I imagine like they run into Adam randomly, like he's taking a stroll in the desert and find these Veritasium guys testing stuff, sharing his wisdom along the way.
Adam's just busy on something in his workshop, when suddenly something twinges in the back of his mind. With a jerk, his head shoots up and he faintly cocks it, as if to listen for something in the distance. His eyes narrow and his brow furrows, and with a slightly defeated -- for the distraction -- but otherwise classically enthusiastic "It's time. I am needed!" he fades from the workshop and surprises Derek with a clap on the back and a "Hey there! So I heard you were doing some science experiments out here..?"
I mean I'm fairly sure anyone attempting an experiment like this is required to get permission and supervision from and by Adam by law in the United States lol 🤣 I Hope You Are All Doing Well And Having A Great Day/Night!!
Derek probably did a couple of expensive videos with helicopters at once. In previous videos, Adam Savage was there as a guest. Here, I guess, he didn't have that much to add to the experiment so he just watched.
Wish there was a point in the experiment that the goal switch from accuracy to "lets see how big crater get from dropping really high" and proceed to have everyone really far away until it lands.
I suppose they could have dropped from higher while staying safe, by not dropping it anywhere close to people, and just using the handcam footage from the helicopter
@@Flt.Hawkeye the Sand Artists were expensive. Can't you people spell check your talk to text or do you rattle crap off so quick and hit send it doesn't even register in your synapses first
Probably in the top half of ideas because at least with this, there isn't any chemicals or radioactive materials that can become uncontained when things inevitably go wrong.
I'm a little shocked that no smaller-scale testing was done prior to the full-scale "helicopters and sand castle professionals" part was brought out. A drone with a piece of rebar would have taught you a lot about the need for targeting apparatus, the lack of fins, etc.
This new format, focusing on hype and false drama like on Discovery Channel is really hurting Derek's videos, IMO. If the next video follows suit, I'll be unsubbing, and that's sad because I've followed him since he had less than 10k subscribers. I think it's probably due to the sheer size of the production team. IMO he needs to return to his roots. But that's just me. Also get off my lawn. Rawr.
@Adrian Molière Because then it would miss the point of this video (no pun intended). The video was trying to prove or disprove that the Rods from god was a feasible idea. And they disproved that. I mean, what's the point of having a missile when you would miss the target by a kilometre away? Althougth I still think it was a bad idea he didn't do a small scale test first
I'd imagine it's a limitation of the helicopter? Securing the load too close could cause safety issues? The real problem is the lack of an onboard guidance system. "Dumb" rockets are hard to aim bc any slight deviation at the firing point is magnified by distance. That's exactly what they're running into when they have to come lower and lower just to hit the pool. But then developing missile guidance systems is pretty hard. On top of that if it's too good then the feds come knocking bc you're creating an honest to God weapon. I remember another vid on a different channel was doing something similar making dead drops from a drone and using ailerons to guide an (egg?) payload onto a target. In his research he got a visit from the feds. His targeting and guidance system could be used by bad actors to deliver more than harmless payloads. As a result he didn't publish his code and recommended no one attempt to replicate it.
There are two main problems I see with Derek's setup: 1) Dropping the payload from what is effectively a pendulum is going to make it nearly impossible to aim, and 2) as Adam pointed out, you need some fins on the rods if you want them to land perpendicular to the ground.
Can't it be dropped at the height of the swing when it has 0 velocity? Correct me if I'm wrong but don't pendulums work based off turning gravitational potential energy (GPE) to kinetic energy (KE) and at the top of the swing it has no KE and thus no velocity?
I think the (incredibly flawed) reasoning was that since the rods from god weren't meant to have them, these ones didn't need it either. Completely forgetting that launching something from space has way more variables that could allow for such a thing: -little to no air resistance from orbit (no duh) -no swinging motion from a satellite moving at orbital speeds -once in the atmosphere, the speed would be so high that the air resistance would be more than enough to cause the rod to fall vertically (at so relatively low speeds from the helicopter, the density of the metal is more than enough to overcome the wind resistance)
Honestly I wish they had just dropped one from the max height they wanted to do, just to demonstrate how big of a crater it would make. But also, even with the height they were dropping from, everyone needed to be a LOT FURTHER back. They took some really dumb risks.
@@hellomark1 The dumbest thing to me was that they saw how they weights were swinging around like crazy below the helicopter and NOBODY thought to shorten the tether, if that tether was 3ft long it would've been much more accurate. What they really should have done though is make a mount/drop system strapped tight to the bottom of the helicopter that would lock the weights in place before release. That, coupled with fins, would have made an enormous difference.
@@watermelonsavage2914 not as much of a difference as it would have made with the way the helicopter itself was fidgeting, but it'd still have been better.
@@watermelonsavage2914 Yeah that bothered me too. They could have made a solid mount, or stabilized the strap with a few more anchor points... or ANYTHING really. Like you said, I'm surprised at how little actual engineering went into this.
Agreed. Using a laser or camera for vertical alignment would have been much more reliable than GPS. As someone else said, a shorter tether would reduce swing inaccuracy. Fins would increase flight stability on the rods. It's poorly enough done that if i were a conspiracy theorist, I might think they were being intentionally misleading.
Adam: "Does it have fins?" Derek: "Why didn't we have this conversation weeks ago?" I just hear Jaime in my mind. "Should have done the engineering." Shortly followed by, "When in doubt, lube."
I was thinking the same thing as soon as I saw it??? everything that's a tube and is sent to fly has wings, except for bullets but they usually don't go that far
I put this knife to my skin and now I'm bleeding. Purely amazing and mind blowing. So happy we have science channels like this to show us that plastic pools will in fact rip when dropping a 150 pound piece of metal from thousands of feet in the air.
I find it funny that Adam Savage is in this video, and it's not even mentioned. I'm just used to him being the one talking to a camera out in the desert, busting a myth.
@@jordancarter8310 and yet he didnt reach out to him and missed out on the vital "you should put fins on it" that noone else involved seemed to think of
KEW on that scale essentially fall under the nuclear disarmament treaties. They’re not mentioned explicitly, but any nation developing them would find itself negotiating soon.
The engineering problems have been worked out. We have tables based on windage for dropping troops out planes been doing it since nam. We know exactly how far a t10 or t11 chute will fly given altitude and windage. Its not that hard to calculate the same for a rod. just add stabilizing fins. and walla
Well the video explains pretty clearly that the issue isn't launching a projectile and hitting a target. The issue is maintaining accuracy as weight, distance, and velocity increase exponentially. Launching a howitzer round 2 miles past the horizon is nowhere comparable to dropping a 10-tonne rod from 22,000 miles altitude, accounting for the change from a vacuum to entering the atmosphere and still trying to maintain enough accuracy to cripple installations. Artillery actually requires less accuracy than kinetic weapons, and it's cheaper and more accurate.
Yeah, I don't think they covered on how it might be a bad idea in reality. I could see it costing a lot more than we expect to set it up, but by all means, it seems like a sound proposal and I'm curious why we don't already have them. Then again, maybe we do and the military just isn't telling us.
Because it's expensive as frick to send stuff into space. And a modern ICBM can do the same thing but without any risk of getting hacked or malfunctioning and releasing a bunch of unguided deadly projectiles all over the planet
I am so confused by how thoughtless this "experiment" was but how well researched the rest of the content was, even with the lamp shading by adam savage and later admitting to "screwing up", it felt more like a drunken idea hastily executed without anyone stopping to think than a high budget science demonstration.
Yeah this looks like it cost a ton of money for basically nothing. Why not build a little 25% scale house or something and do all the drops on that. Wtf was the point of the pool?
@@Mutantcy1992The point of the pool was probably just what you saw: If there was a hit, it would make a splash. Remember, this is video, and you have to have an interesting image.
Meh: rods from god were a piss poor idea from the get go: the fact that you can deliver a bunch of energy without it being nuclear was about the only thing they had going for them, the fastest weapon ever devised was constrained by the slowest kill chain conceivable!
@@wilfdarr Don't under estimate the Rod from God concept. The original idea was rods the size of telephone poles made of 100% tungsten 20 ft long by 1ft diameter. These would hit a city with the impact force of a ground penetrating nuclear weapon and destroy any underground facility hundreds of feet underground. When dropped from orbit it would reach up to 10x the speed of sound without violation of the 1967 outer space weapons treaty which prohibits nuclear, biological and chemical weapons attacks from space signed by 107 countries. These rods would destroy an entire city just like a nuke and any bunker, base or silo under it for hundreds of feet with none of the nuclear fallout. While the targeting system and cost for something like this was near impossible at the height of the cold war its much more feasible now. Especially with advanced AI and the cost of moving things into space diminished It is more possible than ever before ! Unfortunately some weights would have to be dropped from space to gather data for the AI and I would not want to be the country those tests are landing on lol.
The fact that they didn't seem to anticipate that a weight dangling from a helicopter on a tether would be swinging all over the place is ... odd to say the least.
Sometimes a genius is so into the genius stuff, that he forgets about the basic stuff. Whenever I try to do something smart, a rookie mistake just screws it up.
Are they so firearm averse they couldnt have spent a few grand to get a 20mm single shot gun and 4 or five rounds and made it a real experiment? Jeez.. Adam Savage probably suggested this...
Derek needs to speak with Darrel Barnette who worked for several years on projects like this for DOD. The videos that are public from the railgun and gravity weapons for DOD were taken by or with Darrel.
@@JonMahn Using a gun doesn't demonstrate the basic principle of "just dropping a big weight from high up is powerful". It would kinda defeat the point of the video.
Your aiming problem was because your rods were pendulums, so they had significant lateral velocities that threw them off target. you should have had them in hardpoint mounts under the chopper so they'd be dropped with zero lateral velocity.
Needs fins as well to keep the center of drag begin the center of mass, so it stays straight rather than drifting off to the side. Realistically it needs GPS guiding with fins as well because there will always be wind hitting the rods broadside. imo this video was really poorly done, many of these issues could have been mitigated with just an hour or reviewing potential issues and small scale tests, and a week of implementing the fixes full scale.
@@InfernoViperz123 at the speeds they are testing at, the fins would need to be large, and the larger they are, the more wind will blow them off course as well. Now they are realizing why bomb zones in WW2 were often miles wide from a single wave of bombers. yes, GPS or laser buiding would be necessary. A real THOR warhead would have GPS and inertial guidance, as well as active radio guidance from a spotter either on the ground or in space, particularly for hitting moving targets like aircraft carriers.
The problem with a hard mount, is that the object would _still_ be affected by the turbulence caused by the heli rotor the moment it was released. That turbulence extends downwards for a fair distance beneath the chopper before it even starts to ease away. And then once it does you have the general motion of the atmosphere to deal with - which in a hot desert area is probably a fair amount at that height. Only fins can counter this issue - especially adjustable fins whos angle can be adjusted to counter any spin/lateral movement.
I wouldn't attempt it without an arduino based targeting system tested in KSP. Since it's not meant for combat, image processing can be simplified a lot by placing a few bright lights around the target.
@@wyattroncin941 There is absolutely no point. You are needlessly increasing resistance and weight carried on the heli while the same could be achieved over radio. Wifi might lack the range. Idk, whatever drones are using would do.
@@aleksanderczajka6072 a rope rail system would certainly be heavy and expensive, but it would be simple to get opperational, and wouldn't be destroying $200+ in hardware per drop, and it's practically guaranteed to work.
This seemed like a "lot of money, not a lot of thought" video. No one thought about how the rods were going to hit their targets until the day of?? Fins are a bare minimum, you could have even done some gps-based bang bang course corrections with an arduino or something. Of course then you are basically designing a precision guided bomb like Mark Rober noted in his egg drop video.
A precision guidance system with accelerometers dropping longer thinner rods with fin stabilization from heavy lift drones on much, much bigger sandcastle city from much higher. That would have been cool to see.
It's not the wind causing the swinging, it's that you created a long pendulum which exacerbated any vibrations and movement from the helicopter. You would want a 3 or 5 point strap system that the quick release drops from. Combine that with a set of fins and you'd be able to pretty consistently hit the target.
Yes!!! Thank you Raven! I almost stopped the video purely due to his statement of it being the wind. I typically enjoy his videos, this was terrible and for such an individual to have a fair level of intellect to miss so many key points was very frustrating to watch. Possibly his worst video yet.
or just use a plane and some rudimentary ww2 era bombing targeting system. if you lob it, not drop it, it's much more accurate, as long as it's fin stabilised.
I’m honestly a little bit dumbfounded that they went through the whole process without considering down wash, swaying, and the rod’s stability. They didn’t even have a backup plan? (Pivot to just creating the largest impact possible, since this is all about the explosive potential of a KE weapon, not accuracy)
They could have created a larger impact but they were so inaccurate they would not have been able to position a camera to film it without endangering the people operating the camera
Mate the fact they used SAND to showcase destruction of KE weapons might be the most moronic thing in this video. The substance that is LITERALLY known for its ability to do a good job stopping bullets because of it.
