Kinetic bombardment - how destructive?

[takemeout_totheblack]

Oh not this thread again

Sorry Grif, I just had one of those 'this bugs the crap outta me' moments. It's never explained in sci-fi where high mach mass drivers are used in atmosphere why the projectiles don't just turn to plasma a couple meters from the weapon. As you can see from my previous posts on various threads I sort of have a thing for high velocity impactors.

[Night_stalker]

Yeah, kinetic weapons are good if primarily used to drop objects from orbit onto ground targets. Look at Endwar's kinetic strike. It has lots of power, and is cheaper than say a nuke.

[Darth Wong]

Oh not this thread again

Sorry Grif, I just had one of those 'this bugs the crap outta me' moments. It's never explained in sci-fi where high mach mass drivers are used in atmosphere why the projectiles don't just turn to plasma a couple meters from the weapon. As you can see from my previous posts on various threads I sort of have a thing for high velocity impactors.

If you want a projectile to last a long time while travelling through a long distance at very high velocity, then the heavier it is, the better.

As an extreme example, tiny meteors which hit the Earth's atmosphere vapourize before we can even see them. Larger ones streak visibly through the sky but burn up long before reaching the ground. But huge ones hit the ground, and hard. Same material, same velocity, different sizes. Obviously, this creates particular problems for your handheld "grain of sand" hyper-velocity slug-thrower.