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To: ClearCase_guy

Absolutely!

A 3” rod, 3 feet long, dropped from space packs about 12 kilotons of energy. And you can store a LOT of those rods in a very small space! Something the size of a refrigerator could hold 100 units. That’s a megaton of highly directed energy that will strike individual buildings, sites, etc.

And zero fallout to deal with!


14 posted on 07/30/2016 11:52:10 AM PDT by Shanghai Dan
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To: Shanghai Dan
???

3 in diameter rod, 3 feet long. Volume is pi-rsquared times length. 3.1415 * (1.5^2) * (3*12) gives 254.5 cubic inches. Times (2.54 ^ 2) to convert to cubic centimeters, times 19.25 (density of tungsten in grams per cc) to give mass in grams, divide by 1000 gives mass in kilograms: 31.6 kg, about 65 pounds.

Above someone says that they're moving about Mach 10 by the time they hit the ground. That makes sense, orbital speed is Mach 25, but they'll lose a lot of that by the time they get through the atmosphere.

1/2 * m * v^2 = 1/2 * 31.6 * ((343 meters/sec * 10)^2) = 185,885,420 joules of energy. Convert joules to kilotons by multiplying by 2.4 x 10^-13. 1.85885420x10^8 * 2.4x10^-13 gives 4.46x10^-5 or 0.0000446 kilotons, quite a bit less than 12.

16 posted on 07/30/2016 12:15:38 PM PDT by Campion (Halten Sie sich unbedingt an die Lehre!)
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