To be fair he does admit it's his biggest failure, but yes you'd need a very thin, very long rope to not have to deal with wind from the helicopter blades, in turn the helicopter is buffeted by winds, it can't be steady either meaning that the projectile is always moving in a vaguely circular motion modified by the difference between where the helicopter was at this point in the last rotation and the current location. Setting the rod spinning with impeller-like fins would steady the trajectory of the rod but wouldn't help with getting it pointed at the right target and not imparting some spurious steering input as it's dropped. Probably the logical thing to do would be to put a "tungsten warhead" on a conventional missile and fire it on a "kinetic trajectory" (ie: straight down) from a great height (orbit, hopefully). Normal missiles have already solved all the problems rods would face, and could impart more energy as well as actively steering towards the target.
If you’re wondering why Adam is there, if you look at the details it’s the exact same site, helicopter, and crew from the penny drop video released 2 months ago. I suspect it was a pooled resource shooting multiple experiments at one time to minimize cost. Although it’s much cooler to think that Adam myth buster sense starts tingling and he just shows up whenever cool experiments are going down.
All this crew and no one stopped to think about how hard it would be to hit the target? I think the story would have been just as interesting (or maybe even more interesting considering how underwhelming the impacts ended up being) without any targets, just going for the maximum drop height and letting it fall wherever. That would have at least demonstrated the power of kinetic energy, assuming you designed a projectile with high enough terminal velocity.
Yeah I get why this video was released considering the cost but... The high cost could've been reduced AND you could've better tested kinetic energy. Makes the video quite pointless. Also really not a fan of this editing/production.
Exactly. If the point was to demonstrate the release of the maximum possible kinetic energy, there was no need to do the whole targeting thing. Just take the rod really high and drop it. Film the results. One other issue is the effect the lift strap had on the aerodynamics of the object. Maybe rethink this a bit?
The other problem is knowing where it might hit. It's clear there's going to be some drift as the object falls so you need more safe zone space the higher you go. At 3 kilometers I would want a safe space of at least a kilometer. Finding that sort of space where the land is flat enough that you can see the object hit and catch it on film is going to be tough. Plus actually having a camera close enough to the spot it hits to catch the impact point close up is going to be nearly impossible with a helicopter. What you need is something that can go up and drop the object over the target with no wind blowing the object around like some sort of UFO. Maybe on of those drone platforms designed to carry people might work. Only with the fans extended out another ten to twenty feet so that their downward force is far enough from the object that it isn't impacted by that turbulence. Which requires someone like Bezos to fund the development.
Im an engineering student and my first thought was to add fins to these rods, with a bunch of other stuff that would easily make them way more accurate. This whole thing feels very under prepared.
LOL yeah he says its a bad idea but i dont think he really understands what the concept is, Fins as well as a design to make it accelerate even faster on the way down seem pretty simple
I‘m a Industrial Design and Informatics Student and this was also my first thought + maybe a arduino with a gyroscope that controlls the rod to point straight down… what would that‘ve cost? 50-100$ and a few hours of testing? Definitely nothing compared to chartering a Helicopter for a day
I appreciate the honesty and I understand why you had to post it. But brother if you had spent an hour with a ballistic expert enquiring about a good way to showcase this it would have worked a million times better. And like everyone is suggesting, dropping the biggest weight from the heighest height you can just to see the crater size would be a much more enjoyable video than this. I won't think less of your content from one failure and i'm sure it's a very complicated process but this one felt really like a lack of forethought
What irks me about the whole thing is it demonstrates an extremely shallow understanding of the topic at hand while oozing “self-satisfactory professionalism”, my next thought then is the question “On how many other topics that are less obvious did they do similar mistakes?”
Exactly what I was thinking. Could’ve made the impact end a pointed end. Could’ve added wings. Added vents, more straps to stop the swinging. Just downright horrible execution
Considering that shortly before this video was published, Mark Rober put up a video where he was well on his way to designing a system to do exactly this kind of guidance dropping an egg FROM SPACE (way higher than shown here), and he was already dropping from 10k feet (3048 meters) with an accuracy in a reasonable ballpark of what was achieved here, in scale, I'd say that with the technical resources of the US military contracting industry, this definitely COULD be done. It would be fairly costly, but uh... if Mark Rober with a few engineer friends and something like a Raspberry Pi or Arduino and a not absurd amount of code can get that far, that relatively fast, I'm sure it wouldn't take too long or too much money to develop a working system. Deploying the rapid response coverage is the issue, NOT making the projectile control be precise enough. Communicating a target would be trivial, and once loaded, no actual guidance from the ground would be needed - as demonstrated by how well Rober did so quickly. They only stopped from developing their system because of the snares of legality and ethics, when they realized they were developing a guided missile. Yes, this concept is functionally possible and on a smaller scale with less time response definitely feasible.
his experiment was flawed.. he needs to get a smaller object up closer to mach 1 to do any real kinetic damage... if you think about it the shock wave would be enormous..and the impact it rather small whoops right.. they cant show that on youtube..
4 point rigging, fins, better weight distribution, and crosswinds are things I would have assumed would have been thought of for something this expensive. If it was just a backyard experiment type thing I get not doing all the bells and whistles and just trying to make a big hole. But I feel almost bad no one thought of this before dumping what appears to be a large amount of money into something of this caliber. You live and you learn.
2 года назад+87
At a minimum, they could have made the straps much shorter. Less swing that way.
@ I can't believe they didn't talk about the swinging and the potential for harminic motion due to the helicopter pilot's compensation. He kept saying the "wind was blowing it all over the place" - something tells me the wind didn't have nearly as big an impact on that 450lb cubic foot of metal as the helicopter did. I was bothered by some of the other commentary as well. The cube punching straight through the bottom of the intex pool was "unbelievable"? Really?? For me this video was just a miss all around, pun intended.
@ You read my mind!!!! Shorten the straps, have a 4 or 6 point harness to hold whatever they were going to drop which would exponentially minimize the swinging!!! They spent a ton of money prior to thinking everything through. Oh well........ next time (maybe.....)
I don't like when they are all for example doubtful if the helicopter is actually at the right altitude. At the beginning of the vid. I mean, a pilot probably would know...
It was all planned just for the punchline at the end. "I would say it is my biggest failure of all time, which as it turns out, is also something you could say about the actual weapon Rods from God." The whole setup is so crappy it's obvious he never intended for it to succeed.
@UCiUl8dZIzCkGUyB6nrTpOTg Ye, or instead of having the weight tied outside the coptor, have the guy chuck it. So, you don't waste so much fuel to reload.
Kinda surprised that nobody realized that this was never going to work. Id expect this from a Mr. Beast video but not Veritasium. Usually he simulates outcomes with equations before going into the field to test.
Yeah, actually it really surprised me too, derek usually plans things really well, since Adam was there maybe this was at the same time they tested the pennies and the dropping of really big thing was just and afterthought?
I expected he would mention the "Iraqi bunker busters" the US used against Iraqi bunkers in the Kuwait invasion. They did contain explosives, but still used the kinetic energy to penetrate really deep, at least 15 meters (45 feet). Probably not feasible to be recreated by a youtuber tho.
@@iFix. This is what happened. They just decided to milk this and release this video, which is going to make insane money; this video got 200,000 in 1 hour. So they got two videos out of this 'project' they did. Easily making over $500,000 from both videos when you consider the sponsorship as well
"We gonna drop rods from several kilometers up" Ok well that sounds hard but Veritasium probably knows what hes doing. **Pulls up mobile to get target GPS and gets into a helicopter with the payload just dangling freely a few meters under** Im surprised they didnt hit themself...
@Karl with a K just as competent as experts in any and every single field out there. no more, no less. regardless of how many we educate, truly intelligent people remain in short supply.
It was so odd that a science channel didn’t think of this, like it seems obvious to me to put fins or to drop the cylinder by some type of rigid attachment to the helicopter or something.
@@Mr_Vosakisen It's kind of weird how unprepared he was for this, like he's trying to be Mark Rober but doesn't realize how much thought and preparation goes into even his failures
We'll take Russia serious when they can capture a neighboring weaker country, it was just 20 years ago that America conquered Iraq and Afghanistan in less than 3 months
So, the issue I have with this video is that while it is an amusing concept, it really poorly conveys the effects of the kinetic energies involved which are way outside the domain these kinds of mundane drops can achieve. As noted early in the video, true hyperkinetic impacts result in violently explosive energies and liquefaction of the impact area, so the physical dynamics are completely different than low energy kinetic impacts from things like bullets or simple dropped weights.
The fact he literally has video which explains why scaling things is so difficult in science and how it needs additional adjustments but then makes this trash ....tragic.
If they did a quick reading of wind speed and direction, or maybe did a better probably cylindrical harness this would’ve been a much better experiment. Maybe it was a rush video
@@quertbarbie62 I'm pretty sure that was this exact conversation, from the same shoot. They tried to make two videos at the same time, only got one good one, and then posted the bad one too, just for kicks.
Desert Blast Test: *_Exists_* Adam Savage, rising from a demonic summoning circle: *"WHO DARES TO SUMMON THE SAVAG-* _Ooh, lovely test you've set up!_ What a you using as a control group?"
The original business model of RUclips stank, but at least the ads were reasonable. New flood of invasive, repetitive, and offensive ads are EVIL. Google is now fully dedicated to doing any evil that seems profitable. And censoring complaints, too.
Years of experience doing stuff like this, constant contact with world renown scientists, complex logistics involving several teams of people, Adam Savage who has done this for most of his life and somehow the test turned out like this.
Welcome to soulles entertainment. This video was made for sharing it in 30 second clips on facebook and generating ad money. Sadly almost all large content creators get ground down and bought by big business.
I have to imagine this experiment was rushed or something, because I would've expected Derek to take a lot of these issues into consideration. There are a lot of good suggestions in the comments that would've given them a better chance, but I think the bigger issue is that they felt the need to do this at all. Veritasium videos are usually much more information-based; telling stories of scientists or interviewing experts in an interesting field. There's no need to do Mr.Beast-esque stunts like this, especially when there's such a high chance of failure
@@QuasiDude He has a PhD in Physics Education Research. His thesis was "Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education", ie. creating educational RUclips videos. Still a PhD, but not in Physics- in education. And you know what they say about those that can't do...
The sandcastle builders are incredibly chill. Knowing that your sandcastle would be hit by a telephone pole traveling faster than sound is not really amusing.
The point is that this isn’t a efficient way to distribute energy as the force is to focused to effect a large area . I’m sure it would do great work in the case of a giant kaiju or robot though
@@ashscott6068 by saying "this has nothing to do with rods of god, we just wanted to drop stuff from a helicoptor, they explain the rods work by hitting hard enough to create actual explosions, whis would be like testing grenades by throwing rocks at a wall, you are skipping the whole bit that makes it effective, the explosion
Just releasing the weights when it reached to the apex of the swing would have made all the drops a lot more accurate. Just like when you jump off a swing on a swingset at the apex you go straight down rather then jumping off in the middle of the swing.
Given the relative lack of anything beyond visual targeting, this video is functionally a demonstration of why, in WW2, they estimated there was only a 1% chance of a bomb falling within 100 feet of the intended target (thus necessitating hundreds of bombs/bombers in order to have a high likelihood of actually blowing up what you wanted blown up)
"it ripped right through the pool. Unbelievable!" What's so unbelievable that a chunk of steel being drop from the sky goes right through a shallow plastic pool?
Honestly the only way to test this is in a silo using an overhead crane/winch and a quick release. The fact that the projectile was swinging side to side ruined the accuracy as much as anything else they failed to do in the projectiles construction. However that means they can't drop it from as high as they can from the helicopter.
Yes, the effort was wasted on a perfect sand city and not put in considering how to hit a target by dropping a not-aerodynamic rod swinging (!) under a helicopter.
Entirely shocked that you didn't expect a cylinder to turn on it's side given the air resistance the end of the cylinder would be experiencing compared to the rest of the cylinder.
seriously, you can figure this out just by throwing a pencil up in the air.. it's very hard to get a pencil shaped object to land vertically in the dirt..
Revisiting this video two years later - Russia has deployed a weapons system that delivers 36 guided tungsten rods at mach 12 with absolute precision. It's different when you have a powered MIRV
@liam78587 I am not saying anything about the video, which is fantastic and historically accurate. I am pointing out that it is incredible people fogured out how to use kinetic ballstic tungsten in just a few short years.
I was really surprised it wasn't just a few of us noticing the complete lack of aerodynamic consideration going into such an expensive project. Anyone who has tried throwing a stick as a spear can tell you it will tumble around. Hundreds of other people are already saying it, but I'll say it too: fins. Some rear drag surfaces (some people have even suggested spin-stabilizing fins which was a positive surprise) really would have been so simple to do. Tons of people working on this project, but I guess anyone realizing it needed fins wasn't comfortable enough to speak up or there was some kind of deliberate reason for excluding them.
