Whipple Shield: Micrometeoroid Impact — 2D Cross-Section

Space colony and space station hulls face a constant hazard that has nothing to do with radiation or life support: millimetre-sized orbital debris and micrometeoroids arriving at kilometres per second. This 2D side-on simulator models the Whipple shield — the spaced double-wall design used on real crewed spacecraft — by firing a projectile at a thin outer bumper plate, shattering it into an expanding wedge of debris drawn to scale across the standoff gap, and checking whether the spread-out impact survives a rear wall. Adjust projectile size, impact speed, standoff gap and wall thickness, and toggle the bumper off entirely to see how much worse a direct hit on a single unshielded wall really is.