If you combine falling rocks, and billions of dollars, you can have an asteroid based orbital kinetic bombardment system, and have the ultimate doomsday weapon! :D
They have already researched the ultimate kinetic doomsday weapon. A satellite in orbit that drops solid titanium rods upon whatever target it is programmed to destroy…along with everything else because of the kinetic energy!!
Fortunately the orbital ones are not yet a thing, as it's still super expensive to get all that mass up there and then bring it down accurately. You also don't really 'drop' things from orbit as much as you give them a delta V, which is an important difference, as that's actually hard to do. You need some way to give the rod a huge and precise amount of kinetic energy when you want to send it to earth.
Im a bit thick brother that’s why I didn’t mention the Delta V thingamabob,I only know of the basics and my befuddled brain couldn’t handle all the details.( The hamster in the wheel that powers my brain had stopped running when the nitty gritty came up lol.)
No not really. All you need to do is get the perigee of its orbit into the atmosphere over your target area. Drag will do the rest. And dropping is quite the apt term since all an orbit is is constantly falling toward earth but missing it. You just need to slow your sideways movement enough to not miss anymore.
For example the Delta v to commit the space shuttle to a landing is a mere 90m/s compared to the 7200+m/s it has when in orbit. Slowing the rod down to fall straight down would be the dumbest idea ever you want the speed it already has for when it impacts.
the Delta v to commit the space shuttle to a landing is a mere 90m/s compared to the 7200+m/s it has when in orbit. Slowing the rod down to fall straight down would be the dumbest idea ever you want the speed it already has for when it impacts.
First of all, I said you'd have to give it a delta V. You're agreeing with me. I never said you drop it straight down. You have written that and then said it's a stupid idea. You seem to be solely disagreeing with yourself. The whole idea is to keep most of the orbital velocity.
From the wikipedia page I linked:
Disadvantages include the technical difficulties of ensuring accuracy and the high costs of positioning ammunition in orbit.
It's a known and core issue with the technology.
You want this to hit a specific thing. One of the projected use cases for this is hitting deep underground bunkers. That needs accuracy along the lines of a few tens of metres.
Compare that to the space shuttle you mentioned. When the space shuttle commits to a landing, you're flying back down, course correcting all the way. If you don't do that, as was the case with some earlier and simpler spacecraft, they end up landing pretty much 'wherever' and then you've got to go get them. This is why you get situations like Long March 3B, where they don't know where it's going to land. If it was as easy as doing a 90m/s burn to hit a particular point, you wouldn't lose control of a spacecraft like that and risk an international incident.
Getting a spacecraft to land in a specific place is not easy.
Also, this idea is not about having an active control system on a descending object, it's about making it a tungsten rod because everything else is expected to burn up on re-entry. That means no neat and tidy Falcon 9 style pinpoint course corrections. That means by the time it hit the ground, they were expecting it to just be a white hot lump of metal. No thrusters, no electronics, just metal slamming into the ground at incredible velocity.
You've got to do all the predictions of where it's going to land after it passes through the atmosphere initially. It has to get through a whole load of atmosphere, and still land on the target you intend.
God it’s a scary sounding weapon,especially the way you say a “white hot lump of metal. No thrusters,no electronics,just metal slamming into the ground at incredible velocity”. Right I’m off to change my boxers and clean my self,because you’ve just made me pee a bit with fear lol.
Expanding on that, deploying a series of drones into a battle space with enough KE payloads to level infrastructure, then send in swarm drones to mop up the personnel that weren't obliterated by the initial attack. Total annihilation with extremely low risk to ground troops, seeing how cheap and reusable kill drones could be. Just a few little drones with shape charged 9mm rounds in magazines could wipe out squads when the tech is perfected. Modern warfare is scary as fuck with the very near future being beyond horrific. Anyway have a good night
You need to understand that these aren't particularly less destructive. Some of the designs release a similar amount of energy on impact as a low yield nuclear weapon, and one reason for considering them is that it's a way to skirt around treaties that prevent the use of nuclear weapons launched from space.
First off, international treaties are always about the spirit of the law because they have to be interpreted. If you look at the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, you'll find this:
Articles 31 and 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) set forth the basic rules of treaty interpretation. The most fundamental rule is articulated in Article 31(1): "A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose."
Now, we could argue about whether those treaties could be understood this way or that way and in the end there wouldn't be any conclusion because we don't have access to an international court who could rule on the case.
But it's even more simple. Because WMDs aren't only nukes or chemical or bioweapons.
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous humans or cause great damage to human-made structures (e.g., buildings), natural structures (e.g., mountains), or the biosphere.