Almost as if they did it wrong intentionally... What say if we show people on an open internet like RUclips how to make weapons of ass destruction? Okay, so, maybe instead we make a video detailing how not to do it and say that it can't be done as if it hasn't been done already and isn't being done right now?
Agreed, I thought the purpose was to find out the destructive force of the rods and scale it up, not find the most inefficient way to destroy a sand castle.
I can't believe anyone would think that they were going to get any accuracy at all with that setup. I'm bloody positive they all knew about pendulums *before* they went out there.
I’ve watched enough mythbusters to know that you always attach radio controlled aerodynamic surfaces to hunks of metal whenever your dropping them from a helicopter.
@@the_regulator1145 I'd've thought at least a rigid "launch tube" or guide rail fixed to the side of the helicopter. Something other than a bloody-great pendulum
Mythbusters would've had that in small scale and then done it right. I love that Adam just shows up with no explanation or introduction and immediately grades them on not having fins. This is why he's the GOAT.
I was swimming in the ocean once and a small wave hit me, this proves that tsunamis aren't all that bad and people are totally overreacting, like it's just water bro.
Funny thing was, when I hovered over video to do the "preview autoplay" thing. I saw a guy with an Adam Savage goatee wearing his hat and laughing/smiling. I was sure it was someone that just happened to look like him. But no it was actually Adam Savage.
@@agentkirb Pretty sure this was shot at the same time as the earlier penny drop video with Savage in it -- same helicopter, I think the same clothes, and it makes sense to do it all as one set of rentals/excursion.
@@LeadFarmer1597 Please, it is a well known fact that if you stand in the middle of the desert with a camera and a mildy-complicated physics problem to solve then you risk attracting a wild mythbuster or worse... the ferocious Heineman's Desert Walrus.
You just know that the ENTIRE time Adam was watching this, he was trying to suppress his desire to say: "Uhm... why no fins?" Because that would have been the *first* thing he thought while looking at it, having dropped a bunch of things from heights, before.
@@mikaellindqvist5599 thats not what happened. 8:12 veritasium was saying that he wished that they had had that conversation a week ago, which they wouldve IF adam had been involved in the prep. adam has dropped things from altitude several times. why would he forget things that even i would know having never done it?
@@mikaellindqvist5599 Derek DREAMS he had have spoken to Adam earlier, but he didn't... because Adam wasn't in on the planning at all. Hence Derek saying he wishes they had have spoken about this project sooner than on the day. Adam would have totally caught this early and saved them a lot of time/effort.
Agreed, this was a piss poor attempt, everything can be scaled down with the exception of the velocity of the projectile, but with that reduced to pedestrian speeds it's just pissing around in the desert with a chopper and some sand castle builders...
i am SHOCKED they didnt think of that. I mean this in the most respectful way possible. I think hes a smart dude. how was anyone surprised that "its really swinging"?? even the trick shot youtube channels (like HowRidiculous, DudePerfect, etc) hit small targets from very high up. Im really amazed that stuff wasnt thought about Really, the thing im amazed by is that they underestimated this. Dropping stuff from high up is something people have done for a long time lol. we know its hard. the fact they were like "we're above it" and didnt even mention that wind could push it to the side as like whugt. All this said, smart people make mistakes all the time. so im not hating. im just surprised
Sometimes incredibly smart people don’t always succeed at applying relevant knowledge. Saw it all the time in school. Classmates that could solve differential equations would struggle to apply concepts from physics 1.
Fins are definitely the right move. However, the strap that holds the payload is too long. Make the strap shorter and it will probably do less swinging, which in my opinion is causing the payload to miss the target.
Im guessing they wanted the shape to be closely associated to the orig project. ofcourse, a blunt object gets rounded after atmosphere entry, and wind/air is not a factor after gaining it's velocity, so yeah, to emulate those conditions, they would have to emulate completely opposite conditions in this context, iycmd guess they should have gone to space.
The effort was wasted on a perfect sand city and not put in considering how to hit a target by dropping a not-aerodynamic rod swinging (!) under a helicopter.
I can’t imagine how awkward this entire thing must have been. Watch people build sand castles, have Adam Savage literally appear for 10 seconds, and just attempt after attempt of poof, dust clouds 😂
@@Markmagoo Literally any scientist in a field related to the experiment. It would have taken ten seconds for some guy in a lab coat to sit in front of a computer and go "nah, wind exists".
Fun note: the only reason why the fins wasn't there was because those rods wouldn't have fins in the first place (instead, it got weight ball and thrusters). Other than that and some so-so engineering the test, good point. Cool in theory, but those rods from god are too ridiculous to be executed feasibly by sane things (let alone practically). So there you go.
hahahaha, I know! I was like that too. Also disappointed at how they didn't explore the future implications of this idea (can anyone say cheap 3d printed in space boulders falling over your enemy country?)
In my 5th grade science class I asked my teacher the same question you posed @10:01 - why are all the craters on the moon circular? I compared it to throwing rocks in a lake and how they will always leave a circular ripple no matter the angle of throw or shape of the rock. We wrote in to a popular science magazine and they answered back and of course stated what you did here! Amazing. Thank you for reminding me!
The moment I saw the thumbnail I was like "there's no way it could work without fins?!?" And lo and behold I thought they'd prove history wrong. I think a lot of viewers questioned the lack of a fin before the first drop happened with all that swinging 😂
lo and behold* >>> The lo in the expression probably originated from the shortening of the word look, commonly seen in Middle English texts. Its presence in literature can be traced to at least as early as the 18th century. The literal meaning of the expression is "look and see", and it is always used as if in the imperative.
You could eventually add some gyroscopic effect by spinning it to avoid the swinging (like a bullet). This could be done with some twisted rubber from bungee jumping or something. The fins will only help after gaining some airspeed so not while swinging under the helicopter
Aftermath inside talk: "So, we did this dumb idea with 0 forethought and the result belongs to the trash" Him: *"Publish it anyways, we spent a lot on this, we have to make some money back even if this is a big waste of time for us and anyone watching it!*
kinetic bombardment was not developed as an "answer" to soviet ICBMs. it was developed as a weapon that cannot be defeated and is capable of hitting any target anywhere in the world within an hour without the giant red flag of a missile launch that can be detected across the world.
@@lachlan1971 well, most likely. an ICBM launch can be detected anywhere in the world. a kinetic weapon cannot be detected until it's too late and it cannot be defeated.
@@aaronkcmo "a kinetic weapon cannot be detected until it's too late and it cannot be defeated." Can not be defeated... but I am sure the Chinese, Indians, Pakistani and Israelis are aware of this weapon. The moment the incoming rods are detected is the moment the nukes would start flying.
@@thechloromancer3310 uh, this weapon doesn't exist. it's been superseded by hypersonic rockets and jets. are you suggesting that any of these countries would respond to conventional weapons with an all-out nuclear assault? seems highly unlikely since India, Pakistan and Israel do not possess the ability to launch a first strike against the united states. china, having that ability, would seem unlikely to initiate a global nuclear war in retaliation considering their entire country would be obliterated. this weapons system wasn't ever designed to be a strategic deterrent like the nuclear arsenal, it has always been a covert, precise, prompt global strike system that was meant to take out precision high-value targets such as assassinations. btw, by in the time it takes for a hypersonic weapon is detected and for that weapon to reach its target, there would not be enough time to even distribute launch orders to a nuclear arsenal, let alone actually see missiles fly. if an adversary were to launch a nuclear weapon in retaliation to a hypersonic missile or kinetic bombardment it would be a serious escalation, not a response in kind.
@@aaronkcmoThe other commenter seems to be assuming these would be city-burners, like in some popular media, and used like nuclear weapons. You are correct to dispel that notion. However, you claim this weapon has been "superseded by hypersonic rockets and jets." It has not, they fill different profiles. This theoretical weapon is not practical for a variety of mechanical and political reasons, so hypersonics fill most of the role. But hypersonics have nowhere near the same survivability as a kinetic penetrator, just look at tank combat. APFS is far more reliable than ATGM at killing tanks.
Honestly if he had just anticipated the fact that it would be unlikely to hit a target from 500 meters (it only takes a small amount of research to know this btw) he could've dropped the object into the sand from a significantly higher height, and at the crater site he'd be like "According to our calculations, this delivered the equivalent of X amount of TNT into this crater. We're now going to test what X amount of TNT would look like if it hit our sand castle city." Then use X TNT explosive planted in the sand city to see what the damage would look like.
Aiming a drop from an aircraft involves calculating wind speeds at various altitudes to adjust for the push. I’m surprised that this didn’t come up at all in the planning (maybe it did behind the scenes but you seemed caught-off when it was blowing and swinging from a helicopter, and that seemed an obvious thing that would happen)
@@mattmarzula This video is a fail. This video would be far more entertaining if they actually did the experiment right. I was ignorant of this technology until watching this video. Derrick spent a lot of money for this fail of a video, money that should have been given to me as the winner of the veritasium contest, so giving advice is the least I can do. U need to offset the mass of the cylinder so more of the mass is in the front of the cylinder. This will stabilize the cylinder. U cannot put fins on the cylinder because the fins will catch wind and make it sway off course even more. U need to put a sensor that measures the sway of the cylinder, then when the velocity is 0 quickly automatically releases the cylinder. The cylinder should be as heavy as possible and round on both the front and back so the wind has no flat surface to effect it. The amount of off-course radius should be simulated so a safety region is determined, and no personell inside of this region are allowed to be inside that region. Finally, the test demonstration should be built of brick which is more sturdy than sand castles (unless they hardened the sand with some kind of mortar or something.)
You could have just dropped the biggest rod you had from around the highest height possible without thinking about target, it would also be cool to watch how much impact it makes.
why on earth did you hire a team of pro sand castle builders, and then have them spend all their time making more accurate looking buildings, rather than just 10x the number of them so you wouldn't have to worry about missing them??
Huh, forgot to add fins, refused to shorten the rope connecting the payload, refusing to have people walk away to a safe distance to test extreme height, refusing to try and use lasers to track positioning... Interesting...
Yeah, first thing would be to attach the payload securely to the stabilized platform - the chopper -- and the second thing would be to impart spin. Since they're attempting to "drop straight down", I'd take spin over control surface like fins - but you're right, a targeting laser could have been a big, and not very expensive help.
Nobody thought to add fins? They spend thousands of dollars but nobody brought a welder? Or some plywood and some super glue? I lost a lot of respect for Veritasium because of this vid.
Yup, I mean attach fins or like a square kite to the tow strap would of straightened it out like an arrow, but what do I know, I didn't finish high school, but I have made arrows and spears from scratch that flew very straight, also built a rc airplanes, and many dozens of model rockets when I was a kid.
As someone who’s dropped a lot of cylinders from fairly high heights, yes, they DO tend to fall on their side, however, that strap would provide enough drag to right that. The problem was they dropped while it was still swinging, not that it wanted to fall wrong.
@@IIARROWS The quick release was attached to the chopper. Also when you take off you need a little slack between the helicopter lifting off and the load, so it is good to add a the strap or string or whatever to give the heli some room to take off.
It would have been better if they carried the weight in the cabin, and then when they got to the position they could lower it out and then drop it. That would eliminate most of the pendulum effect from the helicopter adjusting its position, plus the wind, though that would be minimal since the wind isn't going to easily blow a 100 kg weight around easily.
ThE Compressed sand castles don't behave like a real building structure. The loosely packed sand readily absorbed the displaced KE from impact dissipating it through the intergranular space. The Shockwave would probably do more damage to solid concrete,wood, and steel.
Yeah there were so many thing’s Veritasium could’ve done differently with this experiment. Like building actual scale model buildings/structures instead of sandcastles, using a helium filled balloon to lift the object instead of a helicopter that is going to move around slightly, especially at that altitude.
I am shocked to think why he puts so little thought to it. There were lots of things they could have done. 1. Shorten the straps 2. Steps could have been of metal. 3. Calculated the wind and have done something to counter it ( like change the drop position of helli. 4. Have designed the fins on rod.
@@27sspider27 Any trailing straps makes it "fly", not a true drop. The best thing would be to deploy it without a strap or wings of any kind. Projectile must be bottom heavy, so it stays in a downward orientation.
Calculating the wind is a lot harder than what you'd expect. Mark rober took a shot at this with his egg drop from space, its incredibly difficult to actually have any form of guidance. And also if it had guidance, it would be legally classified as a missile which makes it illegal
Calculating the wind wouldn't have made a difference. You see it swinging, but as a result it is also rotating. When the dropped it is continued to rotate. It wasn't falling long enough for a fin to have a positive effect. What they needed was to contain it in a pipe that was fixed to the aircraft to prevent swinging. It would have been easy to rig if they'd just given it a few moments of thought.
It would have been interesting had you still just dropped the rod from 3km into the sand to see what kind of impact it made, even if you missed the target.
