The Rods from God: A Brief History of Kinetic Orbital Bombardment
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- Опубликовано: 16 ноя 2022
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Simon we need DTU March 8 1994 Michigan Please make it happen
a rational system of measurement perhaps, but how many metric system craft landed on the moon? or build the fastest plane ever? just remember when you try to look down on freedom fractions you have to look up to see a place you've never been.
also you tell me which is more accurate 1/3 or .3333333333 ad infinitum.
Phuck your rationality, my good man!
Simon, yes, make a video for brilliant pebbles. Also kinetic kill vehicles (Reagan’s SDI), and Pershing II. Thank you!
So much money that has gone into the development, testing and deployment of countless technologies which are destructive in nature and to nature.
Imagine a world where the balance tipped and those funds, time and effort were directed towards something constructive, like saving our fragile planet???
About 20 years back I worked with a retired Air Force engineer. On his wall hung a photo that looked a rain of fire; a clear blue sky broken by half a dozen parallel lines approaching the earth at a steep angle. When I asked him if he had captured a meteor shower he explained that it was "tungsten rods in a high altitude drop test" for a "dinosaur of a defense project" he worked on. That image stuck with me, and now I know what I was looking at. Mystery solved. Thank you!
That could have also been a MIRV test from an ICBM. They leave fiery streaks in the sky called "the fingers of God", pretty much exactly what you described. He might have been trolling you with the tungsten rod comment.
@@JMurph2015 I would not put it past him.
that was when they showed Gorbechov wtf. grandad told me that during the Reagan era they got to give them a demonstration, out i nwhat he referred to as "bumfuck Egypt"
Gorbechov called bullshit. So screenshots or it never happened rule was invented at the same time....id have loved to have seen that photo.
I'm curious how many projectiles you say about a half dozen... I remember it was five or six of the rounds fired at that time and I think by my given estimate it should still have about.... 150 give or take of the small ones.
Glad to see humanity hasn't totally lost sight of the potential of fast moving pointy sticks in warfare
Mate, the spear has been around since the very start, and will probably be what the last human will use to stab the second-to-last human in however-far that future is.
Well kinetic energy will always be useful as both a weapon or a tool. It's just impossible to not use Kinetic energy.
Bullet = very small fast moving pointy stick
Missile = very large fast moving pointy stick
Rod of God = very heavy fast moving pointy stick
@@TakGalen missiles r not just stick, theyre stick shaped bombs
@@worthlesscunt4857 No, a missile is not a stick shaped bomb. Not every missile has an explosive payload. Training missiles don't have any payload. You could also have one that's designed to spread either biological or chemical weaponry still with no explosive payload.
I feel like if the US military mentions a hypothetical weapon system in a report it probably means it's been operational for 10 years already.
It's not hard to understand or to build. The only really hard part is the orbital repositioning of the satellite. It doesn't really pose a danger to cities, 40GJ of energy might take out a command bunker but a whole city is basically unharmed. (The Hiroshima Nuke had 60.000GJ and that as instantaneous airburst over wood and paper houses.)
@The Owl Lady It's physics, the energy can be calculated by the formula e=0.5×m×v² or in long form energy in Joules = 0.5 × mass in kg × velocity in m/s squared ( roughly 8000m/s if atmospheric effects are ignored)
A kg of TNT has an explosive energy of 4MJ (4,000,000J) while a kg in orbit has 32MJ. So 1 ton of rod is roughly equivalent to 8 tons of TNT. Should be enough to take out an HQ but not a city.
It takes the more energy to get it to Orbit and moving the orbit for targeting also takes a lot of energy some final corrections can be done.
@The Owl Lady I did take the mass into account, per ton of spear one gets no more than 8 tons of TNT of explosive energy.
Tungsten has a density of around 20 so 1 cubic meter = 20 metric tons of mass. The largest rocket flying (SLS) can lift up to 95 tons to LEO once a year and Musk promises a rocket that lifts 120t frequently in the near future.
The physics are well know and can be quickly calculated in a spread sheet.
Let''s hope so. We aren't so stupid as to signal our future weapons plans to our enemies. Signaling our past ones isn't nearly as hazardous.
Twenty years, in the case of the SR71 'Blackbird'.
From the GI Joe movie, the 'Zeus' satellite launching its tungsten rods made for an impressive imagination of the resulting devastation. In the early 80s movie "The Last Starfighter", the bad guys fired via a linear accelerator device a number of rocks to overwhelm and destroy a hardened & heavily defended facility.
Linear accelerators move objects at a good % of the speed of light, which exponentially increases the kinetic energy upon impact. This uses super hard materials at a low relative velocity, low output - but with precision it would get the job done.
Can't forget the call of duty ghosts campaign!!
