Rods From God - Real or Myth?
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- Опубліковано 13 сер 2022
- Rods from god is a theorized weapon that does not officially exist. In 2003 the US Air Force proposed project Thor. Since then this concept has been seen in the Call of Duty Ghost Games as well as G.I. Joe movie. This concept is known as kinetic bombardment.
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Conspiracy theory time, the reason the cost to get 1lb into space is so high is because they've been secretly transporting tungsten rods the whole time
oooooo I like it!!!
I like your brain
Actually the reason it cost so much to get 1lb into outer space is because the deceptacons made it so expensive no one would ever want to go back so they can move their pillars and warp Cybertron in secret to save their race.
Could easily do it send em up in pieces and screw em together in orbit, and the satellite? Hubble telescope my friend we launched it and had to send a team shortly after to "Repair It" IE load that bad boy up.
True or not, the entire concept is actually kinda dumb.
We can spend billions of dollars to launch a Tungsten telephone pole into space Ooooor…we can spend 1/10th as much to build and deploy a conventional warhead on a cruise missile or some other munition via standard logistical pathways.
It’s a fun theory but in practice, Rods from God would be a totes redonk way to waste dollars.
This applies to anything the military does: "It's not real, we heard about it, it's very likely real and they're making an even better one you can't even imagine."
classified
If your hearing about it its already 5-15 years of R&D behind
As Stargate SG1 put it "plausible deniability"
@@kuhljager2429 You’re the second fucker to mention SG-1 in this comment section. Now I gotta re-watch that show. Man, that’s gotta be my favorite tv show of all time. Welp, I’m gonna be lost for the next week.
@@chrisryan3460 absolutely. They wanted this back in the 90s. "Star Wars" defence system was conceptualized in the 80s and determined to be unfeasible. This was the next idea on someone's desk that got greenlit for development.
I just imagine four guys sitting in a room to create the ultimate weapon. One is a nuclear scientist and gives a presentation on a nuclear bomb, the other is a traditional missile manufacturer designing a hypersonic missile showing advanced engineering methods and designs, the 3rd is an elite veteran who showcases the perfect training program to create a soldier capable of turning the tides of war through executing perfect specialized missions with no error... and the last guy is some dude who wandered in by mistake and is kind of stoned going "what if we just dropped... like a super heavy thing... but from space?". Than they are all sour because they tied in effectiveness lol
Pretty sure all four of those got used in the Deathworlders sci-fi story. Gigaton nuclear weapons, elite soldiers fed on a regenerative medic that lets them recover from pushing their body to the point their bones break overnight, RFGs (usually dropped by dive-bombing fighter craft for some added push), and a fun little system called a Weaponized Einstein Rosenberg Bridge system (WERBS) that was designed to convert any matter go in to energy coming out- for instance fire an M-1 Browning into it and every bullet comes out somewhere within a 100,000 miles of the target as a 1/4 megaton explosive...
It got used sparingly because A: accuracy by volume only works if you aren't in the volume, and B: valid concerns the enemy would figure out what humanity did and replicate it.
@@FirstIsa magnificent reference used in an appropriate manner. OK skynet quit it, we're not fooled, people aren't that rational.
Three men. The hypersonic guy and the kinetic impactor guy are the same guy.
Fun fact, there IS a more destructive version of the “rods from god”, known as the relativistic kill missile or RKM. It’s literally just Rods from God but fast. Turns out E=MC2 means that if you throw the rod at a significant portion of the speed of light when it hits something it’s mass get instantly converted into energy.
My dad is a 30 year veteran cop, a huge history buff, and over the course of the past 6 months it’s become our thing to watch TFE vids and talk about history. Thanks man, for giving us some great content to spend some quality father/son time with.
ask him if he knows about Project Northwoods
This deserves way more likes.
Fuggin awesome!!
I wonder what the ballistic coefficient would be for a rod like that... As always great stuff.
there's actually a ton of people that have nerded out and done all the math online if you care to look
We've done the math before, its surprisingly low. Far lower than the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima
@@xdeepxfreezex2621 umm...I don't think you know what ballistic coefficient means...
@@neverlistentome
deepfreeze, Is referencing the impact energy. Based on the rod being solid tungsten carbide it's terminal velocity the impact energy wouldn't be much more than a scud or patriot missile. HOWEVER, people often forget that the rods could be doped with other materials to create environmental hazards or increase their yield.
As to the ballistic coefficient, well it would functionally be infinite upon release. As the drag increases, lower in the atmosphere where it is more dense, the BC would drop and rapidly. Although, by that time the rod in moving so fast that it doesn't really matter.
And drag coefficient since at Mach 5 the shockwave would be well behind the projectile. Buh.
During GW2 I was stationed at Edward's AFB where we tested new weapons systems. Getting the GPS fin kits dialed in to the point they could bullseye telephone poles someone got the genius idea to use practice bombs to take out targets parked next to sensitive sites. Turns out you don't have to go all the way to orbit, 40,000ft is far enough when we are talking about a 2000lb JDAM filed with concrete. Punches holes clean through buildings and tanks without obliterating everything nearby.
You chucked metal wrapped Roman columns at stuff, and got paid for it. That sounds fun.
And thus the knife missile was born!