The original business model of RUclips stank, but at least the ads were reasonable. New flood of invasive, repetitive, and offensive ads are EVIL. Google is now fully dedicated to doing any evil that seems profitable. And censoring complaints, too.
@@SethEssington which just begs another question, why do they have to demonetize channels? They've only ever cited advertisers as the reason. You pay $10 to watch content that only RUclips gets paid for.
Very interesting but a bit of a disappointing result/video. Especially since it seems to have been expensive, this is quite unfortunate. If aiming is that difficult, I'd at least drop the weight from a great height on an open space just to see the explosion. But I'm sure preparing the rod beforehand (fins, weight distribution, etc.) would've helped too. Anyways, we learn from mistakes. I'm looking forward to the next video!
the problem with fins is, that mark rober tried to do that, and at this point you're basically trying to build a guided missile which is... probably making lawyers squirm it would have been important to measure wind speed, and ensuring the rod doesn't swing while it is dropped, then again, the height they wanted to drop it from would mean there are probably multiple atmospheric layers with different wind directions and speeds good video nonetheless, didn't think it would bury itself in the ground like that
The problem with dropping it from higher is you get an increased uncertainty on where it will land. More uncertainty means you need to move the people and equipment further away (to avoid killing someone), and you have no idea where to set up cameras to capture the shot.
@@meihauf I really don’t think wind is what made the tungsten rod change positioning. I think it was the comically long and unstable tether mixed with the drag caused by the rod toddling back and forth before and as it fell. If it was properly weighted, they used a rod shute instead of that ridiculous cable system, and if it had fins that you could control using a remote control along with GPS I think you could get pretty accurate.
I think there is an important, non-aerodynamic aspect of rods, arrows, and spears is that there is a lot of kinetic energy directly behind the point of impact. If you concentrate the mass as a sphere, the impulse gets dispersed over a larger area. The rod makes it so that the impulse continues to be concentrated over one spot
Armor penetrating bullets are always long and massive but when you want an actual kinetic explosion like the craters on the moon he was aiming for (got to love him for his ambitions at least) i dont know if the shape matters.
I don't really understand why they bothered doing such a poorly done test. They used no fins. No control device. etc. What they tested has basically nothing to do with using an actual developed weapon. It'd be like throwing a spear the first time in your life and then declaring that missiles don't work
@@SG-Gaming20 I kinda like the simplified explanation of why birds can fly, that air is also a fluid. But since people can't see it, they forget about that fact. That's what I think.
He gave logical reasons as to why the rod of gods wouldn't work at the end. He didn't just say it wouldn't work because of the conclusion of the video. Maybe you should pay attention more.
I like to imagine that Adam Savage just materializes whenever something fun like this is happening in the desert
lmao yeah
I imagine like they run into Adam randomly, like he's taking a stroll in the desert and find these Veritasium guys testing stuff, sharing his wisdom along the way.
Adam's just busy on something in his workshop, when suddenly something twinges in the back of his mind. With a jerk, his head shoots up and he faintly cocks it, as if to listen for something in the distance. His eyes narrow and his brow furrows, and with a slightly defeated -- for the distraction -- but otherwise classically enthusiastic "It's time. I am needed!" he fades from the workshop and surprises Derek with a clap on the back and a "Hey there! So I heard you were doing some science experiments out here..?"
Funny. Had me laughing. Haha. And i actually needed to laugh with the night I'm having so thanks.
I mean I'm fairly sure anyone attempting an experiment like this is required to get permission and supervision from and by Adam by law in the United States lol 🤣 I Hope You Are All Doing Well And Having A Great Day/Night!!
My favourite part is where Adam Savage appears out of nowhere, as if desert explosion tests just summon him 😂
“As if”? :)
@@ericpmoss As if
@@ericpmoss As if
Derek probably did a couple of expensive videos with helicopters at once. In previous videos, Adam Savage was there as a guest. Here, I guess, he didn't have that much to add to the experiment so he just watched.
You mean they don't?
Wish there was a point in the experiment that the goal switch from accuracy to "lets see how big crater get from dropping really high" and proceed to have everyone really far away until it lands.
They got scared. lol
@@BestCosmologist You can tell that by the final shot (the 500 m one) they were terrified lol. I would too, honestly.
Fan of mythbusters, I take? ;)
I suppose they could have dropped from higher while staying safe, by not dropping it anywhere close to people, and just using the handcam footage from the helicopter
Thought the same, fly the helicopter really far and drop it, would love to see it
you hired a team of championship winning professional sand castle builders and you couldnt find a single physicist to figure out the aiming?
A retired engineer would have sufficed.
The sad artists where expensive
@@Flt.Hawkeye the Sand Artists were expensive.
Can't you people spell check your talk to text or do you rattle crap off so quick and hit send it doesn't even register in your synapses first
@@SHAGG13 you're making the assumption they weren't describing the artists as sad.
@@ultraguy14 i love this comment
As someone from the military. I assure you, this is not their worst idea.
Probably in the top half of ideas because at least with this, there isn't any chemicals or radioactive materials that can become uncontained when things inevitably go wrong.
Wasnt their idea to begin with
worst one was allowing females to have combat roles in the military.
Their worst idea was reducing the Jalapeno cheese spread to 1 ounce from 1.5
Worst in terms of costing
Genuinely shocked at the scant amount of forethought that went into something with a budget this large.
Yeah... Like I would have thought Derek would have welded some fins on or somthing to get it to fly true.
Physics vs engineering
If they would've dropped it out of a tube that would have in part cancel out the swaying. A lot more accurate.
@@piele1982 or just not let it swing from a copter. Anyone who's played a video game knows what would have happened.
They are playing about for Likes.
Sort of "Myth busters very lite for RUclips"..
I'm a little shocked that no smaller-scale testing was done prior to the full-scale "helicopters and sand castle professionals" part was brought out. A drone with a piece of rebar would have taught you a lot about the need for targeting apparatus, the lack of fins, etc.
I dont know this still probably got all of our views which is the real success
arrows work too.
This new format, focusing on hype and false drama like on Discovery Channel is really hurting Derek's videos, IMO. If the next video follows suit, I'll be unsubbing, and that's sad because I've followed him since he had less than 10k subscribers. I think it's probably due to the sheer size of the production team. IMO he needs to return to his roots. But that's just me. Also get off my lawn. Rawr.
Yup, no small scale test first.
@Adrian Molière Because then it would miss the point of this video (no pun intended). The video was trying to prove or disprove that the Rods from god was a feasible idea. And they disproved that. I mean, what's the point of having a missile when you would miss the target by a kilometre away?
Althougth I still think it was a bad idea he didn't do a small scale test first
*uses longest swinging rope possible. "why do we keep missing?"*
I'd imagine it's a limitation of the helicopter? Securing the load too close could cause safety issues?
The real problem is the lack of an onboard guidance system. "Dumb" rockets are hard to aim bc any slight deviation at the firing point is magnified by distance. That's exactly what they're running into when they have to come lower and lower just to hit the pool.
But then developing missile guidance systems is pretty hard. On top of that if it's too good then the feds come knocking bc you're creating an honest to God weapon.
I remember another vid on a different channel was doing something similar making dead drops from a drone and using ailerons to guide an (egg?) payload onto a target. In his research he got a visit from the feds. His targeting and guidance system could be used by bad actors to deliver more than harmless payloads. As a result he didn't publish his code and recommended no one attempt to replicate it.
There are two main problems I see with Derek's setup: 1) Dropping the payload from what is effectively a pendulum is going to make it nearly impossible to aim, and 2) as Adam pointed out, you need some fins on the rods if you want them to land perpendicular to the ground.
Can't it be dropped at the height of the swing when it has 0 velocity? Correct me if I'm wrong but don't pendulums work based off turning gravitational potential energy (GPE) to kinetic energy (KE) and at the top of the swing it has no KE and thus no velocity?
I'm trying to find a part of this was WASN'T a problem.
Didn't Mark Rober just do a video of trying to make an egg survive a fall from space. Think they could've collaborated
@@kilansgames556 Mark Rober and Adam Savage casually testing failed doomsday devices for RUclips.
I think the (incredibly flawed) reasoning was that since the rods from god weren't meant to have them, these ones didn't need it either. Completely forgetting that launching something from space has way more variables that could allow for such a thing:
-little to no air resistance from orbit (no duh)
-no swinging motion from a satellite moving at orbital speeds
-once in the atmosphere, the speed would be so high that the air resistance would be more than enough to cause the rod to fall vertically (at so relatively low speeds from the helicopter, the density of the metal is more than enough to overcome the wind resistance)
I'm shocked at how little thought went into properly testing this idea, especially when compared to the amount of money and number of people involved.
Honestly I wish they had just dropped one from the max height they wanted to do, just to demonstrate how big of a crater it would make. But also, even with the height they were dropping from, everyone needed to be a LOT FURTHER back. They took some really dumb risks.
@@hellomark1 The dumbest thing to me was that they saw how they weights were swinging around like crazy below the helicopter and NOBODY thought to shorten the tether, if that tether was 3ft long it would've been much more accurate. What they really should have done though is make a mount/drop system strapped tight to the bottom of the helicopter that would lock the weights in place before release. That, coupled with fins, would have made an enormous difference.
@@watermelonsavage2914 not as much of a difference as it would have made with the way the helicopter itself was fidgeting, but it'd still have been better.
@@watermelonsavage2914 Yeah that bothered me too. They could have made a solid mount, or stabilized the strap with a few more anchor points... or ANYTHING really. Like you said, I'm surprised at how little actual engineering went into this.
Agreed. Using a laser or camera for vertical alignment would have been much more reliable than GPS. As someone else said, a shorter tether would reduce swing inaccuracy. Fins would increase flight stability on the rods. It's poorly enough done that if i were a conspiracy theorist, I might think they were being intentionally misleading.
Adam: "Does it have fins?"
Derek: "Why didn't we have this conversation weeks ago?"
I just hear Jaime in my mind. "Should have done the engineering." Shortly followed by, "When in doubt, lube."
*tub of lard
Yes, there's always time for lube.
Quack, damn you.
I was thinking the same thing as soon as I saw it??? everything that's a tube and is sent to fly has wings, except for bullets but they usually don't go that far
@@colenewton5183 Bullets are spin stabilized.
Well, the recent success of the Russian mach 10 IRBM has proven the "rods from God" concept actually works.
Nuts from God
I dont think it working is the problem 😂
@@alexanderxx2982those would be nuclear bombs
How? It was a rocket launched from land, not a rod launched from space
It contained explosives and wasn't that accurate, how is this analogous?
15:11 "It ripped right through the pool. Unbelievable." That's actually the most believable thing ever.
I put this knife to my skin and now I'm bleeding. Purely amazing and mind blowing. So happy we have science channels like this to show us that plastic pools will in fact rip when dropping a 150 pound piece of metal from thousands of feet in the air.
@@musstakrakish Who'd a thunk it?
Indeed, talk about a face palming "Well DUH" type of moment...
They have to over-act everything.
My nieces and nephews nephews have broken like 6 of these kiddie pools just being dumb kids
I find it funny that Adam Savage is in this video, and it's not even mentioned. I'm just used to him being the one talking to a camera out in the desert, busting a myth.
Smart to reach out to him! He’s probably the global expert on these things!
@MrBeest is ruining the planet[recent vid explains] 100%
@@jordancarter8310 and yet he didnt reach out to him and missed out on the vital "you should put fins on it" that noone else involved seemed to think of
The man needs no introduction, hes that iconic lol.
"We should have had this conversation yesterday..."
I find it hard to believe the engineering problems couldn't be worked out. At one time it was thought you couldn't hit a missile with another missile.
At one point we also thought that re-usable rockets are far-fetched.
KEW on that scale essentially fall under the nuclear disarmament treaties. They’re not mentioned explicitly, but any nation developing them would find itself negotiating soon.
The engineering problems have been worked out. We have tables based on windage for dropping troops out planes been doing it since nam.
We know exactly how far a t10 or t11 chute will fly given altitude and windage. Its not that hard to calculate the same for a rod. just add stabilizing fins. and walla
@@chiefgully9353 pretty much but there have been artillery charts for much longer than nam.
Well the video explains pretty clearly that the issue isn't launching a projectile and hitting a target. The issue is maintaining accuracy as weight, distance, and velocity increase exponentially. Launching a howitzer round 2 miles past the horizon is nowhere comparable to dropping a 10-tonne rod from 22,000 miles altitude, accounting for the change from a vacuum to entering the atmosphere and still trying to maintain enough accuracy to cripple installations. Artillery actually requires less accuracy than kinetic weapons, and it's cheaper and more accurate.
You said the worst "idea". This is a great idea, there is no fallout and it has the same destructive force as a nuke.
Yeah, I don't think they covered on how it might be a bad idea in reality. I could see it costing a lot more than we expect to set it up, but by all means, it seems like a sound proposal and I'm curious why we don't already have them.
Then again, maybe we do and the military just isn't telling us.
