by Chris Peterson » Wed Oct 28, 2015 2:20 pm
popcicle wrote:I am curious if that ICBM was going MACH 5 and crashed into the ocean, what in the heck did it do to the ocean? Wouldn't the impact of that have been recorded somewhere as well? How much sea life would have been killed and over how large an area? How about being radioactive? I am certain there are numerous questions to still be asked and answered.
As Geck explains, this object would not be hypersonic, or even supersonic on impact. However, assuming it were still under power and hit the ocean at Mach 5, the impact would not be very damaging.
A typical ICBM masses around 35,000 kg. At Mach 5 (1700 m/s) the energy released at impact would not exceed 5e10 J, which is the equivalent of 12 tons of TNT. A one ton depth charge has a sub damage radius of about 15 meters; a 12 ton charge perhaps twice that. But that assumes exploding at depth. A surface explosion dissipates most of its energy upwards and only a small amount of energy travels through the water.
An explosion this size would certainly be detected by sub monitoring microphones, but not seismically. It would kill or stun fish for perhaps a hundred meters around the crash site. And that's about it.
At the actual speed it hit, however, it just splashed. It would have needed to literally land on a fish to kill it.
[quote="popcicle"]I am curious if that ICBM was going MACH 5 and crashed into the ocean, what in the heck did it do to the ocean? Wouldn't the impact of that have been recorded somewhere as well? How much sea life would have been killed and over how large an area? How about being radioactive? I am certain there are numerous questions to still be asked and answered.[/quote]
As Geck explains, this object would not be hypersonic, or even supersonic on impact. However, assuming it were still under power and hit the ocean at Mach 5, the impact would not be very damaging.
A typical ICBM masses around 35,000 kg. At Mach 5 (1700 m/s) the energy released at impact would not exceed 5e10 J, which is the equivalent of 12 tons of TNT. A one ton depth charge has a sub damage radius of about 15 meters; a 12 ton charge perhaps twice that. But that assumes exploding at depth. A surface explosion dissipates most of its energy upwards and only a small amount of energy travels through the water.
An explosion this size would certainly be detected by sub monitoring microphones, but not seismically. It would kill or stun fish for perhaps a hundred meters around the crash site. And that's about it.
At the actual speed it hit, however, it just splashed. It would have needed to literally land on a fish to kill it.