@noanswer1864 Sadly no. Working on B-1s is the desert for six years was pretty miserable.
The way you deliver your content is priceless. This channel is 10/10 for sure.
Project Thor was thought up by Jerry Pournelle in the 1950's while he was a working in operations research at Boeing, before he became a science fiction writer. This involved dropping telephone pole sized tungsten rods from orbit.
jerry pournelle thought it up. my grandfather engineered it. he said pournelle was the smartest human in most conversations.
MJOLNIR is the only system to utilize the SMART ROCKS system, rather than the currently used BRILLIANT PEBBLES.
There was a General in the US Air Force in the 1950s who had this idea after Sputnik, but it was dismissed as 'implausible'. Pournelle may have had a hand in that, not sure. The ONLY true problems with this idea then or now are getting them into orbit in the first place and then targeting. The idea was and is a good one. Why waste power or expensive tech when you can use a rock?
I didn't realize Project Thor went quite THAT far back.
But the whole kinetic weapon concept goes at LEAST as far back as early E. E. Doc Smith, in both his Lensman and the Skylark of Space series, a decade or two before that.
The categorization would more likely be "massive kinetic" more realistically though, for an extra-terrestrial WMD, you'd probably see a satellite mass driver throwing asteroids instead of premade rods, simply for cost-effectiveness. Most sci-fi gets it right when they throw massive rocks in space at planets with rocket boosters because "sir isaac newton is the deadliest sob in space".
the drawback of throwing rocks vs these rods is the physical makeup of the projectile. rocks will lose mass significantly when entering the atmosphere, and considering we dont know how much, picking rocks that wont "end the world" would be really difficult. but we KNOW how much tungsten would burn away when entering the atmosphere, so we know what the kinetic energy of the impact would be, so we know we arent going to cause a non nuclear nuclear winter. plus, rocks are NOT aim-able. these rods, as in the animation, could have an aiming structure at the rear, so we know exactly where it will hit because we can steer it. (i helped lockheed design the current missile defense system, i learned a bit about things like that)
Star Wars and Star Trek would be a lot different if they used Faster-Than-Light missiles.
@@ghomerhust alternatively, screw steering and just used simulated ballistics to put the round on target. The issue of space rocks breaking up on entry is definitely legit, but when we're talking scales of cities, be don't need high levels of precision.
How are you just gonna catch rocks? Dropping metal rods seems much more realistic get off the Startrek nerd.
@@mitchconner2021 it all can become realistic one day when someone with lot of money want's it made
Scott Manly tested something like this in Kerbal Space Program. Biggest issue it runs into is it would have to be almost exclusively a dumbfire weapon, as the plasma generated upon reentry fucks with the guidance system, but then again, who need a guidance system when you’re essentially dropping telephone poles from outer space
Uh, you kinda need a guidance system. Accurately targeting one of these things, once you can actually line up the orbital mechanics, is STILL at least as hard as starting from maximum distance on Google Earth and zooming in on a specific house in one go.
@@sethb3090 actually no....RV from both navy and air are dumb.... it's the satalite/bus that releases them knows when and where
the only thing the rv knows is when to boom.. but these rods dont need that
@@evangreenacre3172 those are nukes, they don't need sub 50 foot precision.
@@sethb3090no comment
just for clarification, if this was ever built, they could easily add a thin layer of iron/steel to the rods, and utilize the concept of a rail gun
though, at that point, it may very well begin to push the limits of the definition of a WMD, since you could easily accelerate the rod to mach omg before it ever enters the atmosphere (though it would be interesting to use this as high powered mining equipment as well)
Because of the way orbital mechanics works, you have to accelerate the rod; in the other direction. LEO orbital speed is mach 25 and up, so you need to slow it down in order to drop it.
One important thing to know about Project Thor is that you can't actually drop the rods - the satellite is already in freefall towards Earth (and missing because it's falling while flying sideways extremely fast), so if you let go of the rod it will just stay in orbit with the launcher. You have to shoot the rod backwards - negating much of its sideways momentum - to put it on a collision course with Earth.
And yes, it's an impractical weapon. You're launching your projectiles into orbit and then waiting until they're in the right place to deorbit them to hit your target, when you could just build a smaller launch vehicle that flies those rods directly to the target: in other words, a ballistic missile.
Exactly this. It's a kinetic ICBM with extra steps.
@@Erkle64 a lot of extra steps
@@gabrieltanner670 but, and hear me out we have super computers that can calculate the orbit of things so if we know the sat is about to be taken out you could do times launches so they will deorbit into a target long after the sat has been disabled
@@David-jt9nt I'm not saying that you COULDN'T do that... but just that if you COULD see into the future there might just be simpler ways to win a war.
Counter intuitively you have to slow the rod down significantly to de-orbit it. And that assumes the satellite is in the right orbital plane and vaguely right position in it's orbit to hit your intended target whenever you decide to... ICBM's are easier, cheaper, less complicated more flexible and more reliable.
"Buh, a magnetic accelerator could make it hit faster, buh."
Yeah, and it would be heavy as fuck and obscenely expensive to put into orbit. Also, a magnetic accelerator for one of these theoretical tungsten rods would be massive and easily tracked by Russia as well as anyone else with a telescope.
fax
at that point you might as well just build a space battleship with a spinal mounted main gun
@@The_Racr1 _Space Battleship Yamato theme intensifies._
@@danielseelye6005 hehe Space battleship Yamato go brrrr hehehehehe
Also thanks to newton course correction would be a nuisances
Military humor? Check.