Hey maybe we don’t need a people killer 9000 I think that was the take there
@@Breecci We already have plenty of those, at least thus hypothetical one wont irradiate the surroundings for years.
it is a bad idea since its so expensive and you could achieve the same results with a airstrike or maybe a ballistic missile
Because it's expensive as frick to send stuff into space.
And a modern ICBM can do the same thing but without any risk of getting hacked or malfunctioning and releasing a bunch of unguided deadly projectiles all over the planet
I am so confused by how thoughtless this "experiment" was but how well researched the rest of the content was, even with the lamp shading by adam savage and later admitting to "screwing up", it felt more like a drunken idea hastily executed without anyone stopping to think than a high budget science demonstration.
I'm flabbergasted by how dumb this entire test was.
@@fluffylittlebear Same. I mean this is the worst Veritasium video by far. A city built of sand? What?
Honestly thought this was some sort of spoof after the first few minutes
Yeah this looks like it cost a ton of money for basically nothing. Why not build a little 25% scale house or something and do all the drops on that. Wtf was the point of the pool?
@@Mutantcy1992The point of the pool was probably just what you saw: If there was a hit, it would make a splash. Remember, this is video, and you have to have an interesting image.
This is about as good a test for rods from god as me sitting on my roof dropping marbles onto army men in my front yard.
so accurate
Meh: rods from god were a piss poor idea from the get go: the fact that you can deliver a bunch of energy without it being nuclear was about the only thing they had going for them, the fastest weapon ever devised was constrained by the slowest kill chain conceivable!
Pencils would be better since it’s more rod-like
I would watch that.
@@wilfdarr Don't under estimate the Rod from God concept. The original idea was rods the size of telephone poles made of 100% tungsten 20 ft long by 1ft diameter. These would hit a city with the impact force of a ground penetrating nuclear weapon and destroy any underground facility hundreds of feet underground. When dropped from orbit it would reach up to 10x the speed of sound without violation of the 1967 outer space weapons treaty which prohibits nuclear, biological and chemical weapons attacks from space signed by 107 countries. These rods would destroy an entire city just like a nuke and any bunker, base or silo under it for hundreds of feet with none of the nuclear fallout. While the targeting system and cost for something like this was near impossible at the height of the cold war its much more feasible now. Especially with advanced AI and the cost of moving things into space diminished It is more possible than ever before ! Unfortunately some weights would have to be dropped from space to gather data for the AI and I would not want to be the country those tests are landing on lol.
I can feel Adam Savage's pain when he asks if it has fins and this guy says no. How could you not think to put fins on it??
This would not have made Mythbusters...
@@kkrauter1 Ghostbusters? I'm dying now! 🤣 Whoopsie!
@@grinandferret Yikes!!! My bad...MYTHBusters!!!
@@kkrauter1well, it probably wouldn't have made Ghostbusters, either.
Too true...I got my "busters" mixed up!
2:35 got all the bloons td players hyped
The fact that they didn't seem to anticipate that a weight dangling from a helicopter on a tether would be swinging all over the place is ... odd to say the least.
Things like these in a video like this seems like it’s scripted
Sometimes a genius is so into the genius stuff, that he forgets about the basic stuff. Whenever I try to do something smart, a rookie mistake just screws it up.
@@AgeDrain What exactly should be scripted about this?
Also the weight was not pointed on one end. How much more could have cost them to weld some steel fins to it?
ikr, like they can make the rope shorter or something to increase precision.
8:15 I like to imagine that Adam Savage just materializes whenever something fun like this is happening in the desert
Well, that's my headcanon now too
Are they so firearm averse they couldnt have spent a few grand to get a 20mm single shot gun and 4 or five rounds and made it a real experiment? Jeez.. Adam Savage probably suggested this...
Derek needs to speak with Darrel Barnette who worked for several years on projects like this for DOD.
The videos that are public from the railgun and gravity weapons for DOD were taken by or with Darrel.
@@JonMahn You can buy a 20mm for a lot less than a grand, also, pretty sure Derek lives in Cali so...... no. Lol.
@@JonMahn Using a gun doesn't demonstrate the basic principle of "just dropping a big weight from high up is powerful". It would kinda defeat the point of the video.
Your aiming problem was because your rods were pendulums, so they had significant lateral velocities that threw them off target. you should have had them in hardpoint mounts under the chopper so they'd be dropped with zero lateral velocity.
Don't forget about the drag that was caused by the massive strap that was trailing behind it.
@@Bimmer_MD negligible at that velocity and mass, esp given that straps 'drag" didn't prevent the posts from falling sideways.
Needs fins as well to keep the center of drag begin the center of mass, so it stays straight rather than drifting off to the side. Realistically it needs GPS guiding with fins as well because there will always be wind hitting the rods broadside. imo this video was really poorly done, many of these issues could have been mitigated with just an hour or reviewing potential issues and small scale tests, and a week of implementing the fixes full scale.
@@InfernoViperz123 at the speeds they are testing at, the fins would need to be large, and the larger they are, the more wind will blow them off course as well. Now they are realizing why bomb zones in WW2 were often miles wide from a single wave of bombers. yes, GPS or laser buiding would be necessary. A real THOR warhead would have GPS and inertial guidance, as well as active radio guidance from a spotter either on the ground or in space, particularly for hitting moving targets like aircraft carriers.
The problem with a hard mount, is that the object would _still_ be affected by the turbulence caused by the heli rotor the moment it was released. That turbulence extends downwards for a fair distance beneath the chopper before it even starts to ease away. And then once it does you have the general motion of the atmosphere to deal with - which in a hot desert area is probably a fair amount at that height. Only fins can counter this issue - especially adjustable fins whos angle can be adjusted to counter any spin/lateral movement.
Final words "I'm pretty glad this weapon is only feasible in science fiction".
Russia 2024: "hold my beer"
Мы все в шоке не удивлюсь если через пару лет у нас будет варп двигатели
Honestly I'm surprised about how elementary this set up was
I wouldn't attempt it without an arduino based targeting system tested in KSP. Since it's not meant for combat, image processing can be simplified a lot by placing a few bright lights around the target.
What do you do?
I'd drop it on a wire guide. A few hundred meters of 3mm steel wire and a set of roller guides could get it reliably on target
@@wyattroncin941 There is absolutely no point. You are needlessly increasing resistance and weight carried on the heli while the same could be achieved over radio. Wifi might lack the range. Idk, whatever drones are using would do.
@@aleksanderczajka6072 a rope rail system would certainly be heavy and expensive, but it would be simple to get opperational, and wouldn't be destroying $200+ in hardware per drop, and it's practically guaranteed to work.
This seemed like a "lot of money, not a lot of thought" video. No one thought about how the rods were going to hit their targets until the day of?? Fins are a bare minimum, you could have even done some gps-based bang bang course corrections with an arduino or something. Of course then you are basically designing a precision guided bomb like Mark Rober noted in his egg drop video.
This felt like a producer made video, with mr. Veritasium just hosting. Sub par quality for this channel
Very underwhelming.
A precision guidance system with accelerometers dropping longer thinner rods with fin stabilization from heavy lift drones on much, much bigger sandcastle city from much higher. That would have been cool to see.
Yeah, the producer not doing a good enough job
Big blimp tethered to the target, have the tether act as a zip line to target. Wait for a less windy day.
It's not the wind causing the swinging, it's that you created a long pendulum which exacerbated any vibrations and movement from the helicopter. You would want a 3 or 5 point strap system that the quick release drops from. Combine that with a set of fins and you'd be able to pretty consistently hit the target.
Yeah if it were the wind it wouldn't swing with an even periodicity, it would be biased to one side.
The wind could start off the pendulum action and keep it going longer. Theoretically it could also stop the action.
Yes!!! Thank you Raven! I almost stopped the video purely due to his statement of it being the wind. I typically enjoy his videos, this was terrible and for such an individual to have a fair level of intellect to miss so many key points was very frustrating to watch. Possibly his worst video yet.
Curious…have you studied physics and what degree did you obtain?
or just use a plane and some rudimentary ww2 era bombing targeting system. if you lob it, not drop it, it's much more accurate, as long as it's fin stabilised.
You’re trying to tell me that orbital kinetic weapons are a worse idea than the CIA plot to turn a cat into a living surveillance device
I’m honestly a little bit dumbfounded that they went through the whole process without considering down wash, swaying, and the rod’s stability. They didn’t even have a backup plan? (Pivot to just creating the largest impact possible, since this is all about the explosive potential of a KE weapon, not accuracy)
They could have created a larger impact but they were so inaccurate they would not have been able to position a camera to film it without endangering the people operating the camera
Mate the fact they used SAND to showcase destruction of KE weapons might be the most moronic thing in this video. The substance that is LITERALLY known for its ability to do a good job stopping bullets because of it.
Yeah, it seems like an 8th grader did the math and planned this out. It’s hilarious that physicists didn’t think about physics 😂
To be fair he does admit it's his biggest failure, but yes you'd need a very thin, very long rope to not have to deal with wind from the helicopter blades, in turn the helicopter is buffeted by winds, it can't be steady either meaning that the projectile is always moving in a vaguely circular motion modified by the difference between where the helicopter was at this point in the last rotation and the current location.
Setting the rod spinning with impeller-like fins would steady the trajectory of the rod but wouldn't help with getting it pointed at the right target and not imparting some spurious steering input as it's dropped.
Probably the logical thing to do would be to put a "tungsten warhead" on a conventional missile and fire it on a "kinetic trajectory" (ie: straight down) from a great height (orbit, hopefully). Normal missiles have already solved all the problems rods would face, and could impart more energy as well as actively steering towards the target.
This whole documentary is an embarrassment.
If you’re wondering why Adam is there, if you look at the details it’s the exact same site, helicopter, and crew from the penny drop video released 2 months ago. I suspect it was a pooled resource shooting multiple experiments at one time to minimize cost.
Although it’s much cooler to think that Adam myth buster sense starts tingling and he just shows up whenever cool experiments are going down.
Sniff sniff... I smell science!!!
I reject your reality and substitute my own!
Say, "Is it gonna blow up?" and Adam shows up behind you. He's the Savage Candyman.
@@FlyinSparky Watch out it doesn't always work as planned, last time I did some crazy science experiments only Bill Nye showed up.
All this crew and no one stopped to think about how hard it would be to hit the target? I think the story would have been just as interesting (or maybe even more interesting considering how underwhelming the impacts ended up being) without any targets, just going for the maximum drop height and letting it fall wherever. That would have at least demonstrated the power of kinetic energy, assuming you designed a projectile with high enough terminal velocity.
Yeah I get why this video was released considering the cost but...
The high cost could've been reduced AND you could've better tested kinetic energy. Makes the video quite pointless. Also really not a fan of this editing/production.
My thoughts exactly, though it would be hard to catch on camera!
Exactly. If the point was to demonstrate the release of the maximum possible kinetic energy, there was no need to do the whole targeting thing. Just take the rod really high and drop it. Film the results. One other issue is the effect the lift strap had on the aerodynamics of the object. Maybe rethink this a bit?
Yeah, I think the best drop was when the rod just completely buried itself, I think that showed a lot of power on it's own
The other problem is knowing where it might hit. It's clear there's going to be some drift as the object falls so you need more safe zone space the higher you go. At 3 kilometers I would want a safe space of at least a kilometer. Finding that sort of space where the land is flat enough that you can see the object hit and catch it on film is going to be tough. Plus actually having a camera close enough to the spot it hits to catch the impact point close up is going to be nearly impossible with a helicopter.
What you need is something that can go up and drop the object over the target with no wind blowing the object around like some sort of UFO. Maybe on of those drone platforms designed to carry people might work. Only with the fans extended out another ten to twenty feet so that their downward force is far enough from the object that it isn't impacted by that turbulence. Which requires someone like Bezos to fund the development.
Uh you should look at the figure for Oreshnik. Mach 11 impact in a pretty tight group. It's basically a suborbital missile that does this.
Russian engineers easily solved this problem! Oreshnik kinetic precision weapon with 36 warheads
Im an engineering student and my first thought was to add fins to these rods, with a bunch of other stuff that would easily make them way more accurate. This whole thing feels very under prepared.
LOL yeah he says its a bad idea but i dont think he really understands what the concept is, Fins as well as a design to make it accelerate even faster on the way down seem pretty simple
USA BS, or Hollywood?
I‘m a Industrial Design and Informatics Student and this was also my first thought + maybe a arduino with a gyroscope that controlls the rod to point straight down… what would that‘ve cost? 50-100$ and a few hours of testing? Definitely nothing compared to chartering a Helicopter for a day
@@Simoxs7 and a small rocket engine to increase acceleration. There's no way the real thing wouldn't have had some sort of initial acceleration.
No comparison since one is the speed of a meteor the other is just a plop
I appreciate the honesty and I understand why you had to post it.
But brother if you had spent an hour with a ballistic expert enquiring about a good way to showcase this it would have worked a million times better.
