[HN Gopher] At 4.4 miles, Wyoming team sets new rifle shot world...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       At 4.4 miles, Wyoming team sets new rifle shot world record
        
       Author : bkohlmann
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2022-09-23 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (cowboystatedaily.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (cowboystatedaily.com)
        
       | spywaregorilla wrote:
       | Is this an engineering challenge or a marksmanship challenge?
       | 
       | Like... Could you just fire the gun, then put the target where
       | the bullet went an fire again and say its mission accomplished
       | because the real goal is just setting up a gun that stable and
       | precise and deterministic?
        
         | Enginerrrd wrote:
         | Both, combined with quite a bit of luck.
         | 
         | >Like... Could you just fire the gun, then put the target where
         | the bullet went an fire again and say its mission accomplished
         | because the real goal is just setting up a gun that stable and
         | precise and deterministic?
         | 
         | No... slight variations in wind and atmospherics across that
         | distance change too rapidly and significantly to make that
         | viable. (Also, you wouldn't need to, you'd just adjust the
         | windage/elevation on the optics and/or fancy rifle mount.)
         | 
         | Also the when the bullet drops from supersonic to subsonic
         | speed, there is a non-deterministic kick that it receives which
         | dramatically reduces accuracy beyond that distance.
        
         | adrianpike wrote:
         | Both - the firearm has to be incredibly precise, but you also
         | have to take into account wind and air density to get that much
         | accuracy, and a big portion of marksmanship is accounting for
         | those. Knowing that you'll have a temperature change over a
         | body of water, and how to adjust for that, for example.
        
       | TylerE wrote:
       | I wonder what the rules are? _Naval_ rifle guns have achieved
       | hits beyond 20 miles in combat
        
         | Retric wrote:
         | Looks like +/- 2 inch accuracy which is well beyond naval guns
         | at 20 miles.
         | 
         | Custom guided artillery shells could probably hit that kind of
         | accuracy at significantly longer ranges, but pure ballistic
         | weapons simply aren't designed for extreme accuracy at range.
        
       | jonah wrote:
       | This reminds me about the Ukrainian Snipex Alligator sniper rifle
       | I read about recently. It uses 14.5-millimeter heavy machine gun
       | rounds and it's claimed to be able to penetrate 10mm steel armor
       | at 1,500 meters.
       | 
       | https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a41283557/...
       | 
       | https://snipex.com/alligator
        
         | RajT88 wrote:
         | I was surprised to see a big red "BUY" button on that page.
         | Surely it can't be that easy?
         | 
         | Upon clicking, "This Account has been Suspended. Contact your
         | hosting provider for more information."
        
           | chasd00 wrote:
           | It's not that big of a deal really. A guy in the high power
           | rocketry hobby club I'm in has a 20mm cannon. It's a single
           | shot anti tank rifle basically. It's pretty much impossible
           | to use it in a crime because of how gigantic and heavy it is.
        
             | ketzo wrote:
             | I don't know if that's supposed to be comforting, but
             | "Don't worry -- this weapon is _way_ too large and powerful
             | for someone to use in mere petty crime! " does not exactly
             | put one at ease
        
             | ptomato wrote:
             | funnily enough, a 20mm anti-tank rifle _was_ used in a
             | crime back in 1965, to bust open a vault at a Brinks
             | facility.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | Two quotes I thought were noteworthy:
       | 
       | > traveling at a downward angle and about 600 feet per second as
       | they reached the target zone.
       | 
       | That is incredible. Some BB guns don't even fire horizontally
       | that fast
       | 
       | > Regarding it taking 69 shots to hit the mark, with all the
       | variables that had to be taken into account, "we were thrilled it
       | was so few," Humphries said.
       | 
       | To give an idea of how difficult this is....
        
         | akerl_ wrote:
         | Just to clarify, I'm pretty sure they're saying that the bullet
         | left the muzzle at 3,300 fps and had decelerated down to 600
         | fps at time of impact, not that it was moving vertically at 600
         | feet per second. So the fact that it was moving faster than a
         | BB gun isn't really shocking.
        
           | mod wrote:
           | After four miles, it's a little shocking to me.
           | 
           | And I'm into shooting sports.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Assuming the bullet is traveling on a purely ballistic
         | trajectory, no weird aerodynamics, calculator is saying it will
         | have a vertical delta V of -235 m/s at 24 seconds. So more like
         | -700 ft/s. But friction is real so I don't know the real
         | number.
         | 
         | I'm quite surprised they didn't have the barrel pointed higher.
         | Was the shooter on a plateau?
        
       | timcavel wrote:
        
       | themodelplumber wrote:
       | > "When a bullet is in flight for that long, you have to take
       | into account the rotational speed of the earth. What you're
       | shooting at isn't going to be in the same place it was 24 second
       | ago when you pulled the trigger."
       | 
       | Wow. Impressive work! I also noted the pitch differential between
       | scope and barrel :O
        
         | rabi_molar wrote:
         | It's essentially a little bit similar to a mortar shell launch
         | I suppose, at that distance? Reminds me of the fun I had trying
         | to do ultra long distance shots playing Gunbound (South Korean
         | MMMORPG that was similar to Worms) online. Very impressive.
        
         | sbaiddn wrote:
         | Impressive, indeed [1], but its the easiest of the corrections
         | they had to do. Its a standard classical physics question and
         | has been included in artillery calculations since at least the
         | late 19th century.
         | 
         | [1] Id imagine that a bullet, being so light compared to a
         | shell, is more affected by fluid flow than the coreolis force.
         | That the correction was needed means they nailed the far more
         | difficult fluid problem.
        
         | teaearlgraycold wrote:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXVcXmyKpeI
         | 
         | > At this distance you'll also have to take the Coriolis effect
         | into account.
         | 
         | COD did it first
        
       | gbrindisi wrote:
       | 7.08 km
        
         | [deleted]
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-09-23 23:00 UTC)