Posted on 04/30/2010 10:20:35 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
In an age of rogue regimes and pre-emptive war, states developing clandestine nuclear programs know better than to leave them in plain sight. Anxious to ward off an American or Israeli attack, Iran, for example, appears to have buried its uranium-enrichment halls under 30 feet of earth and concrete. No doubt, canny proliferators will soon dig even deeper and better-armored holes.
But if they dig deeper, we can always go higher: hence the call for the Rods From God. More properly known as hypervelocity rod bundles, these weapons would simply be slender solid tungsten cylinders, 20 or 30 feet long and one or two feet in diameter. The rods would be sent into space and fired from satellites at bunkers on the ground, which they would hit at speeds of more than 10,000 feet per second, penetrating deep into the earth without any explosives. The idea is far from new. Jerry Pournelle, a science-fiction writer and space-weapons expert, conceived it while working for Boeing in the late 1950s; he called the weapon Thor, and as he explained in an interview, People periodically rediscover it.
Physicists have observed serious limitations to the idea, beginning with the high cost of lifting heavy tungsten poles into orbit. The rods were nevertheless included among future system concepts in a recent Air Force Transformation Flight Plan, which envisioned their capability to strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space. Even if Thor will not be hurling tungsten thunderbolts at suspected bunkers in Iran any time soon, the military has accelerated its pursuit of space weaponry; one study of nonclassified budgets released earlier this year indicated that spending on space-weapons research has grown by more than a billion dollars each year since 2000, with an eye toward establishing uncontestable space superiority.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bump for future reference
I love people on FR who think that anybody who signed up after the millenium is a newbie. Only on FR.
5.56mm
This article is from 2006, not 2010 as you posted. FYI.
The best way to provide extra mass for this weapon is to only send up the shells (reentry vehicles) with the guidance systems attached. Then use asteroid soil/rock to fill them. The mass we need is already in orbit. This is one of the first high-value uses for asteroid mined soil.
Or we could just use large asteroid boulders by attaching guidance systems.
BTW, the best way to orbit them is in a high elliptical orbit. Very little energy is needed at the apogee (top of of the orbital path) to change the impact point when the weapon is de-orbited.
Yep. Several scifi novels mention stuff like this as well. I think the Red Alert series might have had a game or two with this as one of the superweapons
Listen up noob, no one cares what you think.
USC
(Member since 6/28/98)
Wrong, anyone who signed up after the March for Justice is a noob .... (which incidentally makes you a noob.)
More properly known as hypervelocity rod bundles, these weapons would simply be slender solid tungsten cylinders, 20 or 30 feet long and one or two feet in diameter. The rods would be sent into space and fired from satellites at bunkers on the ground, which they would hit at speeds of more than 10,000 feet per second, penetrating deep into the earth without any explosives. The idea is far from new. Jerry Pournelle, a science-fiction writer and space-weapons expert, conceived it while working for Boeing in the late 1950s; he called the weapon Thor, and as he explained in an interview, "People periodically rediscover it."
December 10, 2006 is the date of the story.
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