Cutting witful dialogue? Check!
Comedic editing? Double Check.
Love your work!! Keep it up, brother!
Something worth noting is that a streamlined rod (ie, raindrop shaped) with the same cross sectional area and mass would reach ~Mach 22.7. This gives a KE of around 160 tons of TNT. That’s still nowhere near as much as a nuke, but it’s also a helluva lot of energy.
My physics teacher in high school actually worked on this project, in the 80s. along with building a rail gun in his backyard for the government. They never went along with building it, but the documents for the project do exist.
"never went along with building it" hm🤔 😜
Same. My friend's dad worked on the base we grew up on (China Lake Naval Weapons Station) in the Mojave desert. His dad built a prototype of a mini handheld rocket launcher the size of a pistol. Not the 320 which launches grenades, but a freaking rocket launcher. There are so many protoypes, diagrams and sketches of so much cool and destrutive stuff. I served many years in the Army and saw several things in our arms rooms and other locked areas that we dont even delpoy with. Yet we still have it.
We are slowly reaching Warhammer levels weapons.....this is both amazing and terrifying at the same time
I want my flashlight gun
@@mharri9008 we all do
I want my bolter
BROTHER, GET THE FLAMER... THE HEAVY FLAMER!
Exterminatus is the only way
it's not a warcrime the first time and there won't be anyone to claim it is afterwards
This was actually based on a older more useful skunk works concept using the A12 interceptor to drop a heavier projectile from 80,000' at mach 3.2+. Needless to say it would be traveling considerably faster at impact. In theory a rocket booster engine & ablative heat shield could also be added to push the rod mach10+. As the formula for kinetic energy is half mass x velocity squared the energy involved is rather substantial.
Give me an Orbital Railgun!
@@edwardteague3276 I would greatly prefer being shot at by the orbital rail gun. The gun gets one shot at a battlefield every 90 minutes with a small shell(likely 152mm). Shell would be limited to under mach 12 to survive re-entry & shot in a predictable 3m window. Also station is going to eat multiple ICBM based kill vehicles within minutes of conflict start. While a Wing of A-12 is going grandslam 2.0 slamming telephone pole size rods into targets with the secondary effects being earthquakes(assuming booster motor & heat shield).
I met with the co-inventor of the concept, the late Engineer and Science Fiction writer Jerry Pournelle, and he estimated the practical impact like a 500 pound "dumb bomb". He too said it was never going to be feasible until earth to orbit costs went way down.
I met Jerry at an LTUE convention many moons ago. He said a lot of things were practical once the cost to orbit came down enough. A permanent moon colony was one of them. It was important that he used the word colony & not base.
I play a game called Space Engineers, kinetic bombardment from space is hands down one of the most effective ways for dealing with anything too big, slow or crunchy both in space and on the ground
Refinery tipped Missiles......
Yep, just a box of gravel. unbelievable damage.
I too play the game. As TFE put it, the next WMD is "Heavy Shit". I developed an orbital system that guides basically a few blocks of heavy armor capped with blast armor and a warhead for effect. Haven't been able to develop anything better than dropping a rock from space on enemies.
@@locksmithlocksmith5903 lol, gravity generator, battery and tip it with reinforced steel blocks.
Yeet and skeet as it just goes right through anything at max speed
@@dramspringfeald It has been a bit sense I last played but I made and "sold" guided missiles and unguided missiles blueprints on a larger server, and before I stopped playing I made 4 new variants 3 were for moving targets or targets far away (guilded) but that 4th, it had 2 layers of heavy armor for the nose cone protecting a reactor, and a grave generator that was modded (server-side mod) to let the generator work up to 2gs it was amazing bc it always hit at server speed limit (200) and would rip apart their crap and if the target was on a planet just before the missile would hit gervatity would invert and make them go on the roof (another old mod). this was part of the reason I was the weapons king of that server
The "let it go" was perfectly placed.
I'm reminded of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" where Luna won pretty much because they were on top of a giant gravity well above the earth, and just kept rolling rocks onto them, which incidentally is a huge stupid worry of mine, because whoever gets a permanent moon colony up and running first basically rules earth, because there is no real way to fight back against giant rock attacks
It's also used as a threat in the Starks War series as a threat
Technically, they used rock-filled metal canisters and a linear accelerator to send them.
They needed the cans for the magnetic launcher to be able to "grab" them TO send them.
As someone who appreciates someone actually doing the math and logistics to place this, thank you. The fact is, it might be easier shooting from the Moon. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. This method is used. They fire off rounds from the Moon's Cargo transport system. Great read.
This concept was part of the STARWARS program in the 80s.
Difference between the damage from Thor shot vs a MOAB is that the Thor has much more direct penetration.
tbh because of that it would likely only be used to fuck up bunkers and shit
I always find it so odd that so many people are convinced that we spent billions in 1980's money and accomplished zero of the goals! I might have seen something at White Sands that makes me laugh.
