Rods From God

[jolinar of malkshor]

Have you guys seen this:

Among the weapons the Air Force might deploy are space-based lasers, a space plane capable of delivering a half-ton payload anywhere in the world in 45 minutes, and the "rods from god." The rods are currently just a concept--and have been since the early 1980s--but, if the myriad technical and political hurdles to deployment could be overcome, the system could represent a tremendous leap forward in the military's ability to destroy underground, hardened facilities of the type that have allowed Iran and other rogue states to violate the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty with impunity.


HOW DO THE RODS WORK? The system would likely be comprised of tandem satellites, one serving as a communications platform, the other carrying an indeterminate number of tungsten rods, each up to 20 feet in length and 1 foot in diameter. These rods, which could be dropped on a various targets with as little as 15 minutes notice, would enter the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 36,000 feet per second--about as fast as a meteor. Upon impact, the rod would be capable of producing all the effects of an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, without any of the radioactive fallout. This type of weapon relies on kinetic energy, rather than high-explosives, to generate destructive force (as do smart spears, another weapon system which would rely on tungsten rods, though not space-based).

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...5/700oklkt.asp

[jolinar of malkshor]

Leave it up to the US to come up with that name

[Daradon]

Yeah read about these last year or so, your right, the idea has been around for a while, changing slightly each time.

And yeah, had some faith type name too like 'pillars from heaven/god'.

Very disturbing the way the mix the two concepts like that. Course when other countries do it, 'barbaric'.

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Went to the neocon bible for that story! I guess that's the explaination for the lame name of the weapons system. I had read elsewhere that the system was already deployed. I'll have to hunt around for that link. It was a pretty interesting story.

[Agamemnon]

Wouldn't this count as a space-based weapon? I thought there were treaties against those, no?

[Table 5]

yikes, armies still seem to have troubles always hitting targets from the ground or sky. how accurate can they be from space?

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

Wouldn't this count as a space-based weapon? I thought there were treaties against those, no?

Yes, there are treaties against this. There are treaties against lots of stuff that the Bush administration has ignored too. This owuld be surprising in what way?

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

Wouldn't this count as a space-based weapon? I thought there were treaties against those, no?

Yeah there's also the Geneva Convention, Free Trade Agreements, and various articles in the constitution that the current administration likes ignore too.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Table 5

yikes, armies still seem to have troubles always hitting targets from the ground or sky. how accurate can they be from space?

Well obviously deployment or use is probably some time away.

I'm no scientist though, but it got me wondering... If you had the means, might it be EASIER than say using a missile or a long range weapon on the ground? I mean you target and you aim in pretty much a straight line, you don't have to worry about take off, flight paths, distance etc.

Just thinking out loud.

[jolinar of malkshor]

Also you get the destruction of a small nuclear weapon without the radiation.

[icarus]

According to some, I already have a rod from God.

Originally Posted by jolinar of malkshor

Also you get the destruction of a small nuclear weapon without the radiation.

All destruction without that unsightly fallout. Finally, this is what we've been waiting for--pure, unadulterated destruction!

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Daradon

I'm no scientist though, but it got me wondering... If you had the means, might it be EASIER than say using a missile or a long range weapon on the ground? I mean you target and you aim in pretty much a straight line, you don't have to worry about take off, flight paths, distance etc.

i assume you would still have to worry about things like wind, air resistance, rotation of the earth in relation to the rod. etc. The farther away this thing is shot from, the more accurate it has to be, as one little miscalculation could cause quite a severe difference in trajectory (and I say this as a graduate of the Devry School of Rocketology).

[BlackEleven]

From the title, I thought this thread was going to be about porn...

[Cube Inmate]

Originally Posted by Daradon

I'm no scientist though, but it got me wondering... If you had the means, might it be EASIER than say using a missile or a long range weapon on the ground? I mean you target and you aim in pretty much a straight line, you don't have to worry about take off, flight paths, distance etc.

Just thinking out loud.

Here's my guess, based only on a bit of physics knowledge. Starting with the (outwardly) simplest case of an apparently stationary platform (e.g. a geostationary satellite), it's not a straight drop. If you push a rod straight down from the satellite, a couple of things happen:

-there's no force acting to the side, so the kinetic energy of the orbit is conserved. At geosynchronous altitude, the speed is around 3000 m/s, while the maximum motion of Earth's surface is about 460 m/s. Trying to hit a small target using a projectile with a sideways velocity of 3 km/s sounds like a difficult task to me. The problem gets worse as you use lower orbits, as the speed of the orbit increases. Regardless of the altitude, it doesn't land directly beneath the point from which it's dropped.

-angular momentum of the rod is also conserved. Assuming the satellite is initially rotating at 1 rev/day, the rod should keep that rotation all the way down. Unless it hit the surface directly beneath the satellite, or on the opposite side of the world, it likely wouldn't be in the optimal bunker-busting vertical orientation. In lower orbits, might be a little bit easier, but still difficult.

...and all of that is assuming no atmospheric effects, gravitational perturbations, or ????. I'm not saying it can't be done....I'm just saying it's hardly simple when compared to conventional weapons that can be guided either aerodynamically or with thrusters.

[Shazam]

Funny, the last time I heard that phrase I was in bed with a chick.

Thank you, I'm here all week.

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by Shazam

Funny, the last time I heard that phrase I was in bed with a chick.

Thank you, I'm here all week.

One chick and how many dudes? It does say rods (plural)

[photon]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

...and all of that is assuming no atmospheric effects, gravitational perturbations, or ????. I'm not saying it can't be done....I'm just saying it's hardly simple when compared to conventional weapons that can be guided either aerodynamically or with thrusters.

Yeah, I had similar thoughts.. Even if you put it into an eccentric orbit to cover more ground, that's still 90-100 minutes before a satellite could be used. Or you'd have to have more than one.

You could put some fins and navigation on it, kind of like a conventional bomb, to have it able to more precisely guide it.

The cost would be insane though. A single tungsten rod 1' x 20' would weigh 8500kg. There's not many rockets that can lift even one of those rods.

So lets say we wanted a 15 minute response time, we'd need like 6 of these up there. And say each one had 5 rods. 6 x 5 x 8500kg = 225,000kg of stuff to put up there (ignoring the mass of the satellites).

On the shuttle, that would cost $2,550,000,000.. $2.5 billion just to get the stuff up into space! Even on cheaper Russian rockets it'd still be half that.

Lol, and reloading would cost $85,000,000 per round!

[RedMan12]

nothing like getting impaled by a 20 foot rod of god that misses the target by 5 feet and nails a civilian.

[ken0042]

I think if it missed by 5 feet and happened to hit you; it wouldn't have mattered if it was on target; you would be just as dead.

[RedMan12]

I mean if it hits an innocent civilian walking by or something like that. America has enough trouble missing targets and blowing up allied troops. Why do they need to launch 20 foot rods from space?