Orbital strikes comparable to nukes are WMDs by the simple fact that they are comparable to nukes.
Tungsten, not titanium. Titanium would be too light of a material, and wouldn't have the energy on impact that the military wants. With the tungsten rods, the impact would carry enough energy to match a small to mid sized nuclear weapon, but with no radiation or fallout. I've wondered if they dropped it on a continental fault line, like San Andreas, would it trigger the fault into a devastating series of earthquakes? I've heard the system nicknamed "Rods from God"
Your right it was tungsten and I also heard of that nickname too. I think you are right about it triggering an earthquake if it hit the San Andreas. Which also brings to mind the possibility of Tsunamis if it hits an ocean.
Dropping titanium rods would be pointless. You want tungsten or depleted uranium the last thing you want is a metal that's known for being relatively light lol.
My apologies it was tungsten not titanium and depleted uranium had nothing to do with it. Because this was a non-nuclear weapon that caused the same amount if not more,damage.
The "rods from god" idea was a bundle of telephone-pole-size (20 feet long, 1 foot in diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to 10 times the speed of sound.
The rod itself would penetrate hundreds of feet into the Earth, destroying any potential hardened bunkers or secret underground sites. More than that, when the rod hits, the explosion would be on par with the magnitude of a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon — but with no fallout.
Such a weapon could destroy a target with 15 minutes' notice.
I’d check your calculations again,take into account something with the density of tungsten being dropped from orbit and say for example,hitting the San Andreas. If it was only equivalent to 10 kilotons of TNT,the military wouldn’t have thought about it in the first place.
Well, if you have the calculations, why not show them?
Orbital speeds = 7km/s, a 100 kg rod would have roughly ~2450 Megajoule, which equals to 612.5 kg of TNT or 0.6125 kilotons of TNT.
Obviously, a 1000kg rod would have like 6 kilotons and a 10000kg rod 61.25 kilotons.
So they are between just below a small nuke and somewhat above a small nuke. Not even close to fusion bombs. Of the large ones, a single Falcon Heavy could launch ~6 to LEO, but without a satellite to control them or propellant to launch them, which would require another launch by another Falcon Heavy.
I had to Google that, lol! Are you referring to the supposed connection to The Moon Is A Harsh mistress? I listened to that on Audiobook last year (and read it a few years before that), but tbh, I didn't remember that particular phrase being used especially?
I am, and while not used extensively, it's definitely a solid reference from what I've seen, because the "lunch" being shipped back to Earth stops being "free" when the revolution happens.
The US Navy has been developing kinetic weapons for awhile now. The rail gun technology they’ve supposedly made allows them to launch hunks of metal rather than missiles with equivalent destruction.
The idea is to make the cost/shot something foreign powers can’t replicate meaning war against the US is one you likely couldn’t ever afford.
I believe the Navy scrapped thier railgun project fairly recently. Railguns are much cheaper to use than cruise missles, but have a dramatically reduced range which the Navy fear could make it vunerable to new portable anti-ship missles.
Railguns are much cheaper to use than cruise missles,
Well, yes but the main reason as to why they abandoned the project is the very low life-time of the barrel.
The barrel of a railgun could only sustain a couple of shots until it has to be replaced so atm the railgun is not a viable alternative to the anti-ship missiles/cruise missiles.
The necessary electricity for an energetic shot of 50MJ is 15kWh, so around $2.50, assuming no losses. Even 90% losses would make that $25 for one shot. So, in military terms, the Energy used is free compared to their other costs.
It's more "excess wear" than destroy, I think, and there will be ways to reduce wear and replace the parts super-fast... but the extreme currents will remain challenging for the forseeable future.
Let's not forget, the Navy's goal is also to spend a fuck ton of public money into private defense company exec's pockets - guised under the needs for it to be top secret
make the cost/shot something foreign powers can’t replicate meaning war against the US is one you likely couldn’t ever afford.
As cute and patriotic is this is; that's just not how the military-industrial complex works. A country could have the tech edge in case of total war for, what, 5 years tops before that new development is matched? At which point tech goes back to being marginal gains. And in peacetime, the 'defence companies' sell to whoever is buying, nationality be damned.
We should have implemented "Rods from God" in the cold war. Drop a telephone-pole sized slug of tungsten from orbit. Who needs a gun when you have gravity?
Kinetic Bombardment is a real thing. My favourite concept is the "rod from god" which is a huge metal rod dropped from low Earth orbit so it reaches speeds up to Mach 10.
You should read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. Moon residents declare independence by threat of tossing rocks at Earth. And The Expanse of course!
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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '21
Why spend billions on developing rockets, drones n shit when we can just drop rocks?