From a rifleman's view how good a shot is a moon shot over 250,000miles away?

Question

A sniper is happy to hit anything a mile away how happy would he be if he could hit something like the moon

Answer 1

In terms of its angular size the Moon is a large target, much larger than hitting a person a mile away. But there is no way he could actually hit the Moon. The muzzle velocity of a high-powered sniper rifle is in the region of 1000m/s. The Earth's escape velocity is 11,200 m/s. The bullet would never reach the moon.

Answer 2

Smiling Bobs analogy is correct. Assuming you had a rifle that could fire a bullet that could travel for 250,000 miles at a standard rate say 2500 ft. per sec., You would have to calculate how long it would take the bullet to travel that far and then you would have to calculate when the moon would be at the same location. In other words  the bullet would intercept the moon at a point in orbit.

Answer 3

actually if it's a gun nut, he'd have an o****m in his pants... because that would be one powerful *** gun... it'd make the barrent. 50 look like a rubber band gun. (it's amazing the barrent .50 has the range it does... about a mile... it's like 6 miles straight up to get into space... then the moon is still incredibly far...

taking all this into consideration, if he could even hit the SUN at the MOON'S distance, he'd undoubtedly go down in history for the most amazing shot... (remember, once that initial charge, that bullet is on an unchangable flight path.... you can't adjust it's heading like you can with say, a rocket.)

yup, he definatley cream his pants.

Answer 4

Computer-controlled guidance systems were quite advanced in the 1960s. MIT patterned Apollo's guidance system after several that had been successfully developed for ICBMs.

The heart of the guidance system is the inertial measurement unit, or IMU.  The IMU measures orientation and acceleration in three axes.  1960s era technology for doing that could measure acceleration accurately to about 0.1 foot per second, and orientation accurately to about 0.001 degree.  The control system for principal engine burns simply operated until the proper acceleration had been obtained for each manuever; a very clever and simple way to do it.

In addition, considerably accurate ground-tracking was available.  The spacecraft emits a radio signal that can be used by big dish antennas to locate it in space.  There are two main ways of doing that.  One way takes a serious of position measurements (dish alignments) over a precisely measured set of intervals.  Another uses the Doppler shift of the radio signal in a single observation to estimate the component of the spacecraft's speed away from the receiver.  Math converts each of these sets of observations to a precise notion of its trajectory.  From time to time, Mission Control would send a "state vector" to the spacecraft's computer establishing its notion of position and velocity as measured from the ground.

The initial computations for Apollo's translunar trajectories were made on a CDC supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory prior to each mission.  With those as a starting point, NASA's IBM mainframe computers could refine them into actual orbital maneuvers they could upload to the spacecraft should plans change.

There were four opportunities -- two on the outbound trip and two on the inbound trip -- to perform mid-course corrections in order to bring the spacecraft into the desired path.  Nudging the spacecraft a few feet per second at those points results in as much as miles of distance at the end of the trip.  This constant monitoring and correction is what differentiates space travel from riflery.  We've hit comparatively far smaller targets since Apollo.

Answer 5

Actually,  it's not much of a shot. The angular diameter of the moon is about 30 minutes; a good rifleman with a good rifle can hit a target with an angular diameter of 1 minute or less. Shooting the moon would be about like shooting a trash can lid at 100 yards.

Answer 6

Really happy - the moon is so far away, that he can't use linear approximations anymore. Also, it is a pretty small target, when thinking in space dimensions.

Answer 7

There is much more to consider. The gravity and how it changes between moom & earth. I was on a project that bounced a laser off the mirrors that they left on the moon. They claimed an accuracy of 10 cm.

Answer 8

The other posters are correct, but consider this as well.

This is my analogy.

Imagine trying to shoot at a car that is traveling very quickly in a circle around you. Imagine also that your projectiles are much slower (relatively) than an actual bullet from a real gun.

Your "imaginary" rifleman would have to potentially shoot the opposite direction from the car when he takes the shot and then come back three days later to see whether or not he hit the car (which is large, but VERY far away).

I would be ecstatic!

Answer 9

I think your imaginary rifleman would be happy to get his shot to travel more than 2 miles let alone 250,000 miles.

Now if he had a huge rocket with computer controlled guidance systems he would hit the moon every time.