Literally the best type of innovation!

That pun, I was shot through the heart, and turned it.

Unironically that's more or less what tanks tried to do in ww2 and later on. Angles are huge when protecting something since some of the energy is deflected - but if used badly they take too much space

100% that's what they need to be nicknamed.

Really pulled a fast one with that pun :)

Whole else but Texans would you trust to build a giant gun that fires projectiles at the speed of space?

@@ShaunCheah or to *accidentally* point it at their NCAA rivals... in a non-threatening way, of course.

"You can't just shoot a hole into the surface of Mars" Texas: Watch me.

Haha meteor gun go br

Houston we have a problem

...or like in some martial arts... using the opponent's energy against them. It is in truth not an impenetrable barrier, but a true deflector. Now imagine some material as a rapidly spinning -disk- *CONE.* What then?

​@@ExtantFrodo2 There is no way you could spin the cone fast enough to matter. Even if you could spin up your shield to 100,000 RPM (approaching the limits of feasibility for current material science), from the projectile's point of view, it would still be basically stationary. So the impact would be very similar to what was demonstrated with the angled plate. You would also need a double layer of spinners, and whatever mechanism is doing the spinning since the protected area of each one would be a circle, you'd need the second layer to cover the gaps in the first. That is to say nothing of the added complexity and weight of such a system. If you could some how spin up a cone of material to the required speed, that would make for some very interesting interactions. I suspect that the cone would become more effective than an unmoving plate since the spinning would be bringing more material into the path of the projectile than a stationary plate of the same thickness would, effectively making the spinning plate thicker. That's just a guess though; hyper velocity impacts are frequently unintuitive and behave very differently than "normal" impacts so I doubt that we will ever see this particular thought experiment demonstrated outside of computer simulations, if even in that.

That is not Newton's third law. Newton's third law will only say the same force will be applied to the asteroid as the shield(because of which it evaporates)

@@resurgam_b7 You offer some good thoughts on this matter. In addition the spinning center of the cone would be as ineffective as stationary material would be since it would not be presenting the same "thickening" aspect. The overlap you mentioned would have to encompass those areas as well.

@@ExtantFrodo2 That's a good point, I wasn't even considering the center of the cone and the attachment point. I imagine it would be fairly catastrophic for the spacecraft if the bolt holding the ludicrously fast spinning mass were to suddenly disintegrate from an impact directly to it. Come to think of it, a hit anywhere on a shield like that would almost certainly unbalance the cone and cause it begin oscillating horribly if it didn't just break up immediately. Then you would get hyper velocity cone fragments to deal with in addition to the micro-meteors you were already facing. All in all a bad day for the astronauts I'd say!

why cook up an array of complicated computers, needing to make complex calculations and model hundreds of structures, when nature has been doing so for literal billions of years? All that computational-result wealth of knowledge, out there for us to take!

@@Apostate_ofmind Because it's not as magical and calculation intensive as you seem to believe

@@tonylee1667 you have no idea what i believe.

@@Apostate_ofmind Neither do you

@@tonylee1667 well, im not here professing what you think, so youre wrong there. Im literally a biologist, so i know what im talking about, so you managed to be wrong on three things at the same time: 1) you dont know what i think 2) i dont think its magic, i literally know how the science of it works 3) and no, it IS calculation intensive, its just being outsourced to billions of years and countless organisms and deaths (rewriting iterations). Every enzyme is a 'gate', every Dna and Rna 'strings'. Every organism is a supercompex 'computer', and every niche is a 'server' and every community a connection of 'servers', and then you have whole ecosystems that are even a metastructure on top of that. Literally if someone would have the competence to appreciate the complexity, it would be a biologist like me.

Go the classic myth busters route and explode a chicken with it

You could print that with carbon fibre/nylon filament

@@ocelotmadness6287 he meant the mother of all guns

I think they're just down the road!

As much as it hurts me to say, I don't think there would be much use of it. The camera they use at the facility is far better than any of the Phantom cameras, achieving higher framerate/resolution. It could be a fun video with Gav going over the technology and challenges of filming something like this and get real deep into it with a longer 2nd channel video though.

@@olekaarvaag9405 Definitely! It's really fun to listen to Gavin nerd out about camera technology.

@@douglasboyle6544 15s away!

Their V2511 can’t go as fast as this needs to be.

It shouldn't be - it's not like it would disintegrate as a whole (it's a layered construction) and small hole wouldn't depresurize space station like in some movies. It's like draining a pool through a small hole. It takes a lot of time.

I thought the same until the Whipple shield came up, that is such an interesting and ingenious design, just wow

Wow! a) way more energy than I though, and b) bone is surprisingly fragile. Thanks for sharing!

additional fun fact I know thanks to airsoft, it ony requires about 1 to 2 joules to 'break' skin. as in, to impact hard enough to cause a superficial wound.

isnt that a typo? really 80?