@@VeteranExpat Bro, the things I've heard from some very senior retired SpecOps NCOs... The ones that started out in the TLC campaign during Viet Nam and spearhead every covert everything from then until the 90s... And, then contracted and "advised" until they finally dropped dead... A few are still around.
“Zero is could as fuck, 100 is hot as fuck…. #science…”
Absolutely love it!
Not sure if you’ve heard this before, but you’re like a real life family guy episode. I love it. Keep it up.
2:33 "Use Fahrenheit it's the easiest thing on the planet, zero's cold as fuck, a hundred's hot as fuck."
You just described the metric "Celcius" temperature system perfectly...
Military history, physics, weapon design, cost analysis, and snarky humor... very well done sir indeed. A definite tip of the Hat starting off our Sunday with a yeet and a boom. If you wonder why you're subscribership is going up, stuff like this is exactly why. If you were an actual teacher your method of getting the point across and yet keep your students focused and entertained would have your classes packed.. teachers across the country need to watch this, the man has cracked the code of how to keep your students engaged enough to actually pay attention and learn something. Can't wait for your next example of non-metric Madness that leaves you thinking and a smile on your face.
Small correction the energy of the rod is not just the acceleration from droping but the angular velocity of its orbit closer to mach 22 then mach 5
exactly
I was about to write this. The min Orbital velocity is about Mach 25 (lowest altitude for lowest de-orbit energy required). If you did something clever like having it stored past geo-stationary (ie out of range of most counter satellite systems this could potentially get this up past Mach 32 (reentry speed of Apollo 11) on reentry. Now there is crazy of storing it out of Earths well and maybe get to Mach 35 (Hayabusa reentry speed). The point is though everyone loves a good reentry :). (my numbers might be a little out but as OP says its a lot more than Mach 5)
You are all forgetting atmospheric drag. It won't be going Mach 25 by the time it hit the surface.
@@jsquared1013 yes. But it won't have slowed down to mere terminal velocity, either.
@@jsquared1013 at mach 35 it would be going so fast that the atmosphere can barely offer any real protection. Realistically, maybe a 1km/s deceleration before impact. Anything higher than 20km basically doesnt have atmosphere and it would take less than 2 seconds to go through it.
Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest SOB in space
"USSF orbital this is K6B07. Fire mission, over."
"K6B07, pebbles or sand?"
"Sand would be lovely."
"K6B07, K-strike DOB in progress. Wherever you are, it's probably danger close."
I’m 73 years old. I obviously grew up with the Atomic age and the weirdnesses that occurred I like your work. Your detail, your attitude and your sass makes me as proud as hell. Oh, yeah…. Electricians RULE!!!
New shirt: “Types of WMD’S: Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Heavy Sh*t.”
I love the idea of how ridiculous this weapon idea is, and knowing the US and how they can bend budgets harder than the national debt. This could be a future possibility with cheaper rates of transporting things into space.
And like the saying goes. "It's not a warcrime till you get caught doing it."
so long as everyone else thinks it's ridiculous, no one will be ready for it because the real motto of the U.S. is "Eh, we can go bigger."
Compared to stuff that actually was really used or was thought up in WW2 but never actually tried for various reasons, this is actually fairly tame and mathematically viable. It's just the price tag that's holding it back right now.
Its a war crime if you lose.
I always liked the theory behind the rods from God; even small mountains would get the heebie-jeebies at the thought of a tungsten telephone pole hitting whatever supervillian lair is contained within the belly of that mountain.
Also, your math was slightly off; the report stated the reduction from drag would be around 5 kilometers per second, putting it as three, from around eight. 3km/s is still around Mach 10, which puts the energy at the tip of the telephone pole at around 4.8 - 5 (ish) x 10^10 Joules, which still only puts it at *around* 11.71 tonnes of TNT.
As the guy who thought up Thor was simply considering it as a hard target deleter, as opposed to a civilization deleter, in that respect the project is super scary... Though realistically tungsten is so absurdly expensive that even the US would think it's a bit much for a single bunker... though I do wonder if they could be salvaged after use.
i love this "theory" so much, the design, everything about it i love. I reference it every chance i get, had a whole d&d character whose' whole mission into life was to make it.
Love the video man. This sht makes my day when I see the absurdity the US will go through to un-healthcare any and all 'rivals' on the planet. Funnily enough, one of my professors at university actually wrote a paper on why the 'Rods from God' would never work. Besides the astronomical cost of sending the dang things into space in the first place, the re-entry angle of those rods even with guidance would result in massive losses of material before it even made impact. 25,000 pounds going up, more like 10 to 7,500 that would be doing the unaliving. And don't forget the atmosphere gets thicker as you go down, so terminal velocity wouldn't be as high as predicted in a perfect vacuum as most velocity equasions assume
Personally I think it would drop smooth and near friction-less, like a massive throwing spike.
(Space ninjas, yeah-yeah-yeah!)
Bold of you to assume we have rivals 😂
Coat it with ceramics or a layer of material that burns forming a barrier, ie what the used for reentry vessels.
OTOH I'd rather see them worry about un-healthcare than healthcare. Consider the basic fact that the Feds spent 2 years pushing meds they know will kill us (as opposed to our enemies) and ruined millions of lives with reqs you can't get a job w/o the shot, as well as all the lives they took.
