For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[kerbiloid]

22 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Oh, come on now. The Star Spangled Banner, written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key. "...and the rockets' red glare!"

I don't argue that there were several episodical attempts to use powder and incendiary rockets, against the wooden fleets and towns.

... Just to ensure that traditional cannons rule.

A little earlier incendiary arrows were used. This still doesn't make them real artillery.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

What explosives in 1800? They hardly had chemistry.

Any rocketry units in Napoleon wars or later until 1930s?

Pipe bombs with black-powder and  black-powder rockets predates effective cannons. It was making an reliable explosive cannonball who was the problem. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

 

 

7 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Oh, come on now. The Star Spangled Banner, written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key. "...and the rockets' red glare!"

It was the use of ship-launched Congreve rockets by the British in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the US in 1814 that inspired a phrase in the fifth line of the first verse of the United States' National Anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner": "the rockets’ red glare". HMS Erebus fired the rockets from a 32-pound rocket battery installed below the main deck, which fired through portholes or scuttles pierced in the ship's side

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congreve_rocket

 

Edited February 23, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Quote

in their heyday during early American wars, rockets had an interesting though erratic career

.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/Military_Affairs/10/4/Rockets_in_Early_American_Wars*.html

 

the Chief of Ordnance on July 15, 1864, wrote to the Secretary of War as follows:76

Experience with rocket batteries during this war is not at all favorable to their usefulness. The same number of men and horses can produce  p34 more effect with the improved cannon and projectiles now used. Rockets have but little range and accuracy compared to rifled projectiles, and are liable at times to premature explosions and great eccentricity of flight. This department has no assurance that these rocket batteries have been tested in actual service, or that they possess the necessary requisites. I cannot, therefore, recommend their purchase.

Edited February 23, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[DDE]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

great eccentricity of flight

[tater]

 

 

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

That's cool! 

 

Here's something interesting - Dinosaur killing asteroid may have peppered the moon with glass spherules.  Also:

 

Quote

researchers said that ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere, where it was fall when the asteroid collided with Earth, appear to have bounced back nearly twice as fast as those in the Northern Hemisphere.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/world/asteroid-dinosaur-extinction-spring-scn/index.html

[Jacke]

Speaking of Congreve rockets, the sole British unit at the massive Battle of Leipzig was a company of the British Rocket Brigade.

Quote

The Swedes also had under their command a company of the British Rocket Brigade armed with Congreve rockets, led by Captain Richard Bogue.^[c]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leipzig

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, Jacke said:

British Rocket Brigade

Taken completely out of context, this wins the award for coolest military unit name I have heard this week.

[StrandedonEarth]

32 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Taken completely out of context, this wins the award for coolest military unit name I have heard this week.

Now imagine said unit doing drills and exercises in Benny Hill mode, complete with Yakety Sax!

Edited February 23, 2022 by StrandedonEarth

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Taken completely out of context, this wins the award for coolest military unit name I have heard this week.

Out of curiosity, just how many military unit names do you hear of per week?

I myself am in the process of creating multiple orders of battle for different nations between 1962 and 2027 and therefore hear (see, actually) quite a few, all though it is more of a monthly affair rather than weekly.

On 2/22/2022 at 12:45 PM, Admiral Fluffy said:

Could Starship recover the HST?

Perhaps yes, but it would need to be specially modified to carry the same payload retention system as the Space Shuttle. I don't know how that would affect flight performance during EDL. The Shuttle landed horizontally, Starship lands vertically, so there could be issues.

Starship creates a lot of opportunities for the recovery of space artifacts.

------

Q: Is it possible to spot ballistic missile reentry vehicles with one's eyes during the daytime? On "final approach", that is.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

On "final approach

It'd be traveling at terminal, wouldn't it?  So not terribly fast.  Then it's a matter of knowing the detonation altitude/distance from the observer and reflectivity. 

I'd say a few would be seen 

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Out of curiosity, just how many military unit names do you hear of per week

I haven't spent a lot of time on unit names - but generally speaking the Brits have this down.  I'd be surprised if they did not have a Royal Fusilier company or two 

US is comparably boring.  53d Maintenance Co.?  Yawn

Edited February 24, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[TheSaint]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

US is comparably boring.

Maybe, but I want to know the MOS code for this.

