Iranian navy's largest ship SINKS in the Gulf of Oman after fire breaks out
(www.dailymail.co.uk)
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Rods from God is not even a remotely practical concept. This is not to say it is impossible, just monumentally stupid. A x number of tonne tungsten rod in orbit, does not just drop out of space, it must be de-orbitted with a burn that will bring it initially onto a shallow atmospheric entry, the steeper the more fuel is used. A steep trajectory would require enough fuel to almost completely stop the orbit from say 27,000 Kph.
This whole weapon system is so egregiously energy inefficient with the initial launch included that it is just not practical in any way. To get a heavy object out of the atmosphere, accelerate it to 7kms per second only to slow it down again is the most inefficient delivery system possible. Have a look at the price of sending objects into space and then think about the rods from God program. It makes no sense. There are better methods of weapon delivery than this in every parameter conceivable. This is a fantasy promulgated by people who do not understand orbital mechanics and think something dropped from a satellite will act like something dropped from a plane. It does not.
Edit:- Not to be a downer, I loved the concept until I applied knowledge of orbital mechanics to the problem, had a bit of a think about it then went..Nah. This is not to say it would not work, but that burn to slow from 7 kilometers a second to gradually walk a vector onto a terrestrial target at any sort of non shallow trajectory would be long. I guess you could use a smaller course correction and then atmospheric breaking of some sort to achieve a steeper trajectory with less fuel but I just don't overly see this whole concept as practical, especially when the tungsten is coming from earth. If you are going to use atmospheric braking why not just drop it from a plane and save money probably equal to the GDP of Liberia, for one launch.
I think you are implying that rod of god has to do with shooting some actual object from orbit towards a target?
From what I understand its a directed energy weapon. You do not need anything to be physically shot out of orbit.
Two different weapons. Rods from God are (conjectured) tungsten poles which are shot or dropped from orbit. Tungsten is very dense and has a high melting point so they would survive the reentry and absolutely obliterate the relatively small spot they hit. Directed energy would be like a heat ray in old sci fi movies.
G R A V I T Y .
Except as I stated they can not be dropped. They are already in free fall in orbit.
Yes, that was a nice analysis. Math ftw. However, I think just dropping a big dense spike would be very destructive, just not the guided meteorite level destructive (which I think might turn out to not be such a good idea).
i worked on SSBNs. The unclassified accuracy of a warhead is hitting within a baseball diamond. They just go up and fall off a sled. Little bit of navigation using the stars and good to go.
Its entirely possible that we can stick kinetic warheads on the missile. i have never actually seen or heard of its existence, but we always heards rumors about exotic allow warheads.
i dont see why it wouldnt be easy to use the energy from the re-entry in a kinetic weapon instead of a warhead.
Yeah, exactly. This idea seems much more practical and the energy would be conserved to some extent. The biggest drawback to my thinking is it would look exactly like an ICB(Nuclear)Missile strike.
its interesting to contemplate what exactly a ton of tungsten or depleted uranium hitting the earth at typical re entry speeds of a warhead would do. i think its 14k mile an hour for the trident warheads.
would be sick to see it being tested
So its doable
Yes. So is using an Orion nuclear explosion propulsion system to send a tungsten penetrator around jupiter before hitting Tehran with it.
Like my dad always said. Find out what is trying to stop you, then remove it. Never leave it unchallenged.