@@ninjabearpress2574 I know, thats what I though as well. How my professor explained it to me like this. If you were to place a satellite with those rods into orbit, they would have to be in geo-stationary orbit in order for the rods to hit the same spot on the earth the satellite was pointing at. This way, you wouldn't have to take into account the rotation of the earth much when launching, thus minimizing the air resistance. The problem arises when the target is anywhere BUT where your satellite is pointed at. The rods would have to be aimed ahead of the target to such a degree that the re-entry angle would cause most of it to burn up
This assault on the metric system at every opportunity, be it the Unsubscribe podcast or these highly informative videos, is the best.
I also have binged all these videos over the last year. 10/10 highly recommend. Easily better than the history channel.
Even as a Brit I love the creative American approach to the slander, part of the reason why I stick around for this guy is just to hear his metric jokes lol
The History Channel should pay TFE to do videos for them.
After all we are talking about the channel that brings us Forged in Fire.
True.
history channel? they're now either "alien channel" or "tinfoil hat channel"... nick talks more sense about history than those idiots from the "history channel" 😂😂😂
No tenths, 12/12
Man this video just got you a sub, funny asf amazing editing job, educational, & stating facts 👍
Didn't even mention that tungsten itself is ridiculously expensive. Probably $500k-$1m per rod just for the raw materials.
Great video. Though point of clarification, I think you mean billion instead of trillion (240 million x 4 = 960 million). Also, the falcon heavy rocket has a payload of 55,000 lbs and costs 90 million to launch, so we could launch 2 of these bad boys into space for 90 million today. Though I agree, it probably doesn't exist (yet), the expensive part would definitely be the satellite that launches them, not the rods themselves.
nice catch. but remember when the F-117 didn't exist.....
You can't send the rods up in one peace. So you have to build a satellite that can melt tungsten bb's and the material for the mold. It's hard enough to even try that on earth with a factory of a 1000 men. Now try that in space with 10 men and an army of robots. Making it is the hard part that costs the most.
@@RyanWilliams-sq8fg Or just make them so they can screw together.
@@benlawton5420 On impact with the ground you would want it to be one solid piece. You would shatter more bedrock that way. Sky scrapers are best built on bed rock, so launching that onto a city makes it not worth it to build back up again. Nukes don't really damage bedrock that much.
The expensive part is the energy necessary to make them come back down in a specific location. Orbital dynamics are not easy.
These new videos are so much higher quality than your old ones, I love it 👍Keep up the good work man
thank you I'm tryin to improve
@@the_fat_electrician It shows, man. The audio is much better quality, and the video editing software isn't clipping parts of your face off with the green screen anymore.
@@the_fat_electrician I don't know if anyone has commented this previously but you should check out the proposed Orion battleship. It's in a similar vein to the Rods from God. I won't spoil everything but basically space battleship with 5 inch guns, nuclear mortars, deployable marines and propelled by dropping nukes out the back and blowing them up. In the 60's.
Kennedy said no.
I’m just seeing the President in the bunker. The football is open and ready. One button says Nuke. The other says Yeet.
Tungsten =super expensive. With what tungsten shotgun shells cost, a rod of this size would be extremely expensive.
Jerry Pournelle wrote about this in the 1980s in his “there will be war” collections. The idea was to make smaller rods and use them as a antitank weapons.
so, the M829 APFSDS tank round. It uses depleted uranium instead of tungsten, too.
Also, Dan Simmons used this idea in Flashback which is a awesome book
He told me a couple of stories about his involvement in some of the Stuff which later showed up in his writings. He had the best lieutenant stories.
This and they came up with the idea before that
@@kathyjacques2688 The ides goes quite a ways back - and has relatives that were bigger, like E.E. "Doc" Smith crushing planets by hitting them with other planetoids in his Lensman series, or Heinlein dropping rocks in cans from Luna in "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" to achieve small nuclear-scale "explosions" on Earth.
"Hey so what if we played darts with a fucking planet?"
"Say no more"
NASA must be on some stronger stuff than grunts are
some employee on crack probably came up with this after seeing a kid play with yard darts
Well look at it this way, they can’t miss a fucking planet
This is literally a weapon system in Gundam IBO and I love that my government thought about it before anime.
The rod from god thing will stay with me for a long time thank you for that one, i will get many chuckles from that.
I'd love to see what the Quackbang's opinion would be of an even crazier idea. That being Project Orion, which was just a thinly veiled cover for its intended military application, Casaba-Howitzer. We're talking a nuclear pipe bomb.. an actual nuclear weapon shaped charge. For when just a regular nuke won't make the other guy quite dead enough.
I mean, it was kinda just a thought experiment. But you could use it as a nuclear shaped charged device, yes, but that's because sufficiently powerful propulsion systems are indistinguishable from weapons in their own right(even if they are actually using weapons for the propulsion)
@@novatopaz9880 I think Jerry Pournelle's Kzinti series made that point about there being little difference between tools and weapons.
@@brodriguez11000 makes sense, if you build a laser that can propel a ship to Jupiter. than if you point it at something not designed to collect laser energy. that something will likely have a bad day.
@@novatopaz9880 Project Orion was real - but never got past the "use conventional explosives for proof of concept" phase due to one of the early Nuclear Test treaties.