GI Joe 2 was the first thing I thought of too. Fun movie.
Also played a big role in Call of Duty: Ghosts with the Odin and Loki satellites. They caused an apocalyptic amount of damage to the United States.
Uhm the rods of God plan existed before that movie came out. By like years. I've been hearing about this since I was a child and I'm like 30.
You forget Jerry Pournelle was first and foremost a scientist and researcher, only writing and reporting later on in his career as a side line. Generally regarded as the smartest person in almost any room, and did a lot of research that was used by the military. Also has his own section in the Smithsonian Museum, and was one of the first people to use desktop publishing, in place of a typewriter, because it made his output so much higher, and revising so much easier.
He was always a pleasure to listen to, and his collaborators really miss him.
I wasn't a fan of the man's politics either. I still don't understand why really smart people who write popular science fiction tend to lean so heavily towards fascism. Having said that, Pournelle directly explored the concept of living in a society in which people explicitly trade away all privacy and many personal freedom rights to live in a closed, gated society with a crime rate somewhere around zero. That novel is _Oath of Fealty_ and is one of many he co-wrote with Larry Niven (who is also a renowned, famous sci fi writer.) I do have to say that the novel doesn't take the easy way out by choosing a side and there's plenty of ambiguity such that a thinking reader's opinion could go either way. It's always a good thing when a novel lets the readers do the thinking for themselves.
He and Niven also wrote the first really-good apocalyptic novel about a massive comet impact on earth, and how people cope with the aftermath. Fears of a bolide strike killing everything on Earth seems to be more of a recent thing, becoming a popular meme in fiction and nonfiction only in the past thirty years or so. But their novel, _Lucifer's Hammer_ was published way back in I think 1976 and is a highly entertaining and thought provoking read.
Niven and Pournelle also wrote what is one of the five or so best sci fi novels I've ever read (and I've read hundreds.) It's an alien first-contact novel about our encounter with the first intelligent alien species in human history and is utterly brilliant. Not to spoil anything but it has an intricate plot about our naive encounter with a species that is extremely dangerous, if only the characters in the novel will catch on to the grave threat they present. That novel is _The Mote in God's Eye_ and I can't recommend it strongly enough. If you're both a thinker and a reader, the novel will blow you away.
Though as a genuine scientist Pournelle might be expected to lean heavily into the hard aspect of hard sci fi, his and Niven's novels also do a fantastic job with character development and even dialogue. Not exactly Hemingway or McCarthy-level brilliance in characters and how they communicate with each other, but still orders of magnitude better than most sci fi which tends to have rote or cliched characters and dialogue. Honestly, most sci fi is all about the aliens and the spaceships and the high-tech stuff, not so much about the human characters which are often so thin that they're stereotypes and mere place-holders for a space where a real character should go. Pournelle and Niven greatly transcend genre in that vital aspect.
@@patrickscalia5088 Thanks for this Patrick. I just got the audiobook. Sounds like a great read.
@@patrickscalia5088 you named some great books. His series of Herot's Legacy, also with Niven, is another fantastic series.
@@wstavis3135 don't forget about nivens destiny's road. Not co authored by pournelle but takes place in the same universe as herot with a few references to the series
@@patrickscalia5088 There are a few interviews with him about this, they are well worth looking up and listening. Do not forget that he could argue for both sides of a question convincingly, and give good reasoned thoughts on both that were equally valid in each case. the interview I watched with him, Benford and Niven was memorable, both for their interaction, and for the great friendship they had with each other.
Good thing there isn't a massive reusable rocket in development...
Yup, it's already functional!
Good thing theres no plans for a moon base witch if works will make this very devastating to any planet in are solar system.
Why well it takes like no effort to make these things move fast to a different planet and when it enters its gravity it will just speed it that much more.
Spin launch from the moon
Or that no weapons can be used in space because the pen is stronger than the sword. Am I right guys?
I don't know what or when WW3 will happen or how it ends. I do know satellites will be targeted, or a preemptive strike even.
The US Space force already has an orbital nuclear weapons platform. What do you think the X-37B is?
There was a Call of Duty game that explored this concept in 2013. CoD Ghosts’ story featured a kinetic rod space weapon that was hijacked and used to destroy much of the US’ infrastructure
I was just about to ask
Yes, he mentions it in the video. It's been used in Sci fi for decades.
Wasn’t it the South American federation that was the enemy?
They way overstated the damage it could do, though. While a bombardment with those things would be no fun, Ghosts had them hitting like nukes. The "yield" Simon mentioned is only 11.5 tons of TNT...awesome for a point target like a bunker or command center or seat of government, but not enough to blanket an entire portion of a country unless you had thousands upon thousands of those 8-ton rods. You'd need something a hell of a lot bigger to do what Ghosts implied happened. Or they'd need to be moving at truly ludicrous speeds above and beyond a gravity assist. OTOH, something like the Chelyabinsk meteor, if it made it all the way to the ground...now that's a city-buster.