@@ologhai8559 E=1/2*m*v^2. A 1kg (2.2lbm) mass traveling a bit under 13m/s (45.5 koh, 41.5fps, 28.3 mph) would probably hurt a decent bit.

Other interesting reference in this case, the average energy of a .50 BMG bullet is 20,000 joules. And it is already called an anti-material munition 😅

Well, vacuum is really nothing but absence of pressure. You'd get the exact same thing in space, anyway.

@@niklaskoskinen123 You’re right but that wasn’t my point. His explanation of how they were attaining the projectile speeds in the gun was incomplete is all I was saying.

@@jimk8520 Fair enough. It's all about what you are comparing it to, though. Shooting a gun in space won't reach the same speeds, and this video will explain why.

The target was in a vacuum chamber? He went through that including adding pressure to stimulate upper atmosphere?

@Jim K Exactly. The target getting to sit in a vacuum much as it would in space is a free bonus - the barrel in front of the projectile would be under vacuum ANYWAY, for the reason you state, regardless of whether or not you want to study space stuff.

What's an easter egg?

@@mumiemonstret An egg used to symbolize the Easter holiday.

@@mumiemonstret But besides being a symbol of Christianity, the term grew to denote a particular hidden element in Western media production, intended for dedicated community to discover on their own. Eastern eggs are typically intended leftovers in a production that is sufficiently large, expensive, or manned, sometimes as a joke, as a reference, as a homage, or for marketing purposes (and building up a hype). It largely depends on the audience commitment (you don't use them in a video intended for casual viewers or grandmas) and the solemnity of the product (you don't use them while explaining Holocaust). In the recent times Eastern eggs are done for the sake of it, most commonly in movies, cartoons, video games, as well as short documentaries such as this one, because it would be weird to do so in a piece of music, for example. Normally the media itself has to be multidimensional and possess a multitude of sensory streams, so anything that has a moving image is basically quite compatible with the concept.

@@milanstevic8424 OK, so basically an easter egg is something that flies over my and other casual viewers heads? An in-joke?

@@mumiemonstret yes, probably. I, for one, don't even care. that's probably something only his long-time viewership understands. maybe it's something cool, but I don't have the time to even pretend to be interested lol

Great thumbnail as well.

@@Thebreakdownshow1 Thanks! I'm most pleased they let me keep the plastic test sample - it's on my desk where it receives lots of weird questions.

@@AtomicFrontier That is so cool, When they let you keep such things you know you have made it as a edutainer lol

@@AtomicFrontier I was hoping they'd let you! Talk about a good coffee table conversation starter...

don't lie to him please

And of course we pointed it at the teasips lol

Gig'em, but stop by Dudley's first.

With all the new engineering students more and more of this stuff will pop up. It would be super cool if a&m becomes known nationwide for their engineering program like Georgia tech or MIT

Or killing eachother due to political reasons, in space!

"Meteoroid and Debris Protection" was about 2% of the Space Station's budget (I worked on that project). It has the "Whipple shields" described in the video to protect the crew modules and pressure tanks. The now Space Force tracks dead satellites and debris in low orbit, mostly with radar. If a bigger piece looks like it will come too close, the Station moves out of the way. Windows not only have covers when not being used, but have four layers of glass. Losing a window would be a catastrophic loss of pressure. Some stuff just doesn't need protection. The solar arrays have been punctured multiple times, but they are so thin stuff just flies through. There are thousands of solar cells, so losing a few to impact damage isn't a big deal.

Pretty sure that it will eventually be used on tanks, if not already. Many technologies that were initially developed for space ended up finding earth-based applications. We either get lighter tank armor for the same protection, or better armouring for the same weight. It could translate into higher speed, longer driving range, and/or fuel savings. Who knows? I'll leave it to the engineers but it's fun to ponder about :)

@@lamdelmundo8492 sort of, some composite armour relies on the projectile hitting it deflecting in the way shown in this video. Albeit since the velocity is lower, the effect is not quite as strong.

Tried changing the title to that, KZfaq didn't like it :( . Guess it stays as a bonus for anyone who actuallt watches the whole thing

@@AtomicFrontier very sad face

Tried it again with the thumbnail and seems to be going better (knock wood). If you ever run into me irl let me grab you a coffee :)

@@AtomicFrontier instead of a coffee, can I request a video on the science being done by indigenous people in North America, properly known as Turtle Island? I dunno if this topic fits into your channel, but indigenous land management on Turtle Island is an extremely interesting topic, like burning down a forest to save it.

Also that ad was hilarious haha.

It's not even the biggest such gun. The largest indoor one is between Chattanooga and Nashville, at an Air Force test range: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEDC_Range_G The largest one is slower but a much bigger barrel, the HARP gun now at the Army Yuma proving grounds, in Arizona: api.army.mil/e2/c/images/2016/08/22/447843/original.jpg

True, but kinetic anti tank weapons have high mass and density which can take a beating by armor, where as space debris has high velocity but low mass, making spaced and sloped armor much more effective due to shattering. But you are right, the principles are the same

Glad you enjoyed it!