Spaceships hull armor…solid?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by FrackingBiscuit

I think part of the problem is that you guys are talking past each other and don't actually know what the other person is saying. Because I just read the paper as well, and reviewed this entire thread, and tracked down the 14-year-old thread Agemegos mentioned (don't look at me like that, I was bored), and everything (including this paper) seems to show that hypervelocity impacts against Whipple shields go exactly as he described.

Yes and no. The problem is not that the analysis for spherical impactors is wrong. The problem is that people interested in space combat are not going to use spherical impactors, nor are they going to use anything close to the mass ranges most of those studies use.