My son and I have talked about this quite a bit. He's a bit anti -nuke (due to fallout, collateral damage, radiation, etc.) but not anti-nuclear energy. Once the cost goes down, He's all for dropping tungsten rods on foreheads. Also, great video this week. Loved it. Keep it up.
@in desperate need of a scotch mmm rail guns
First time seeing the channel and I'm thinking, "The Fat Electrician, is there any other type"? Nice content and format, keep up the good work
I've known some thin once - starting with a first cousin.
Looking for more topics.. try the pig war 1859...US vs England.....San Juan Island
The velocity would depend on distance traveled.
If it were a guided projectile they could send it around the planet once to build energy then guide it to target.
Or drop it from a satellite in a much higher orbit and use guidance from there.
Both options would SIGNIFICANTLY increase its kinetic energy released on impact.
they originally thought they could get it up to mach 10. but once it hits the earth's atmosphere it slows down do to drag
@@the_fat_electrician oh yeah for sure it would slow down but atmosphere can only do so much, depending on the speed.
I'm not suggesting it's real or anything, I agree with you.
But the American unhealthcare system can definitely figure out how to make this more lethal.
You don't even need an actual guidance system on the Rod itself, only the satellite. Math equations will help you hit whatever you want from orbit
@@comradeeverclear4063 if you drop it straight down from low orbit but I think sending it around the earth once or from a high orbit to pick up speed might require some to keep it on correct reentry path. I'm not talking rocket motors, just like little attitude thrusters.
If it's going too fast it will also start breaking up in atmosphere too.
"The government wouldn't spend two trillion dollars for four bullets." ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?
Orbital Kayaking is STILL the most extreme sport. Get dropped from Orbit in a kayak with a heat shield, wearing a space suit, and have to reenter the atmosphere and then paraglide into a river to paddle down it.
At a previous job I had do to some research on R.K.K.V.s (Relativistic Kinetic Kill Vehicles) and the math and studies on those things are insane.
The rods from god showed up in my research and really the biggest thing stopping them from being WMD is just velocity. If the can impart a massive amount of velocity on them it gets out of control super quick.
Gotta say, the way he speaks in all his videos is so entertaining. It's knowledgeable, kinda gripping, and there's a little bit of snark ever-present. It's great 👍
“Sir the enemy is resisting”
“Release the unga bunga”
LOL 😆 🤣
Unga bunga inbound, cover your ears.
If SpaceX StarShip actually works as designed... Then this becomes cheaper than Nukes.
Also. The minimum speed to stay in orbit is 17,000 MPH. If instead of just dropping straight down, you redirect the rod, so that it hits your designated target at that speed, minus whatever air resistance bleeds off a giant nail... The damage potential gos up quite a bit.
Kept waiting for the part where you mentioned that satellites were "dropped off" by whatever rocket put them in orbit, so "releasing" these rods would just cause them to float in the "launch" tubes forever. You'd have to fire the rods backwards at orbital speed to make them drop straight down.
"How do I know it's not real, MATH that's how"
Every marine in 1000 miles: HSSSSS!!
I though it would hit much faster than Mach 5, considering orbital velocity to maintain a low earth orbit is between Mach 22 and Mach 29 (17,500mph-22,500mph) depending on the orbit and mass of the spacecraft.
Exactly.
Air resistance might slow it down. The moment it hits atmosphere, it will begin to decelerate.
@in desperate need of a scotch You're forgetting that when you throw something out of a speeding car, that object starts with the same velocity as the car.
P.S. Just "letting go" won't do anything at all - the rod would be going the same speed as it's launcher and would just sit there next to it, I'd recommend firing in a retrograde direction so the resulting movement winds up being "downward"
@in desperate need of a scotch iron and concrete would not survive reentry at orbital velocities. Iron melts at lower temps than it would experience during reentry. As it started to melt it would throw off the aerodynamics causing the rod to begin tumbling and the it would be torn apart by aerodynamic and gravitational forces. Think of a meteorite entering the atmosphere, most are torn apart during decent and the only ones to make ground impact are those that are sufficiently large to have enough matter to have something left at impact. Nuclear warhead re-entry vehicles use U238 uranium (depleted uranium) because it would resist reentry temperatures almost as wells as tungsten but acts as a neutron reflector resulting in more energetic reactions once the warhead detonates.
@in desperate need of a scotch Tungsten works GREAT in a rail gun - it's got high resistance which is what generates the motive force, and a high heat tolerance, so the current doesn't melt the projectiles.
Or were you thinking space coil gun / gauss gun?
Rail guns use the current, coil guns use rapidly switched magnetic fields. Rail guns are easy to build & design, with high maintenance. Coil guns are .... well let's just say I said "fuck this" after doing 4 pages of math and winding 1/4 mile of wire to make the 1st 2 electromagnets.
Quick note on cost - 4 rounds being a BILLION, not a TRILLION. Off by a factor of 1,000
I did the quick search, the Mythbusters episode where they blew up a cement truck was 5 tons of TNT, so that's basically how useful the rods from god would be
So other than the Telephone pole there was another proposal I saw for "Space Needles" which were about 5 feet long and a few inches wide. The idea behind them was to use the excellent penetration of a rod from space to take out missile silos and bunkers in a first strike with basically no time to react.