[lrd.Helmet]

9 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Q: Is it possible to spot ballistic missile reentry vehicles with one's eyes during the daytime? On "final approach", that is.

Yes it is. Many years ago I read a Dutch science magazine with a picture of a ballistic missile reentry test. I'll send them a message to see if they still have the article somewhere. If I remember correctly it was 6 or 7 parallel lines coming through the clouds and smacking the ground somewhere.

 

edit: Found it! 
 

Spoiler

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by lrd.Helmet
found the image.

[DDE]

7 hours ago, lrd.Helmet said:

Yes it is. Many years ago I read a Dutch science magazine with a picture of a ballistic missile reentry test. I'll send them a message to see if they still have the article somewhere. If I remember correctly it was 6 or 7 parallel lines coming through the clouds and smacking the ground somewhere.

 

edit: Found it! 
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Wait, how the heck did I miss this question being asked!?

 

[steve9728]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

等等，我怎么会错过这个被问到的问题！？

 

My ex: the "Your Name" animated movies are so romantic!

Me: It's great that you don't know that there is a thing in the world called a ballistic missile.

[ARS]

If a stealth aircraft such as F-117 or B2 is taken into WW2 era where the radar is still during it's early age, would it be completely invisible to the radar?

[Terwin]

2 hours ago, ARS said:

If a stealth aircraft such as F-117 or B2 is taken into WW2 era where the radar is still during it's early age, would it be completely invisible to the radar?

I strongly suspect that modern stealth aircraft could be below the noise floor of early radar.

[Jacke]

2 hours ago, ARS said:

If a stealth aircraft such as F-117 or B2 is taken into WW2 era where the radar is still during it's early age, would it be completely invisible to the radar?

@Terwin is right about the noise floor.  However, still not necessarily.  Modern stealth aircraft are optimised for modern radars, that is their location (ground/sea or airborne) and frequency patterns.  Things were different in WW2.  Also there were a lot of ground observers in all nations at war.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Even if not entirely below the noise floor - if spotted the operator wouldn't know what he's seeing was a plane. The cross section is so different from what they were used to seeing and recognizing as a plane that it would be brain noise even if not completely invisible. 

As for being observed - they're both night fighting aircraft with high altitude capabilities. 

[mikegarrison]

Yeah, the ability to operate at night is extremely different today.

Service ceilings are higher, too. The B2 can fly at 50,000 feet according to Wikipedia. The ceiling for Spitfires was 36,500. ME-109s  39,000. P-51 was 41,900. The fighters would have a tough time even getting to an altitude where they could attack, and the B2 is actually faster than fighters anyway.

[TheSaint]

22 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

if spotted the operator wouldn't know what he's seeing was a plane.

Foo fighters

There you go, there's your free fiction inspiration for the day.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Lenticular cloud! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_cloud

(referenced in Foo Fighters link) 

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Jacke said:

@Terwin is right about the noise floor.  However, still not necessarily.  Modern stealth aircraft are optimised for modern radars, that is their location (ground/sea or airborne) and frequency patterns.  Things were different in WW2.  Also there were a lot of ground observers in all nations at war.

This early radar used longer frequency who was easier to handle with 1940 electronic but is less accurate, who was irrelevant as you was not using them for guiding missiles just to spot targets for fighters. 
On the other hand they would probably come in so high the propeller fighters could not reach them and would be faster than even the late war jet fighters. 
Now we do not know details on how stealth work on modern planes. It has been an renewed interest in low frequency radar and other systems to spot stealth planes so you can try to intercept it or launch missiles who might get an lock on then getting close. Obviously everything here is classified.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

This early radar used longer frequency who was easier to handle with 1940 electronic but is less accurate, who was irrelevant as you was not using them for guiding missiles just to spot targets for fighters. 
On the other hand they would probably come in so high the propeller fighters could not reach them and would be faster than even the late war jet fighters. 
Now we do not know details on how stealth work on modern planes. It has been an renewed interest in low frequency radar and other systems to spot stealth planes so you can try to intercept it or launch missiles who might get an lock on then getting close. Obviously everything here is classified.

Not all of it. Enough has been published about Nebo-M: it's a trio of meter, decimeter and centimeter-wave radars with the explicit goal of counter-stealth.