Comment on When will we have auto turrets mounted on plane engines to stop birdstrikes?
Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca 2 days agoTerminal velocity is really only relevant for objects that go below terminal velocity and then start falling. Bullets famously come out of guns very fast, so fast they go into people.
While air will slow the bullet down, tell that to the guy over over 2 miles away from Viacheslav Kovalskyi
Now, bird shot ain’t sniper rounds, but the point stands.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Bullets also famously come out of guns horizontally. As they travel, their horizontal speed decreases due to friction (slowly) and their horizontal speed accelerates until it hits terminal velocity.
Now one point here is that the only place where you’d be shooting at birds is during takeoff and landing; this is near the ground, and in both cases, the aircraft is nose up — which means the bullet wouldn’t be traveling at height until it lost momentum and fell, but would instead follow an arc that would still likely preserve a lot of forward momentum as the bullet approached the surface of the earth.
But it’s not falling bullets that are dangerous; it’s bullets moving forward with velocity that cause damage.