I feel like this approach would be much more likely, a smaller rod made out of tungsten of depleted uranium with a rocket and guidance dropped from space. Likely to be used against hardened targets. I'm guessing a 5 foot rod of depleted uranium falling at mach 10 goes through a seriously scary amount of material.
@@nitrodasnipaz9392 The estimate as I recall was something 100 to 200 feet of rock (depending on size) and the bunker underneath. Though this may have been to the largest rods. But yeah a mach 10 impact is kinda scary.
@@noctisumbra2749 Just some gravity with a little rocket assistance, I'd be curious to know which would be more effective, DU or tungsten
@@nitrodasnipaz9392 honestly probably about the same given the near identical densities of the alloys likely to be used. But I don't know for certain
@@noctisumbra2749 But I know DU "self sharpens" depending on what it's going through so maybe that'd help or hurt it's performance
Have to say I love how your videos are getting better and your editing is getting more advanced!
By 2003 we had nuclear weapons that didn't have fallout. But they're still classified as nuclear weapons.
The fact that the Idea of it exists and is possible to make regardless of the price is why I believe it’s real.
What I have heard about this project was in the 1970s a DoD spokesman let it slip during a news briefing that we had these in orbit at that time. I can't remember the exact year or the name of the spokesman because it has been about 5 years since I heard about it. I think it was post Vietnam around 1976-1978 during the lead up to Star Wars being announced officially in the early 1980s. So this project could have been done in the massive black defense budgets of the late Cold War and no one would have questioned it.
Link
'' in the 1970s a DoD spokesman let it slip during a news briefing that we had these in orbit at that time. I can't remember the exact year or the name of the spokesman because it has been about 5 years since I heard about it. I think it was post Vietnam around 1976-1978'' You really messed up your time table. So in the 1970s you heard a spokesman talk about it being in orbit at that time but you cant remember the name of the spokesman or the 'year'(What the f does that mean? Are you trying to say the age of the spokesman or the year it happened) and the reason why you cant remember anything is because it was 5 years ago and the the project was done in 1976-1978 which is after they announced that they had the rods in orbit in 1970. Bro what the fuck seems like youre either lying or just sloppy as hell
@@eeurr1306 Hey motard, I heard about it 5 years ago. These were mentioned in a press conference at the Pentagon in the mid to late 1970s (so about 40 years before you were born). Next time pay attention to detail and actually read what is written before showing how dumb you are.
Anyways the project is infunctional anyways
Could have? Sure. But as a PsyOp spook, "let it slip" sounds VERY much like a disinformation campaign to scare enemies into inaction. TFE said it correctly - way too expensive considering the alternatives, especially for the 1970s-80s. For the cost of $250 Billion *per rod,* not considering maintenance _in space,_ and _in today's dollars_ they could've built a fleet of tanks, nuke subs, and aircraft carriers and Congress critters would've fought tooth and nail for the manufacturing bids to be in their district.
I actually did the math on this a while back. To get kilotons out of a kinetic strike took quite a few zeroes.
The end result was one of those rods at roughly Mach 500. Or ~380,000 mph. And that doesn't beat Fat Man by a hell of a lot.
To be roughly in line with Castle Bravo, that same rod would need to be going at least 20 times faster. (Put another way, that's ~1.14% of the speed of *light!)*
The other option is simply to increase the mass. A rocket like the Saturn V could put up a ~120 tonne rod, which gives you about a kiloton at orbital velocity.
In the near future, Starship ought to be able to do around 250 tonnes in expendable configuration, so around 2 kilotons.
Though realistically, using it's reusable configuration to put a bunch of 1-kiloton rods up is probably a lot more cost effective.
you would think something shooting from space would have a similar damage as a meteor but a control blast with no burning and effecting the whole planet.
Funny enough, I got to this channel from the G.I. Joe movie 🤣
Love the channel bro, it got you a sub and a like. Look forward to more.
welcome!!
I love how your editing gets better every video, and your content is funny and educational as always. You’re truly awesome big man, its a great day when funny electron man posts.
I remember reading about these in Science Fiction in the 90’s the author named them “Thor Shots.” I would also like to say this concept is considered a WMD in the Babylon 5 universe, the only difference is the opposition takes asteroids in the local solar system and drops them on the planet (that is an extinction level WMD.)
Yeah, when the Centauri bombed the Narn homeworld with asteroids.
That was a mass driver, if I'm getting it right this is more like dropping something off the roof to hit something on the sidewalk.
@@ninjabearpress2574 kind of, except you are shooting 100 ton and up rocks from outside far orbit in a continuous bombardment, and if your enemies want to take shots at your icecaps. There is very little defense against that other that don’t let them in system, or pray for outside help break the siege.
As I recall, those were in the half mile or so diameter range. Not a lamp post. Slight difference in mass.
@@zedhiro6131 With a lot of the rocks blowing from friction before they reach the ground, like the one that wiped out that forest in Siberia --- hell I was amazed there were any Narn left.
Now that we unlocked fusion power, there will be hostage weapons that never run out of power and can detonate at any moment. They either Land on or hover above a target
“0 is cold as fuck and 100 is hot as fuck” but celsius 0 defines the freezing point so thats why its superior, and then everything below 0 is literally freezing
Seriously these videos are like a breath of fresh air when going through crazy bs in life 🤙🏻
So space force might be getting some cool toys in 50 years? the ultimate air support, turn a moutian into a foxhole
Actually it’s 3ft in diameter. Which is estimated at 400 kilotons of tnt.
