Whether it actually happened, or it's just urban myth - the version of the story I have goes like this: the tall foreheads at NASA got together with the egg heads at the Jet Propulsion Labs and over beers or coffee - and they turned their formidable knowledge of flight dynamics on the common honey bee. They studied the critter, hemmed and hawed, took measurements - and then the slip sticks came out for some recreational out house math. The results were unexpected, and they frowned in consternation The programmable calculators came out. The results of
that induced panic - and the whole shebang ended up in an ivory tower somewhere with a Cray supercomputer. The results were devastating. The super computer pronounced that it was physically impossible for the bee to fly. The honey bee had broken math and the laws of physics - because the little critter flew when science said it should not. Minds snapped and careers ended with gibbering, crazed ex-scientists trying to assimilate the impossible. Some snapped, and became irredeemable intellectual wrecks and liberals. Banished from the hallowed halls of academia, others ended up as gibbering, gobbling zealots of fringe cults like The Flat Earth Society.
I fear we may be headed down the same path, gentlemen. Those of you with fragile minds and egos had better turn away from what follows. Those of you that wish to follow this path to it's conclusion - you have been warned!
Consider the paper patched bullet. Some of the gun club duffers and stubfarts at my rod n' gun club say that the paper patch serves to contain the exploding pressure behind the bullet - and the pressure in turn drives the bullet forward. I've heard them say the same about the patched round balls favoured by our front-stuffing brethren in the muzzle loading forum. I know this to be false: with ultra slow motion photography, we see clouds of burning gases exit from the muzzle of a flintlock
first - followed by the patched paper ball. And of course, as the ball follows its trajectory, the patch falls away. It is my conviction that Dr. Sam Fadala was right - the patch serves only to impart the spin from the rifling.
Moving forward from the muzzle loader to our BPCR guns … shouldn't the same apply? I've never used paper patched bullets myself but have seen others do it. When the gun fires, what comes out of the muzzle is the gases, the bullet, and confetti. To me, the paper patch has to be fully or partially immolated and incinerated during the firing process. How can mere burning paper in that state even serve to impart the spin of the rifling to the bullet? Is this possible?
Methinks not.
Unless somebody can convince me of the error of my logic, I will be forced to address our fellows of the BPCR persuasion with admonishment and reprimand. Pending logical evidence to the contrary I will have to insist that they cease and desist with their erroneous ways and repent - or be forever cast out and exiled from The Brotherhood Of The Boolit.