@@Moose6340well to be fair, it’s not like you’d need a lot of rods if you’re aiming for key infrastructure. They weren’t trying to blanket the entire US, they were trying to cripple its ability to sustain its economy and then start a land war
I read about this concept in a sci fi book called the Reality Dysfunction by Peter F Hamilton and he used the term "Kinetic Harpoon". It turns crazy since kinetic bombardment in the story uses hundreds of the harpoons at once instead of just one.
1:50 - Chapter 1 - The concept
5:35 - Mid roll ads
7:20 - Chapter 2 - The history
9:55 - Chapter 3 - Present & future
China will build one. Then the U.S. will hurry up and build one. Did I say one? I meant 10,000.
You da real MVP
@@williamyoung9401 and it will cost a gazillion dollars, a bunch of people will get medals and in the end none of it will matter
I think we need a video about those “Pebbles.”
Interesting, if not a bit terrifying, video. You really do have the best writers and researchers Simon 😊👏🏻💯🙌🏻
Yes we need a Brilliant Pebbles Video!
You’re racist
smart rocks, brillian pebbles, and M.J.O.L.N.I.R.
Brilliant pebbles is a brilliant video idea
Interesting point of fact: Jerry Pournelle was co-author (with Larry Niven) of Footfall, a novel about an alien invasion. A "rods from god" type weapon featured prominently in the early battles, used by aliens against the humans.
If I remember correctly, in Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," citizens of the Lunar colony launched giant rocks at the Earth in lieu of their usual shipments of moon-grown grain as a form of protest and rebellion. It was quite effective. Thanks for another great video!
As I mentioned in my comment it is actually easier to launch something from the surface of the Moon into the Earth compared to deorbiting from low earth orbit (ignoring utilizing air friction)
Nuke the moon.
@@ukaszlampart5316 Yep. The reasons the Moon makes such an excellent place to gather resources for space development also makes something like chunking rocks at the Earth (or anything else in the Solar System) much more feasible.
Like in the fifth season of The Expanse. Or was it the sixth?
@@murphykenji Yep. There's a scene in season 1 where Avasarala is on the roof with her grandson talking about shooting stars... Ends with her saying "I worry about people who throw rocks."
The only reason why Rods from God have never been fielded boils down to launch costs. A telephone pole made of tungsten is a tad heavy. So up until now the launch costs were prohibitive. But with Starship in development and it's massive (literally) launch capability, it may well become possible in the not too distant future.
You assume they've never been fielded. The US government spares no expense when it comes to ways to kill someone.
Oh I can assure you when I first heard of starship I thought it would be basically everything we wanted the shuttle to be in the 70s
And then I got very happy and had a wicked grin because I could finally see Project Thor being Greenlit
Oh boy, thanks for spiking my anxiety and excitement at the same time
mm yes just a tad quite
Umm, no. The Space Shuttle has a payload capacity of 29 tons, more than enough to take a 20ft long 1 foot wide tungsten rod, which would mass about 8 tons, into low earth orbit.
For a moment I thought he said 11.5 tons of dmt, I think I’ve been watching too much Joe Rogan…
😆 🤣 😂
Damn wild weekend with that amount... 🤣🤣
Yeah- a warhead that powerful would keep anyone within 100 miles of impact high as fuck for at least a couple years!
Yeah, communicable brain damage will do that.
That would be a hell of a trip. Maybe it could bring people together.
There was a novel back in the 80’s called “David’s Sling” that used a much cheaper concept they nicknamed “flying crowbars”: metal rods with a simple guidance system. Small ones were used to take out tanks. Large ones to destroy missile silos. The story also had a number of “cheap” automated weapons used to overwhelm the enemy with shear numbers. Basically thinking outside the box. The concept of drone swarms is similar to what the author proposed.
I've always had a fascination with the idea of kinetic bombardment as a way of waging war... that would be the craziest way to wipe a spot from existence without irradiation everything.
In his book "A Step Farther Out", Pournelle discussed the Rods from God concept. His take on it wasn't that it was too expensive to implement, but that it wasn't expensive enough. Lots of money, therefore lots of profits to be made building carrier fleets, and his calculations were that just putting a few of these in orbit would cost less than one carrier fleet, and be far more effective.
So he thinks that if the rods were more expensive there would be more incentive for all the military contractors to invest in them. Was that the only reason he thought these aren’t being used?
Forget rail guns, the standard anti-tank round fired by most tanks is a kinetic energy projectile. They're depleted uranium or tungsten (density counts) darts with a sleeve around them to fill the remaining diameter of the barrel. The genius of the rods from god, whether orbital or just dropped from a great height, is that gravity does all the work. It's a refined version of the penny dropped from the Empire State Building. but with enough mass and a terminal velocity high enough to actually wreck things.