This is why mining asteroids in space is such a great idea
I enjoyed the content and quality, well done. I would like to point out that this idea was also mentioned in the book - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - by Robert A. Heinlein - where they threw rocks from the moon to the earth - I guess this does not affect the race to establish a lunar colony
Is it a cool idea? yeah.
Is it practical? Hell no.
Then again, we do have missiles with swords on them...
I mean... those are a little practical lol
...Arguably a lower "equivalent TNT" yield is preferable. More targets, less collateral damage...maybe.
But I 100% agree with you on the cost of getting that much mass into orbit.
Stupidly expensive.
The other benefit of the “rods from god” concept was is penetrating ability. In the event of a nuclear war most command and control facilities would be moved to bunkers with active defense systems. As you said nothing currently is capable of intercepting it and at that speed and density it’ll punch right through whatever fortifications they have. So to answer your question I don’t think the US would pay that much for four bullets. I think they’d pay that much to have the ability to make a direct strike on an enemy C2 infrastructure destroying it within minutes.
Yeah killing ur enemies command structure gives a HUGE advantage, not just tactically. Since if you do kill their leaders in one go it could lead to civil war and will allow you to setup a puppet using one of the factions from said civil war.
Question is, how likely would these things be banned by Geneva, and if so, how likely would America spend trillions of dollars on a weapon that would likely be banned after the first use?
Perhaps, but it wouldn't be an on-demand weapon, which reduces its value. You could always build _more_ to open up 'windows of opportunity,' but now you are multiplying the original "absurd price" even further. Additionally, you risk alerting your adversary of a new capability, further reducing its value.
At the end of the day, we stick with what we know. If we need a 'Rod from God,' we've got plenty of old satellites to "de-orbit."
I remember wishing this was real. I grew up reading a lot of science fiction. Out of all of the options, this and the nuclear powered particle cannon seemed the most metal.
Neat pivot from practice to theory. I am interested in seeing what you do next.
I always enjoyed the idea of a catapult on the moon upchucking rocks enclosed in a metal can into earth.
I always wanted that horn from Jericho. man, that'd STFU all the mouths.
@@argentstorm2861 is that with or without interchangeable bionic arms and talking sentient computers?
@@kevincrosby1760 been a few years, but I only remember the accidentally sentient computer.
@@argentstorm2861 The main character "Manny" lost his arm in an accident prior to the events in the book. He had multiple artificial arms...A "Social Arm" which looked and behaved naturally, and a few others for special tasks.
One of the very few books that I read as a youth that I have continually re-read ever since.
It's probably a decent book if a copy has had a place on my bookshelf for several decades...
There's already 4 versions WMDs this would have made it 5 versions of WMDs.
Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear "CBRN" are the current 4(radiation bombs are also known as Dirty Bombs & nuclear doesn't just mean atomic it can also be Electromagnetic Pulse)
Here is the thing, if it just traveling at terminal velocity it will depend entirely on how much it weights for how much damage it will do, but if you accelerate it using rockets or some other system it will be traveling a lot faster than terminal velocity and will do a lot more damage.
Love your work. Keep them coming.
As I agree with your mathematical computation of the energy I'd like to add one thought. As the rod from God re-enters the atmosphere it's going to pick up a lot of temperature. And as one who worked over 40 years in the steel industry anytime a super hot near molten material comes in contact with even moist earth let alone water the instantaneous production of steam creates an impressive explosion on its own in addition to the kinetic energy released on impact. As this would not raise it to the level of a nuclear warhead, it I think would raise it well above the Moab. And as for it being not cost-effective right now I'm sure conventional wisdom would have said the same thing about the Manhattan project.
The better comparison would have been space cowboys, when the went to fix the Russian satellite.
One of the problems with kinetic orbital bombardment is trajectory. These rods wouldn't come down vertically. They would be closer to horizontal. Mountains could potentially obstruct targets. It really depends how much the lower atmosphere would slow the projectile. Which is the other problem, accuracy. We are pretty good at predicting where shit from orbit will come down, but atmospheric density changes a lot. Hitting targets would likely be inconsistent.
During this video I had the most intrusive thought I could possibly have. imagine one of those dropped on a faultline.
Great longer video. See that your subscribers are going up too. Keep ‘em coming!
“Hey USSR! Catch these rods!”
Not going to lie ghosts was underrated and had a great story campaign
It's not propelled by gravity alone. It has a rocket engine. Mach 20. Figure out that yeild.
Kyle Hill did a video on these back when he was a part of Nerdist and ran Because Science. He came to the same conclusion that right now they are not cost effective.
It seems that all the fun toys are unobtainable cause of the laws of nature, would cost the entire worlds economy, lack of recourses and the Geneva Convention.
The only thing I have to say is that they could push it out to a higher orbit greater distance more time for gravity to work and higher speeds impact force being mass times velocity. But if you want to make nuclear bombs completely obsolete just redirect a asteroid it worked great against the dinosaurs
Excellent stuff bro
I totally thought you were going to say the oldest unhealthcare was just throwing rocks which would also be an accurate description of this weapon.
fair