And like everyone is suggesting, dropping the biggest weight from the heighest height you can just to see the crater size would be a much more enjoyable video than this.
I won't think less of your content from one failure and i'm sure it's a very complicated process but this one felt really like a lack of forethought
What irks me about the whole thing is it demonstrates an extremely shallow understanding of the topic at hand while oozing “self-satisfactory professionalism”, my next thought then is the question “On how many other topics that are less obvious did they do similar mistakes?”
It's to try to get more youth interested in the USA military. I hope it's not working!
Ir tie a crash Cam tied to a long rope to the weight with a small stabilizer parachute so you can record it no matter where it goes
@@MichaelButlerC so it's just propaganda then? If so then wow boy is the FCC going to have a field day
@@MichaelButlerCyou say that till you need them
There are so many errors in the design and execution of this experiment, that one would almost think it was intentional.
for fuckin real
Exactly what I was thinking. Could’ve made the impact end a pointed end. Could’ve added wings. Added vents, more straps to stop the swinging. Just downright horrible execution
Author oversteps literary license with misleading statements many times.
Considering that shortly before this video was published, Mark Rober put up a video where he was well on his way to designing a system to do exactly this kind of guidance dropping an egg FROM SPACE (way higher than shown here), and he was already dropping from 10k feet (3048 meters) with an accuracy in a reasonable ballpark of what was achieved here, in scale, I'd say that with the technical resources of the US military contracting industry, this definitely COULD be done. It would be fairly costly, but uh... if Mark Rober with a few engineer friends and something like a Raspberry Pi or Arduino and a not absurd amount of code can get that far, that relatively fast, I'm sure it wouldn't take too long or too much money to develop a working system. Deploying the rapid response coverage is the issue, NOT making the projectile control be precise enough. Communicating a target would be trivial, and once loaded, no actual guidance from the ground would be needed - as demonstrated by how well Rober did so quickly. They only stopped from developing their system because of the snares of legality and ethics, when they realized they were developing a guided missile.
Yes, this concept is functionally possible and on a smaller scale with less time response definitely feasible.
his experiment was flawed.. he needs to get a smaller object up closer to mach 1 to do any real kinetic damage... if you think about it the shock wave would be enormous..and the impact it rather small whoops right.. they cant show that on youtube..
You call it rods from god, I call it Odin. Call of Duty Ghost was the best.
Finally, I have been using ctrl f to find someone who also made the connection. I also loved Ghosts! (I did not have xbox live for multiplayer)
4 point rigging, fins, better weight distribution, and crosswinds are things I would have assumed would have been thought of for something this expensive. If it was just a backyard experiment type thing I get not doing all the bells and whistles and just trying to make a big hole. But I feel almost bad no one thought of this before dumping what appears to be a large amount of money into something of this caliber. You live and you learn.
At a minimum, they could have made the straps much shorter. Less swing that way.
@ I can't believe they didn't talk about the swinging and the potential for harminic motion due to the helicopter pilot's compensation. He kept saying the "wind was blowing it all over the place" - something tells me the wind didn't have nearly as big an impact on that 450lb cubic foot of metal as the helicopter did.
I was bothered by some of the other commentary as well. The cube punching straight through the bottom of the intex pool was "unbelievable"? Really??
For me this video was just a miss all around, pun intended.
I feel like this was one of Derek's absolute worst vids for all these reasons. It was just dumb, unscientific, hype.
@ You read my mind!!!! Shorten the straps, have a 4 or 6 point harness to hold whatever they were going to drop which would exponentially minimize the swinging!!! They spent a ton of money prior to thinking everything through. Oh well........ next time (maybe.....)
I don't like when they are all for example doubtful if the helicopter is actually at the right altitude. At the beginning of the vid. I mean, a pilot probably would know...
Impressive how little research went into this.
It was all planned just for the punchline at the end.
"I would say it is my biggest failure of all time, which as it turns out, is also something you could say about the actual weapon Rods from God."
The whole setup is so crappy it's obvious he never intended for it to succeed.
Did you see all the producers that were involved? lol, so embarrassing.
@UCiUl8dZIzCkGUyB6nrTpOTg Ye, or instead of having the weight tied outside the coptor, have the guy chuck it. So, you don't waste so much fuel to reload.
@@L1ft0ff They're all 20 somethings from prestigious universities. You can't expect them to do anything except hate everyone beneath them.
@@BestCosmologist calm down, edgelord
Kinda surprised that nobody realized that this was never going to work. Id expect this from a Mr. Beast video but not Veritasium. Usually he simulates outcomes with equations before going into the field to test.
Big little boys playing sand castles?... Why not!
Yeah, actually it really surprised me too, derek usually plans things really well, since Adam was there maybe this was at the same time they tested the pennies and the dropping of really big thing was just and afterthought?
I expected he would mention the "Iraqi bunker busters" the US used against Iraqi bunkers in the Kuwait invasion. They did contain explosives, but still used the kinetic energy to penetrate really deep, at least 15 meters (45 feet). Probably not feasible to be recreated by a youtuber tho.
@@iFix. This is what happened. They just decided to milk this and release this video, which is going to make insane money; this video got 200,000 in 1 hour. So they got two videos out of this 'project' they did. Easily making over $500,000 from both videos when you consider the sponsorship as well
So many of you really don't understand the point of this video, and it's sad because his audience is usually fairly educated.
Adam savage coming in and asking "Did you put fins on that thing?" was extremely telling of the quality of the experiment.
"We gonna drop rods from several kilometers up"
Ok well that sounds hard but Veritasium probably knows what hes doing.
**Pulls up mobile to get target GPS and gets into a helicopter with the payload just dangling freely a few meters under**
Im surprised they didnt hit themself...
Yea or rig up steerable fins with a live FPV camera so you can guide it.
I don't know how this guy has so many subs if this is how he operates...
Error margins on GPS being bigger than the target.
@@hunterahudsoninstall the GPS right into the body, and just launch it like an actual rocket. That’s how you’ll test it.
@Karl with a K just as competent as experts in any and every single field out there. no more, no less. regardless of how many we educate, truly intelligent people remain in short supply.
When Adam "Does it have fins?" His laugh was like "this guy has never dropped anything from this high huh?"
It was so odd that a science channel didn’t think of this, like it seems obvious to me to put fins or to drop the cylinder by some type of rigid attachment to the helicopter or something.
I thought that immediately.
@@Mr_Vosakisen It's kind of weird how unprepared he was for this, like he's trying to be Mark Rober but doesn't realize how much thought and preparation goes into even his failures
@@teflontelefon There are "fins" on the animated one, they go inward instead of outward
@@teflontelefon Can't trust the marketing photos without seeing the actual engineering lol.
15:08 "It ripped right through the pool. Unbelievable!"
A 200kg cube of metal against a flimsy plastic membrane.
Who would have thought?
Hydrogen bomb vs Coughing baby
@@ashutoshkumar3864 Hydrophobic acid vs cancer patient
Christ…this sums the video up wholly.
im convinced veritasium is specially educated
It could have been a magic pool? Mb with magic water?
It's not a science fiction, it's already a reality, Introducing the Russian ICBM Oreshnik, speed: Mach 11 with 16 warheads
36 of them
@@zinit22 Thank you for the correction
Oreshnik kinetic precision weapon with 36 warheads
looks like Putin read comments :D
We'll take Russia serious when they can capture a neighboring weaker country, it was just 20 years ago that America conquered Iraq and Afghanistan in less than 3 months
So, the issue I have with this video is that while it is an amusing concept, it really poorly conveys the effects of the kinetic energies involved which are way outside the domain these kinds of mundane drops can achieve.
As noted early in the video, true hyperkinetic impacts result in violently explosive energies and liquefaction of the impact area, so the physical dynamics are completely different than low energy kinetic impacts from things like bullets or simple dropped weights.
The fact he literally has video which explains why scaling things is so difficult in science and how it needs additional adjustments but then makes this trash ....tragic.
Agreed this is baffling
That's the part I don't get - something coming in from orbit is way different than dropping a weight from a few hundred meters.
@@natalyawoop4263 terminal velocity is a thing but that doesn't scale well with this size weight
its because he isnt as smart as he would have you belive he is.
*rod swinging wildly back and forth on the helicopter*
everyone: "wow I can't believe that missed the target."
OMG it can land sideways if you have no fins? How could we possibly know that before renting a helicopter?
The drop at 17:35 was ridiculous. If it was rigidly mounted to the base of the chopper and had fins it would've hit the middle of the city.
Shorten the strap and involve a professional surveyor.
If they did a quick reading of wind speed and direction, or maybe did a better probably cylindrical harness this would’ve been a much better experiment. Maybe it was a rush video
😂😂😂😂😅😅😅😅
*gets helicopter and world-class sandcastle builders before testing how cylinders fall*
Derek noooo
Adam Savage mentioned that to derek when they were doing the bullet/ penny drop episode.
@@quertbarbie62 I'm pretty sure that was this exact conversation, from the same shoot. They tried to make two videos at the same time, only got one good one, and then posted the bad one too, just for kicks.
@@MobiusPeverell surely you aren't calling the penny one good.
@@Cssfiend False.
NOW they posted both so your presumltion has now been invalidated.
not surprising since this show has turned into click bait and tv type videos.
Desert Blast Test: *_Exists_*
Adam Savage, rising from a demonic summoning circle: *"WHO DARES TO SUMMON THE SAVAG-* _Ooh, lovely test you've set up!_ What a you using as a control group?"
Redditor
Let's be honest here I think we all want you to do another redo video of the experiment targeting the problems you faced here.
The original business model of RUclips stank, but at least the ads were reasonable.
New flood of invasive, repetitive, and offensive ads are EVIL.
Google is now fully dedicated to doing any evil that seems profitable.
And censoring complaints, too.
@@ShannonJacobs0 loser
@@ShannonJacobs0 what
Personally, I'd like to see Laser guided rods
@@ShannonJacobs0 I agree with you, but that literally has nothing to do with the OP
Years of experience doing stuff like this, constant contact with world renown scientists, complex logistics involving several teams of people, Adam Savage who has done this for most of his life and somehow the test turned out like this.
Welcome to soulles entertainment. This video was made for sharing it in 30 second clips on facebook and generating ad money.
Sadly almost all large content creators get ground down and bought by big business.
Adam savage was just visiting,he wasn't really involved
He was actually a desert mirage.
@@fiiredark He always was...
Yeah this is disgraceful. How do you make a science show, and have this loose a grasp on how to apply it practically
I have to imagine this experiment was rushed or something, because I would've expected Derek to take a lot of these issues into consideration. There are a lot of good suggestions in the comments that would've given them a better chance, but I think the bigger issue is that they felt the need to do this at all.
Veritasium videos are usually much more information-based; telling stories of scientists or interviewing experts in an interesting field. There's no need to do Mr.Beast-esque stunts like this, especially when there's such a high chance of failure
It's like he outsourced all of it to his interns and just showed up for filming.
Maybe he really isn't very smart, I mean he does make YT videos for a living?
100% gov contracted work. Where else do you see projects of this verbosity without any substance
@@QuasiDude He has a PhD in Physics Education Research. His thesis was "Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education", ie. creating educational RUclips videos. Still a PhD, but not in Physics- in education. And you know what they say about those that can't do...
@@QuasiDude More of a Ph.D in education about physics through media as it is defined.
The sandcastle builders are incredibly chill. Knowing that your sandcastle would be hit by a telephone pole traveling faster than sound is not really amusing.
this is "testing" rods of gods, like shooting a spitball at a wall is testing a bazooka
TRUE
not a wall but a pile of sand could give a good idea about a bazooka impact on broken particles probably
The difference being that a bazooka exists. How seriously do you want a RUclipsr to take a subject this silly?
The point is that this isn’t a efficient way to distribute energy as the force is to focused to effect a large area . I’m sure it would do great work in the case of a giant kaiju or robot though
@@ashscott6068 by saying "this has nothing to do with rods of god, we just wanted to drop stuff from a helicoptor, they explain the rods work by hitting hard enough to create actual explosions, whis would be like testing grenades by throwing rocks at a wall, you are skipping the whole bit that makes it effective, the explosion
I think just one hour of consulting with a professional would make the results wayyyy different!
I mean shoot Adam Savage magically appeared and within a few minutes of the helicopter lifting up thought to ask if it had fins on it lmao.
@@hereandnow3156 Right? He had THE professional right there the whole time!
i mean he had adam savage there.. he could have spent 10 minutes with him and solved a lot of pain..
@@bconnler yeah, and Adam almost looked in pain when he asked if it had fins on it.
Just releasing the weights when it reached to the apex of the swing would have made all the drops a lot more accurate. Just like when you jump off a swing on a swingset at the apex you go straight down rather then jumping off in the middle of the swing.
