"Okay then. I'll try shooting away from the ship and away from the planet. Thanks Steve."
It would probably be safer if you were shooting sideways, actually. Away from the ship and perpendicular to the up/down direction. If you're shooting projectiles that do reach escape velocity it doesn't matter, but if they don't they are much less likely to eventually fall back if they are fired into an orbit.
Yeah, I had the same thought, I was going to say it next turn.
Not that it is necessary, the Rainbow Cannon is an energy weapon, so its projectiles will probably run out of juice after a while.
And while some of the modes of the Rainbow Cannon seem plausible and reproducible by current Human science in the ERverse, others, like the Orange Energy Mine which is made of 100% pure
orange juice energy, seem to be some sort of space magic that would normally require automanipulators to work, so they probably won't keep functioning indefinitely and will eventually run out of energy.
So as long as they remain in a semi-stable orbit, they'll dissipate after a while.
Then again, it's space magic and you can never be sure with space magic.
If my calculations are correct an electron goes about 2km/s when orbiting a proton.
I remember reading that if electrons really did orbit protons in a conventional sense, the moving electrical charge would cause a release of...something, I forget what, causing the electron to lose energy and crash into the proton in a tiny fraction of a second. So that number might be meaningless.
Moving electrical charges creates an electromagnetic field (light, magnetic field).
However even in the model I'm describing (Rutherford-Bohr model basically), the electron doesn't do that, because the electron only releases energy when it leaves a quantized orbit and descends into a lower orbit, which signifies a lower energy state. Similarly, an electron must absorb photons that have the exact energy for it to ascend to a higher energy state, a higher orbit. Search for a website explaining emission lines or Bohr's model of the atom.
And like I said in that post, I have little clue of how quantum mechanics work in that scale other than those few functions we learned in the university. So while a model using modern quantum-mechanics would be more accurate representation for that system, I have no idea what that quantum model would entail. Unless you have any spare quantum physicists lying around.
You also have the problem that heat from firing might just boil the booze.
I chatted with a firearms expert I know, and he said it was doable. He said it depends on how much was getting heated up, but unless it managed to make the alcohol reach its flash point, it would be fine. He compared it to incendiary rounds, in case that helps.
When I explained the situation, he pointed out that is might be pointless. How potent is a few grams of mind rot, anyways?
I think I read somewhere of some rebels who put mercury in hollow point rounds so that anyone their bullets didn't kill would be poisoned and thus the enemy soldiers would either be forced to care for their wounded comrade with little chance of success or be forced to leave him to die. Might have been just a rumour though. Anybody knows more on this?