Editing Talk:2125: Luna 2

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:That impact speed still sounds ridiculously high,  Escape velocity to break free of earth orbit is, IIRC, 11.186 km/s (roughly 40K kmph or 25K mph), and it takes a massive rocket to achieve that.  Most of a trans-lunar flight is unpowered using either momentum built up by the initial launch thrust or the gravitational pull of the moon itself.  I find it hard to believe that impact speed, even allowing for gravitation influence of the moon itself, could result in an impact at almost 2X the speed needed to get away from Earth in the first place.[[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 07:24, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 
:That impact speed still sounds ridiculously high,  Escape velocity to break free of earth orbit is, IIRC, 11.186 km/s (roughly 40K kmph or 25K mph), and it takes a massive rocket to achieve that.  Most of a trans-lunar flight is unpowered using either momentum built up by the initial launch thrust or the gravitational pull of the moon itself.  I find it hard to believe that impact speed, even allowing for gravitation influence of the moon itself, could result in an impact at almost 2X the speed needed to get away from Earth in the first place.[[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 07:24, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 
::22 km/s seems to be wrong. Wikipedia along with a few quick google searches put the impact speed at around 3 - 3.3 km/s. To me (far from an expert) that appears more realistic but still fast enough to cause significant damage. Whether things are literally vaporized at those speeds I leave for others to determine.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.94.2|162.158.94.2]] 11:31, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 
::22 km/s seems to be wrong. Wikipedia along with a few quick google searches put the impact speed at around 3 - 3.3 km/s. To me (far from an expert) that appears more realistic but still fast enough to cause significant damage. Whether things are literally vaporized at those speeds I leave for others to determine.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.94.2|162.158.94.2]] 11:31, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 
:The whole point of the "bomb" was to avoid all of the little "flags" (they actually contained the coat of arms) from being vaporized.  The idea was to take a sphere, hurtling towards the moon at speed X - then to explode with an explosive speed of Y.  The flags at the 'front' of the bomb would then be propelled towards the moon at speed (X+Y) but the ones at the 'back' would be moving at (X-Y)...it was hoped that this slowing down from the explosion would result in at least some of the flags arriving intact onto the lunar surface.
 
:It's a very clever idea because it works even if the sphere is tumbling in some uncontrolled way...and it's VERY simple.
 
: [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 20:37, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
 
  
 
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