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The weapon is called "Rods from God" and consists of metal rods made from a heavy high- melting metal. These rods are to be dropped from a great height by military satellites and can apparently, cause very great destruction.

Has any one any more info on this and perhaps show us some calculations of the terminal velocity, evergy involved, etc?

2007-03-10 11:42:32 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics Astronomy & Space

Ihave just found out that the said weapon consists of bundles of tungsten rods, to be dropped on targets.

2007-03-10 12:02:14 · update #1

My information was from a recent short item by the science correspondent of Times, a serious newspaper in UK. It was the day after the Chinese shot down their sattellite.

2007-03-16 09:08:25 · update #2

6 answers

Wouldn't they burn up when passing through the atmosphere? They must be very large and have some type of heat-shield to protect them.

To cause enough destruction to make a difference to an enemy these rods must be of tremendous size. They would also need to be very aerodynamic so they do not reach terminal velocity at a lower-than-desired speed.

2007-03-10 11:45:21 · answer #1 · answered by physandchemteach 7 · 0 1

Well, I am not sure, Franco, but I got this from WIKIPEDIA:

"Rods from God
"Rods from God" is a space-based kinetic energy weapon that has been discussed since the early 1980s.

They would conceivably be particularly well adapted to penetrate hardened targets, such as underground nuclear facilities.

There are major difficulties involved. One of them is where to position the rods. They need to be high enough to deliver enough energy upon impact, but not so high that they vaporize in Earth's atmosphere. The other difficulty is the number of satellites that would be required to cover a material portion of the Earth."

According to the same article, It is built on a technology called: "Orbital bombardment", which is
"the act of attacking targets on a planet, moon or other such object from orbit around the object, rather than from an aircraft or a platform beyond orbit. It is most often encountered in fiction, but has been proposed as a means of attack for several real-world weapons systems concepts, including kinetic bombardment and as a nuclear delivery system."

This idea originated from "Kinetic Bombardment" , which is:

"he act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile, where the destructive force comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high velocities. The resulting extreme force can be explained by the formula EK = 0.5mv2, where Ek is the kinetic energy, m the mass of the object and v its velocity. The concept is encountered in science fiction and is thought to have originated during the Cold War."

This idea was used in real life in some nuclear missiles satellites launched during the Coldwar, which means that the technology itself, including the whole mechanism is very real and was applied, but ofcourse never used.

This supports the idea of existance of "Rods from God", but who knows, maybe it is just a rumor.

2007-03-18 06:23:44 · answer #2 · answered by Marty McFly 2 · 0 0

The concept is not very likely. The USA is a capitalist country and wasting money to no advantage is not the way that things are done.

The energy required to slow the rods to a speed that would drop the object out of orbit would be quite high. That means that the fuel to be used to drop the object out of orbit would be great or significant energy would need to be dissipated in atmospheric breaking.
In either case the technology to deliver significantly larger weapons from airplanes is much less expensive and just as devastating and just as safe for the people pulling the trigger.
The cost of delivering each pound of material of any type to orbit is extremely large.

2007-03-11 21:05:43 · answer #3 · answered by anonimous 6 · 1 0

You know what the US neeeeeds to do in space? Go to that freaking planet that looks like Earth.. OH YEAH, there is another planet out there that looks like Earth. :D & I really don't think that the US Is developing a new weapon from space. That's freaking ridiculous. We have some super nuclear bombs! We do not need "rods from God". We don't need weapons like that at all. >:(

2007-03-15 13:20:33 · answer #4 · answered by _____ 2 · 0 1

sounds like sci-fi to me. would like to know where you hear this stuff. oh ya there is a worm hole that goes thru the earths core

2007-03-16 14:50:16 · answer #5 · answered by franksr57 2 · 0 0

I don't believe it!

2007-03-18 00:12:49 · answer #6 · answered by ZORRO 3 · 0 0

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