Given the relative lack of anything beyond visual targeting, this video is functionally a demonstration of why, in WW2, they estimated there was only a 1% chance of a bomb falling within 100 feet of the intended target (thus necessitating hundreds of bombs/bombers in order to have a high likelihood of actually blowing up what you wanted blown up)
Actually, this was their measured result, not just estimated. This was very disappointing, as they'd had high hopes for their bomb sight technology.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤙🏽🍻🇦🇺
This. I absolutely expected the video to have something to say about WW2 bombing raids.
Also relying on a phone GPS system for targeting, which has an accuracy of about 10 meters
Exactly. No wonder we needed so many bombs and bombers to level Germany....
How does this man not know basic physics and has a science show
"it ripped right through the pool. Unbelievable!" What's so unbelievable that a chunk of steel being drop from the sky goes right through a shallow plastic pool?
🤣🤣🤣😂
I think their concern was about the accuracy
Yeah, that comment got me too. Clutching at straws for this car crash of a video.
my thought exactly lol
why are these people acting smart when they cant even understand what people are tryna say
I don't know if you can afford it, But this video needs a revisit. Ideally with more effort put into the rods than the sand buildings.
If you ‘dropped’ a rod from geo synchronous, it would just orbit in geo synchronous orbit….You would have to launch it from orbit.
It would be relatively easy to make them gps guided. Some basic flight controller or even an FPV pilot.
if you need you appetite whet now, check out Mark Rober's egg drop from space
Honestly the only way to test this is in a silo using an overhead crane/winch and a quick release. The fact that the projectile was swinging side to side ruined the accuracy as much as anything else they failed to do in the projectiles construction.
However that means they can't drop it from as high as they can from the helicopter.
Yes, the effort was wasted on a perfect sand city and not put in considering how to hit a target by dropping a not-aerodynamic rod swinging (!) under a helicopter.
Entirely shocked that you didn't expect a cylinder to turn on it's side given the air resistance the end of the cylinder would be experiencing compared to the rest of the cylinder.
seriously, you can figure this out just by throwing a pencil up in the air.. it's very hard to get a pencil shaped object to land vertically in the dirt..
@@wolfgang2453 but if you throw one really fast upwards with a half spin you can stick them in the ceiling 10/10 times - further research needed.
@@wolfgang2453 That’s why they should have added fins
Even watching old Airforce or Nasa files on dummy drops, they show the payload with fins.
Revisiting this video two years later - Russia has deployed a weapons system that delivers 36 guided tungsten rods at mach 12 with absolute precision. It's different when you have a powered MIRV
are we really comparing military tech with some random youtuber? lol people expect too much from (content creators - entertainment only)
@liam78587 I am not saying anything about the video, which is fantastic and historically accurate. I am pointing out that it is incredible people fogured out how to use kinetic ballstic tungsten in just a few short years.
I was really surprised it wasn't just a few of us noticing the complete lack of aerodynamic consideration going into such an expensive project. Anyone who has tried throwing a stick as a spear can tell you it will tumble around. Hundreds of other people are already saying it, but I'll say it too: fins. Some rear drag surfaces (some people have even suggested spin-stabilizing fins which was a positive surprise) really would have been so simple to do. Tons of people working on this project, but I guess anyone realizing it needed fins wasn't comfortable enough to speak up or there was some kind of deliberate reason for excluding them.
Almost as if they did it wrong intentionally...
What say if we show people on an open internet like RUclips how to make weapons of ass destruction? Okay, so, maybe instead we make a video detailing how not to do it and say that it can't be done as if it hasn't been done already and isn't being done right now?
How will the average person launch massive rods of tungsten into space and then back at earth?
@@kaneanwalsh6943 Weapons of ass destruction lol. I know what you meant but that's just too funny.
I haven't watched the vid yet, but I'm assuming this test never reaches a hypersonic regime. Are fins even effective at those speeds?
the tip should have been the heaviest part - clearly they didn't think ANYTHING through one single second
Pretty much all they proved is that they put minimal thought into this and that it's hard to drop things precisely from a helicopter.
Gee who would have thought? Apparently them.
I know! I'm surprised how much money was spent with so little care as to why.
Agreed, I thought the purpose was to find out the destructive force of the rods and scale it up, not find the most inefficient way to destroy a sand castle.
My opinion they should try to make it work and less on accuracy bc the accuracy can always come after you figure out how to drop the rod straight
At least do a test drop before making a video😅
I can't believe anyone would think that they were going to get any accuracy at all with that setup. I'm bloody positive they all knew about pendulums *before* they went out there.
I’ve watched enough mythbusters to know that you always attach radio controlled aerodynamic surfaces to hunks of metal whenever your dropping them from a helicopter.
@@the_regulator1145 I'd've thought at least a rigid "launch tube" or guide rail fixed to the side of the helicopter. Something other than a bloody-great pendulum
Shorten the strap up you don't need 50 feet of strap. Gees
@@williamkowalchik572 That'd just make it oscillate faster 😁
@@wolf1066 even just having a shorter pundulum arm.. Take out the 15ft of strap and put it right against the copter. Problem solved.
Mythbusters would've had that in small scale and then done it right. I love that Adam just shows up with no explanation or introduction and immediately grades them on not having fins. This is why he's the GOAT.
"We're trying to recreate Rods From God"
Literally just drops a metal stick from a few hundred meters up.
I was swimming in the ocean once and a small wave hit me, this proves that tsunamis aren't all that bad and people are totally overreacting, like it's just water bro.
first thought i had. who cares about orbital velocities/aerodynamics/atmospheric drag when you can get VIEWS??
Adam Savage doing tests in the middle of the desert… seems nostalgic. 😂
Funny thing was, when I hovered over video to do the "preview autoplay" thing. I saw a guy with an Adam Savage goatee wearing his hat and laughing/smiling. I was sure it was someone that just happened to look like him. But no it was actually Adam Savage.
@@agentkirb Pretty sure this was shot at the same time as the earlier penny drop video with Savage in it -- same helicopter, I think the same clothes, and it makes sense to do it all as one set of rentals/excursion.
Honestly that was the highlight of this vid.
He needs money for young girls
@@rickgreer7203 Sounds up to the point.
I'm convinced Adam Savage just spawns in the desert, like he shows up out of nowhere and so casually too.
I suspect they did this and their penny drop video in the same session
@@KINGJERMARCUS ratio
@@LeadFarmer1597 Please, it is a well known fact that if you stand in the middle of the desert with a camera and a mildy-complicated physics problem to solve then you risk attracting a wild mythbuster or worse... the ferocious Heineman's Desert Walrus.
He's the spirit of the desert
Russia: Hold my vodka
You just know that the ENTIRE time Adam was watching this, he was trying to suppress his desire to say:
"Uhm... why no fins?"
Because that would have been the *first* thing he thought while looking at it, having dropped a bunch of things from heights, before.
He was in on the planning as he said to adam why didnt you say that a week ago. Either Adam is getting old or this bs is scripted.
@@mikaellindqvist5599 thats not what happened. 8:12
veritasium was saying that he wished that they had had that conversation a week ago, which they wouldve IF adam had been involved in the prep.
adam has dropped things from altitude several times. why would he forget things that even i would know having never done it?
@@mikaellindqvist5599 Derek DREAMS he had have spoken to Adam earlier, but he didn't... because Adam wasn't in on the planning at all. Hence Derek saying he wishes they had have spoken about this project sooner than on the day. Adam would have totally caught this early and saved them a lot of time/effort.
@@sunnymon1436 Holy crap thatbmakes this awful channel even more useless. A freaking daydreamer....
Guess he didn't at any point think of an arrow? 🏹 😅 like ya need some fletching bruv
IT BAFFLES ME the incompetence in this video! from someone who I look up to, who I perceive as incredibly bright!
Agreed, this was a piss poor attempt, everything can be scaled down with the exception of the velocity of the projectile, but with that reduced to pedestrian speeds it's just pissing around in the desert with a chopper and some sand castle builders...
You look up to him.... lmao...
I'm surprised he's gotten this far without learning he'd need fins on the rod. Should've talked to savage apparently
i am SHOCKED they didnt think of that. I mean this in the most respectful way possible. I think hes a smart dude. how was anyone surprised that "its really swinging"?? even the trick shot youtube channels (like HowRidiculous, DudePerfect, etc) hit small targets from very high up. Im really amazed that stuff wasnt thought about
Really, the thing im amazed by is that they underestimated this. Dropping stuff from high up is something people have done for a long time lol. we know its hard. the fact they were like "we're above it" and didnt even mention that wind could push it to the side as like whugt. All this said, smart people make mistakes all the time. so im not hating. im just surprised
@@pvic6959 Yup, pretty poorly researched.
Sometimes incredibly smart people don’t always succeed at applying relevant knowledge. Saw it all the time in school. Classmates that could solve differential equations would struggle to apply concepts from physics 1.
They could just use a rope or something with one end on the ground and the other on the helicopter, and use that to guide the rod to the target.
@@shenjingbing2293 500m of rope seems like a lot of rope though
Fins are definitely the right move. However, the strap that holds the payload is too long. Make the strap shorter and it will probably do less swinging, which in my opinion is causing the payload to miss the target.
How did someone not think "this thing needs fins" in the first 60 seconds of this idea getting discussed? 🤣
It's almost like literally every dumb bomb is shaped the same for a reason or something lmao
@@Acidburn1155 Every bomb has fins
Im guessing they wanted the shape to be closely associated to the orig project.
ofcourse, a blunt object gets rounded after atmosphere entry, and wind/air is not a factor after gaining it's velocity, so yeah, to emulate those conditions, they would have to emulate completely opposite conditions in this context, iycmd
guess they should have gone to space.
The effort was wasted on a perfect sand city and not put in considering how to hit a target by dropping a not-aerodynamic rod swinging (!) under a helicopter.
Seems only Adam Savage did lol
I can’t imagine how awkward this entire thing must have been. Watch people build sand castles, have Adam Savage literally appear for 10 seconds, and just attempt after attempt of poof, dust clouds 😂
They spent the time and money for sandcastles just to be like "We're dropping it on a walmart pool instead."
Who could know it would be hard to aim when dangling a weight from a flying object in windy conditions /s
@@Markmagoo I think lot of engineers, theoretical scientists tend to underestimate practical issues. But may be I am wrong.
@@Markmagoo Literally any scientist in a field related to the experiment. It would have taken ten seconds for some guy in a lab coat to sit in front of a computer and go "nah, wind exists".
Fun note: the only reason why the fins wasn't there was because those rods wouldn't have fins in the first place (instead, it got weight ball and thrusters). Other than that and some so-so engineering the test, good point. Cool in theory, but those rods from god are too ridiculous to be executed feasibly by sane things (let alone practically). So there you go.
Concept introduction: "Sounds interesting."
5:04 Finless steel rod 3 ft. long, helicopter, sand castle: "What???"
It's not even an accurately scaled expirement by a long shot lol
Right? This video sucks.
hahahaha, I know! I was like that too. Also disappointed at how they didn't explore the future implications of this idea (can anyone say cheap 3d printed in space boulders falling over your enemy country?)
20:00 we can accuartely steer hypersonic MIRVs into targets, so its absolutely possible to direct "Rods from God" as well.
I love how Adam Savage was just *there*
like there was no explanation as to why, he just sensed an explosion and was like "im in"
In my 5th grade science class I asked my teacher the same question you posed @10:01 - why are all the craters on the moon circular? I compared it to throwing rocks in a lake and how they will always leave a circular ripple no matter the angle of throw or shape of the rock. We wrote in to a popular science magazine and they answered back and of course stated what you did here! Amazing. Thank you for reminding me!
The moment I saw the thumbnail I was like "there's no way it could work without fins?!?" And lo and behold I thought they'd prove history wrong. I think a lot of viewers questioned the lack of a fin before the first drop happened with all that swinging 😂
lo and behold*
>>> The lo in the expression probably originated from the shortening of the word look, commonly seen in Middle English texts. Its presence in literature can be traced to at least as early as the 18th century. The literal meaning of the expression is "look and see", and it is always used as if in the imperative.
> there's no way it could work without a fin
I know, right? Everything works better with a Finnish person in command.
You could eventually add some gyroscopic effect by spinning it to avoid the swinging (like a bullet). This could be done with some twisted rubber from bungee jumping or something. The fins will only help after gaining some airspeed so not while swinging under the helicopter
@@AeroJ-yz4gv fire it out of a fixed tube, that would be easier to aim.
@@chronxdevall you did was plagiarize google. copy and paste ? Intellect superiority signal denied.
Aftermath inside talk: "So, we did this dumb idea with 0 forethought and the result belongs to the trash"
Him: *"Publish it anyways, we spent a lot on this, we have to make some money back even if this is a big waste of time for us and anyone watching it!*
Russian engineers easily solved this problem! Oreshnik kinetic precision weapon with 36 warheads
kinetic bombardment was not developed as an "answer" to soviet ICBMs. it was developed as a weapon that cannot be defeated and is capable of hitting any target anywhere in the world within an hour without the giant red flag of a missile launch that can be detected across the world.
