Magnetic Accelerator Cannon: Difference between revisions

A UNSC orbital platform typically mounts larger and more powerful version of the standard Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, nicknamed the ''"Super"'' MAC or the ''"big stick"''. At {{convert|802.2|m|ft}} long,<ref name="visual"/> these cannons fire a 3,000-ton ferric-tungsten rounds at .04''c'' or 4% of the speed of light, impacting with a massive amount of relativistic kinetic energy, which is of equivalent to 51.6 gigatons of TNT.<ref name="for283"/><ref name="big MAC yield" group="note">''The Halo Encyclopedia'' claims that a Super MAC slug is fired at .5''c'' (50% the speed of light), and that its explosive yield is around 9.98 teratons. This would result in an explosion with around 18,4815 more energy than the aforementioned Tsar Bomba, or roughly one tenth of the energy released by the Chicxulub impactor which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.</ref> No known UNSC or Covenant ship has been shown to survive the impact of one of these rounds, with shielded Covenant destroyers being shattered to "a million fragments" upon impact.<ref>'''Halo: The Fall of Reach''', ''page 297'' (2001 edition)</ref> Against Covenant shield technology, the rounds possess enough kinetic energy to punch through shields, cut through the ship and, upon exit, still retain enough energy to cripple or destroy a second ship. However, these guns, even with assistance from the UNSC Home Fleet, were not powerful enough to pierce the shields of the [[Ur-Didact]]'s flagship, ''[[Mantle's Approach]]''.<ref name="midnight"/>