#^Rods from God: Orbital Threat or Sci-Fi Dream?Imagine a strike from space, comparable in force to a nuclear explosion, but without a radiation trail as if God himself had thrown a giant scourging rod from heaven to earth. The idea of creating Rods from God has been stirring minds for decades – from the corridors of the Pentagon to sci-fi books and the plots of space movies. What is it? Cold War strategy, weapon of future, or just the most expensive “space scrap” in history?
Get ready to dive into the declassified history of Project Thor and see how real rods of God are: a weapon that is radically changing the rules of modern warfare.
What are the Rods from God?
Courtesy of
YoutubeIf we put aside the mystical haze, then Rods from God is a concept of an orbital weapons system based on the principle of kinetic bombardment, where instead of explosives, the striking element is a kinetic energy projectile.
Concept
The idea of Rods from God is simple and deadly effective: from an orbital platform, a heavy, inert rod the size of an electricity pylon is thrown at the target. Using the Earth’s gravitational field as a natural accelerator, it accelerates to hypersonic speed – about 3.4 km/s, or Mach 10. To understand how fast it is, imagine that while you blink once, the object manages to cover a distance equal to the length of several football fields.
Materials
The choice of material is critical. Tungsten is considered a favorite: it is almost twice as dense as lead, which gives the rod a huge mass with a relatively small volume. How heavy are the Rods from God? 8–11 tons each. And there can be dozens of such kinetic energy projectiles!
The second important property of tungsten is its high melting point of 3422°C. This allows the rod to withstand monstrous heat when passing through dense layers of the atmosphere.
Advantages
In theory
, the Rods from God weapon promises lots of advantages. The main is the absence of radioactive contamination, unlike nuclear weapons, with its “clean” destructive power. The colossal kinetic energy literally slices through bunkers sheltered under tens of meters of concrete. Add to that the ability to hit to any place on the planet within 10–20 minutes after making the decision, and extreme difficulty of interception (hypersonic speed, lack of an engine’s thermal signature.
Challenges
Despite its apparent simplicity, the implementation of the Rods of God concept is a relay race with many obstacles. First of all, it’s very expensive, given how much it would cost to launch, deploy and service the multi-ton orbital platforms.
The second problem is the necessity to create high-precision guidance systems capable of hitting a compact target from a height of hundreds of kilometers. The third problem of tungsten rods from space is entry into the atmosphere: the rod loses speed, overheats, and the resulting plasma cocoon blocks communications and GPS.
And finally, let’s not forget about international treaties, limiting the militarization of space. The first Rods from God weapon test would almost inevitably launch a new arms race.
Historical context
Credit: Quora The idea of kinetic bombardment was born in the middle of the Cold War. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US Air Force
launched Project Thor (not to be confused with the modern THOR – Tactical High-power Operational Responder). Science fiction writer and scientist Jerry Pournelle claimed that he invented tungsten rod strike systems while working at Boeing. Later, Pournelle described them in detail in his sci-fi novels, thanks to which the idea has become widely known.
Project Thor was never officially implemented due to the high cost and the problem of targeting accuracy ablating (burning) the rod when passing through dense atmospheric layers, but it laid the basis for all subsequent thoughts on the topic of Rods from God.
How much would Rods from God cost?
There are no exact cost figures because the project is still just a theory. But let’s think about it: even today, in the era of cheap launches, putting 1 kilogram into orbit is worth thousands of dollars. Each rod weighs about ten tons. It becomes evident that even the initial configuration of a system dropping tungsten rods from space would cost more than an entire fleet of aircraft carriers – not even hundreds of billions, but trillions of dollars. Such a price tag makes the whole project financially unviable.
How much damage would Rods from God cause?
Credit: independent.co.ukIn order to estimate the potential destructive force, it is first necessary to understand how powerful would a Rod from God be? The impact of a multi-ton tungsten rod on the surface at Mach 10 releases energy, which is, according to independent estimates, equal to an explosion of 10–12 tons of TNT. This power is enough to destroy any super-protected bunker or ship.
Could people survive a kinetic bombardment from space?
Everything that would be at the ground zero point would be vaporized or turned into dust. There would be a significant crater, tens of meters deep and wide. The shock wave and seismic vibrations (according to calculations, about 2.5 on the Richter scale for an 8-meter rod) would be fatal within a radius of hundreds of meters from the epicenter. The chances of survival would increase significantly with distance from ground zero (by 1 km or more), although there would still be a risk of injury from collapsed structures or flying debris. A timely warning to evacuate would be a lifesaver, but even then you would have no more than 10 minutes to leave the affected area.
Have China or Russia conducted a ‘Rods from God’ weapon test?
Although there is no direct evidence that China or Russia has conducted a Rods from God weapon test, both countries are actively developing advanced space weapons. China has made progress in developing fractional orbital bombing systems (FOBS) with
hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs). Their goal is to bypass missile defenses and reduce warning times. An analysis of the potential of the
russian space weapon (the Nudol anti-satellite missile and the Peresvet laser system) also points to increasing threats.
Rods from God v nukes
A comparison between Rods from God and nuclear weapons is inevitable.
Rods from God vs. nuclear weapons
References and Additional Information
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Rods from God: Orbital Threat or Sci-Fi Dream? appeared first on
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