Giant red flag with a hammer and sickle on it?
@@lachlan1971 well, most likely. an ICBM launch can be detected anywhere in the world. a kinetic weapon cannot be detected until it's too late and it cannot be defeated.
@@aaronkcmo "a kinetic weapon cannot be detected until it's too late and it cannot be defeated."
Can not be defeated... but I am sure the Chinese, Indians, Pakistani and Israelis are aware of this weapon. The moment the incoming rods are detected is the moment the nukes would start flying.
@@thechloromancer3310 uh, this weapon doesn't exist. it's been superseded by hypersonic rockets and jets. are you suggesting that any of these countries would respond to conventional weapons with an all-out nuclear assault? seems highly unlikely since India, Pakistan and Israel do not possess the ability to launch a first strike against the united states. china, having that ability, would seem unlikely to initiate a global nuclear war in retaliation considering their entire country would be obliterated. this weapons system wasn't ever designed to be a strategic deterrent like the nuclear arsenal, it has always been a covert, precise, prompt global strike system that was meant to take out precision high-value targets such as assassinations. btw, by in the time it takes for a hypersonic weapon is detected and for that weapon to reach its target, there would not be enough time to even distribute launch orders to a nuclear arsenal, let alone actually see missiles fly. if an adversary were to launch a nuclear weapon in retaliation to a hypersonic missile or kinetic bombardment it would be a serious escalation, not a response in kind.
@@aaronkcmoThe other commenter seems to be assuming these would be city-burners, like in some popular media, and used like nuclear weapons. You are correct to dispel that notion. However, you claim this weapon has been "superseded by hypersonic rockets and jets." It has not, they fill different profiles. This theoretical weapon is not practical for a variety of mechanical and political reasons, so hypersonics fill most of the role. But hypersonics have nowhere near the same survivability as a kinetic penetrator, just look at tank combat. APFS is far more reliable than ATGM at killing tanks.
Honestly if he had just anticipated the fact that it would be unlikely to hit a target from 500 meters (it only takes a small amount of research to know this btw) he could've dropped the object into the sand from a significantly higher height, and at the crater site he'd be like "According to our calculations, this delivered the equivalent of X amount of TNT into this crater. We're now going to test what X amount of TNT would look like if it hit our sand castle city." Then use X TNT explosive planted in the sand city to see what the damage would look like.
Yeah but then you don't get to put a whole crew of people in harms way like they did here.
I like it.
Pretty good idea
u dont need to go higher. Air also has resistance and is stopping acceleration at a point. the whole experiment is dumb
lol that youtube comments are smarter written in 3 minutes are smarter than the 100k production value video
Aiming a drop from an aircraft involves calculating wind speeds at various altitudes to adjust for the push. I’m surprised that this didn’t come up at all in the planning (maybe it did behind the scenes but you seemed caught-off when it was blowing and swinging from a helicopter, and that seemed an obvious thing that would happen)
The whole video is designed to entertain the ignorant.
yeah, anyone who watched the video of the grandma spinning under a helicopter knows more or less how carrying a weigh under a helicopter works.
Bold of you to assume that there was any planning.
@@mattmarzula This video is a fail. This video would be far more entertaining if they actually did the experiment right. I was ignorant of this technology until watching this video. Derrick spent a lot of money for this fail of a video, money that should have been given to me as the winner of the veritasium contest, so giving advice is the least I can do. U need to offset the mass of the cylinder so more of the mass is in the front of the cylinder. This will stabilize the cylinder. U cannot put fins on the cylinder because the fins will catch wind and make it sway off course even more. U need to put a sensor that measures the sway of the cylinder, then when the velocity is 0 quickly automatically releases the cylinder. The cylinder should be as heavy as possible and round on both the front and back so the wind has no flat surface to effect it. The amount of off-course radius should be simulated so a safety region is determined, and no personell inside of this region are allowed to be inside that region. Finally, the test demonstration should be built of brick which is more sturdy than sand castles (unless they hardened the sand with some kind of mortar or something.)
@@earthenscience I only know about the MOAB because of BLOONS TDS lol.
This isn't the worst idea the US Military had. The Psycho-Chemical Weapon was the worst.
You could have just dropped the biggest rod you had from around the highest height possible without thinking about target, it would also be cool to watch how much impact it makes.
What if it hit them? No one would know how far to film from.
But how would you get footage and make sure nobody gets hurt?
@@KrulKrulSprietSpriet remote cameras.
@@KrulKrulSprietSpriet I would be interested in just seeing the damage it caused on the ground
But wouldn’t it just get buried under the sand like the others and possibly drag the canvas straps down too making it hard to find?
So you hired professional sand castle builders but not a physicist or some kind of engineer?
😆👌
Price. Lol
mate they got a helicopter, how's price an issue?@@marvinkweyu5206
Yeah well you’re a doo doo head military bad derrrr
Priorities.
why on earth did you hire a team of pro sand castle builders, and then have them spend all their time making more accurate looking buildings, rather than just 10x the number of them so you wouldn't have to worry about missing them??
Yeah I would've just gotten massive buckets to make a premoulded one and made 10x as much area.
As if professionally sand castle makers would allow a quantity first approach
Because it’s fun to have fun
because its fun
Quantity wouldn't need professionals, and that part of the video is gone, so thats why
4:52 Isn't guns just weapons of kinetic energy?
Yes just on a much smaller scale
Guns use high energy propellants like gunpowder, KE weapons use gravity and potential energy turns into kinetic energy
@@brown7583 both are kinetic weapons they just get that kinetic energy from different sources
Huh, forgot to add fins, refused to shorten the rope connecting the payload, refusing to have people walk away to a safe distance to test extreme height, refusing to try and use lasers to track positioning... Interesting...
Yeah, first thing would be to attach the payload securely to the stabilized platform - the chopper -- and the second thing would be to impart spin. Since they're attempting to "drop straight down", I'd take spin over control surface like fins - but you're right, a targeting laser could have been a big, and not very expensive help.
Yeah it was very weird, i'm not even 10% as smart as veritasium but i thought about this stuff, pretty dissappinted
Nobody thought to add fins? They spend thousands of dollars but nobody brought a welder? Or some plywood and some super glue?
I lost a lot of respect for Veritasium because of this vid.
Yup, I mean attach fins or like a square kite to the tow strap would of straightened it out like an arrow, but what do I know, I didn't finish high school, but I have made arrows and spears from scratch that flew very straight, also built a rc airplanes, and many dozens of model rockets when I was a kid.
@@horrorislanderat a certain length to width ratio, the required spin will be too much; so fins are more practical for pole-like rods.
As someone who’s dropped a lot of cylinders from fairly high heights, yes, they DO tend to fall on their side, however, that strap would provide enough drag to right that. The problem was they dropped while it was still swinging, not that it wanted to fall wrong.
Also: why did they dropped the strap too? They could have released just the rod.
There are a multitude of ways to stabilize that swinging and nobody thought of any in advance of making this. It's kind of hilarious.
@@IIARROWS The quick release was attached to the chopper. Also when you take off you need a little slack between the helicopter lifting off and the load, so it is good to add a the strap or string or whatever to give the heli some room to take off.
@@sluggo562 You can tell these engineers aren't very good weapons designers haha
It would have been better if they carried the weight in the cabin, and then when they got to the position they could lower it out and then drop it. That would eliminate most of the pendulum effect from the helicopter adjusting its position, plus the wind, though that would be minimal since the wind isn't going to easily blow a 100 kg weight around easily.
ThE Compressed sand castles don't behave like a real building structure.
The loosely packed sand readily absorbed the displaced KE from impact dissipating it through the intergranular space. The Shockwave would probably do more damage to solid concrete,wood, and steel.
Yeah there were so many thing’s Veritasium could’ve done differently with this experiment. Like building actual scale model buildings/structures instead of sandcastles, using a helium filled balloon to lift the object instead of a helicopter that is going to move around slightly, especially at that altitude.
I'm even surprised they didn't even think about this.
bad bad unplanned video this one
@@RagdyAndy It's hit piece Anti RoG designed to fail. I'm sure there'd dome money backing Anti with weak Propo.
@@Deutritium93 Huh? A balloon would drift miles and miles off the target. There's literally no way to steer them. Absolutely hopeless.
You just tested oreshnik 🎉😢
I am shocked to think why he puts so little thought to it.
There were lots of things they could have done.
1. Shorten the straps
2. Steps could have been of metal.
3. Calculated the wind and have done something to counter it ( like change the drop position of helli.
4. Have designed the fins on rod.
Wind is partially the helicopter
@@27sspider27 Should have used a blimp.
@@27sspider27 Any trailing straps makes it "fly", not a true drop. The best thing would be to deploy it without a strap or wings of any kind. Projectile must be bottom heavy, so it stays in a downward orientation.
Calculating the wind is a lot harder than what you'd expect. Mark rober took a shot at this with his egg drop from space, its incredibly difficult to actually have any form of guidance. And also if it had guidance, it would be legally classified as a missile which makes it illegal
Calculating the wind wouldn't have made a difference. You see it swinging, but as a result it is also rotating. When the dropped it is continued to rotate. It wasn't falling long enough for a fin to have a positive effect. What they needed was to contain it in a pipe that was fixed to the aircraft to prevent swinging. It would have been easy to rig if they'd just given it a few moments of thought.
It would have been interesting had you still just dropped the rod from 3km into the sand to see what kind of impact it made, even if you missed the target.
The original business model of RUclips stank, but at least the ads were reasonable.
New flood of invasive, repetitive, and offensive ads are EVIL.
Google is now fully dedicated to doing any evil that seems profitable.
And censoring complaints, too.
@@ShannonJacobs0 I’ve been paying for an ad free experience since the RUclips Red days.
@@SethEssington which just begs another question, why do they have to demonetize channels? They've only ever cited advertisers as the reason. You pay $10 to watch content that only RUclips gets paid for.
@@ShannonJacobs0 just use adblock, what's the problem?
same impact. learn physics
Very interesting but a bit of a disappointing result/video. Especially since it seems to have been expensive, this is quite unfortunate.
If aiming is that difficult, I'd at least drop the weight from a great height on an open space just to see the explosion.
But I'm sure preparing the rod beforehand (fins, weight distribution, etc.) would've helped too.
Anyways, we learn from mistakes. I'm looking forward to the next video!
the problem with fins is, that mark rober tried to do that, and at this point you're basically trying to build a guided missile which is... probably making lawyers squirm
it would have been important to measure wind speed, and ensuring the rod doesn't swing while it is dropped, then again, the height they wanted to drop it from would mean there are probably multiple atmospheric layers with different wind directions and speeds
good video nonetheless, didn't think it would bury itself in the ground like that
@@sage_x2002 He should’ve made a giant shuttlecock.
The problem with dropping it from higher is you get an increased uncertainty on where it will land. More uncertainty means you need to move the people and equipment further away (to avoid killing someone), and you have no idea where to set up cameras to capture the shot.
@@meihauf R/C fins and GPS on the rod. Also making one end heavier so it falls pointing in one direction.
@@meihauf I really don’t think wind is what made the tungsten rod change positioning. I think it was the comically long and unstable tether mixed with the drag caused by the rod toddling back and forth before and as it fell. If it was properly weighted, they used a rod shute instead of that ridiculous cable system, and if it had fins that you could control using a remote control along with GPS I think you could get pretty accurate.
Lesson to take from this: If you want to build a doomsday weapon you should FIRST call Adam Savage so your rods have fins.
You can see this effect in the Navy's rail gun tests. No explosives of any kind but the explosive power of the kinetic energy is unreal.
I think there is an important, non-aerodynamic aspect of rods, arrows, and spears is that there is a lot of kinetic energy directly behind the point of impact. If you concentrate the mass as a sphere, the impulse gets dispersed over a larger area. The rod makes it so that the impulse continues to be concentrated over one spot
Armor penetrating bullets are always long and massive but when you want an actual kinetic explosion like the craters on the moon he was aiming for (got to love him for his ambitions at least) i dont know if the shape matters.
Otherwise known as 'sectional density'....
I don't really understand why they bothered doing such a poorly done test. They used no fins. No control device. etc. What they tested has basically nothing to do with using an actual developed weapon. It'd be like throwing a spear the first time in your life and then declaring that missiles don't work
I can guarantee they basically insulted anyone with a basic knowledge of aerodynamics lol
@@SG-Gaming20 I kinda like the simplified explanation of why birds can fly, that air is also a fluid. But since people can't see it, they forget about that fact. That's what I think.
@@erikamikulcova3796 now u remind me air is actually fluid, thx
Exactly. I commented they should get the guy that makes glitter bombs to help them add a guidance system via some fins.
He gave logical reasons as to why the rod of gods wouldn't work at the end. He didn't just say it wouldn't work because of the conclusion of the video. Maybe you should pay attention more.
Вот так фантастика стала реальностью. Орешник использовал кинетические боеприпасы.