[DUMBGRUNT]

“Rods of God” put a stop to Russia’s futuristic weapons testing..

“For example, one such weapon might be a 1-[meter]-long tungsten rod weighing about 100 [kilograms].”

That size is important because, as the RAND study blithely puts it, the object needs to be large enough to survive the burn-up that comes with racing through the Earth’s atmosphere, but “preferably” small enough that it doesn’t cause “mass extinction,” like the end of the dinosaurs.

https://www.insidehook.com/article/military/rods-god-space-weapon-make-thor-jealous

[Spktyr]

Yeah, that never got built. Funding for the last attempt got cut by Congress and the Obama admin.

[AzNASCARfan]

Pretty sure this is what caused the “Earthquake” on North Korea’s nuclear test mountain, which is also what convinced them it was time to make a deal.
Of course we will never know for sure if it was.

[Waverunner]

Of course coating the rod with ceramic material reduces the reentry mass loss.
As the developers of the original mercury/gemini/apollo era shielding said, it's easy to design a reentry shield that is only going to be used once.
Say what does that original concept look like.. hmmmm...

[JohnBovenmyer]

If my math is correct a 100kg tungsten rod 1m long would be 8.1cm in diameter. Tungsten has roughly the same density as gold, 19.3g/cm3.