbit because the weapons designed to engage spacecraft probably wouldn't work too well (missiles would burn up on entry, lasers/phasers diffuse in the atmosphere, shells would also burn out), and someone else pointed out that "The most sensible way to 'bombard' a planet would be to take one of your spare corvette or destroyer ships, have the whole crew evacuate, deactivate the emergency faster-than-light restrictions for being near celestial bodies, point it straight at the planet, set a timer to cause it to go to full warp speed, and get the last crewman off . . ."

Of course, I immediately appreciated (at an intuitive level) what he was getting at: even a fairly small object of some density would cause a tremendous impact it was going that fast. But there were some who were skeptical so I wanted to find one of these pages that would model it. I tried a 40m object, density 1000kg/m^3 or less and nearly light speed (200,000 I believe) and it was an impressive impact. Couple of those would put any planet into complete upheaval to say the least!

[Green Baron]

On 11.6.2016 at 2:31 PM, Diche Bach said:

Yeah! I did eventually find that one by the UK university folks. The GUI version restricts you to like 72km/sec but the text version (you have to click around a bit to find it) allows speeds up to around light speed! 299,000km/s if memory serves!

This was all "in service" to a thread in the Stellaris forums over at Paradox, where there was a discussion about why "bombarding planets is too fast." I noted that, really there should be special weapons to bombard planets from orbit because the weapons designed to engage spacecraft probably wouldn't work too well (missiles would burn up on entry, lasers/phasers diffuse in the atmosphere, shells would also burn out), and someone else pointed out that "The most sensible way to 'bombard' a planet would be to take one of your spare corvette or destroyer ships, have the whole crew evacuate, deactivate the emergency faster-than-light restrictions for being near celestial bodies, point it straight at the planet, set a timer to cause it to go to full warp speed, and get the last crewman off . . ."

Of course, I immediately appreciated (at an intuitive level) what he was getting at: even a fairly small object of some density would cause a tremendous impact it was going that fast. But there were some who were skeptical so I wanted to find one of these pages that would model it. I tried a 40m object, density 1000kg/m^3 or less and nearly light speed (200,000 I believe) and it was an impressive impact. Couple of those would put any planet into complete upheaval to say the least!

Well, around 70-80km/s rel. speed is something coming the opposite way, "wrong-way-driver" so to say. Things from the solar system can't be much faster. "Normal" relative speed is around 8-12km/s (question the eager space corvette captain bombarding a planet: why ?). Example: Halley's comet perihel speed around sun 55km/s, earth around sun 30km/s.

Happy bombardment