"Gravity does all the work" but you must first PLACE that amount of energy into the projectiles by lofting them to orbital/suborbital trajectories. Even true in the case of your penny, where the building elevator adds the energy.
For what it's worth, the "penny dropped from the Empire State Building" thing is utter nonsense. The terminal velocity of a penny is WAY too low to be lethal, though it could definitely cause a decent bruise. While it makes for an interesting story, it's a myth that has been disproven.
Emm, no, gravity will do absolutely no work on these stupid gods rods. That's not how orbits work ruclips.net/video/i5XPFjqPLik/видео.html
Depleted Uranium is still Uranium. Which means, it's radioactive. Which means, the Uranium rounds hang around and leave the surrounding area or vehicle they destroy radioactive long after the war is over...☢
@@ProfessorJayTee Of course. I was thinking more of the simplicity of the device. Dropping a lawn dart from a high altitude drone still needs some electronics to keep it on target, but other than that it's just mass dropped from a great height.
Once stumbled upon this on Wikipedia a number of years ago in grad school. This older guy I worked with who used to work for a defense contractor in the space industry heard me mention it and gave me the “who told you about that? You shouldn’t. Suggest not mentioning that” etc and visibly shocked I knew about it
@@Quagula there’s 360 millions FBI agents? So there’s an entire US full of just FBI agents interesting you don’t think it more likely all your devices collect everything you do say or think then someone at the FBI just types your name in and all that comes up
@@Quagula Would you like the engineer's name?
What a melodramatic weirdo
Robert Heinlein in "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" used a similar concept catapulting containers filled with rocks from the Moon as a weapon. One of his best books...
And he had his ideas published well before Pournelle did.
I remember a version of this proposed 30 years ago. It involved unmanned, high-altitude aircraft that could loiter over an area and drop rods the diameter of a crowbar with a guidance system to keep it on target. A variant was intended to be launched as a bundle in the general direction of an armored advance, with the guidance systems finding tanks to guide themselves to once they started their long fall. Given the widespread use of drones in recent years, especially rigging simple drones to drop grenades, I'd be surprised if the high-altitude platform version doesn't come up again.
I believe the concept was "Thors Hammers" or flying crowbars.
High-altitude bombers became obsolete in 1970s, by the advance of anti-air missiles. USAF shot anti-satellite missiles in 80s, so no matter how high you flys, even in orbit, you are simply dead. Nowadays bombers are just carriers for cruise or ballastic missiles, and they launch missiles hundreds miles away from the targets. A large plane high above the enemy sky is impossible now.
Something similar already exists but in the form of a bomb called the CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon. A bomb is dropped form an aircraft overhead and rods are ejected from the bomb housing. The rods open parachutes which lines them up perpedicular to the ground and then they rocket upwards and spin, flinging "pucks" out in all directions. Each puck has a sensor that scans the area, find a tank, then flys overhead and detonates, sending an explosive formed projective at it.
@@rubiconnn These cluster bombs usually are carried by fighter-bombers and dropped in low altitude. You can drop it from a B-52 in high altitude, but it would be a suicidal mission against Soviet AA misilles.
I believe there is a version of the Hellfire missile which has no explosive warhead, just a kinetic kill projectile. Used for taking out a terrorist target in a busy area without hitting nearby civilians.
In “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” (1966) canisters of rock launched by electromagnetic catapult from the moon are used as kinetic weapons against earth.
Heinlein!
@@tgmccoy1556
You bet. i’ve read all his works, several times (I’m 70).
@@karlknechtel8119 pretty much - they called it the "meteor gun" and it fired meteors at the starfighter base.
I was going to mention this.
a newer science fiction show demonstrated that scenario, it was quite dramatic. It's called "the expanse" you should give it a watch
10:12 It’s worth mentioning that the Abrams (and possibly other tanks although I don’t know for sure) does have kinetic energy rounds as well in it’s possible payload
Yeah I believe they are depleted Uranium darts they fire to defeat heavily armored targets. They've been using those at least since the 90s
Very interesting video! Kinetic orbital bombardment's one of my favorite sci-fi weapons and it's nice to learn about the concept's roots.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" novel by Robert Heinlein (1966) involved the launch of space barges filled with ore mined on the Moon at the Earth.
How could you not have mentioned Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's novel Footfall. If you are a science fiction fan you should read this book (Footfall).
Top 3 favorite Niven/ Purnell novels.. second only to Lucifer's Hammer.. and Legacy of Herot
I haven't watched the video. Does he mention Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?
@@joesmith323 No, but he should have. He mentioned Starship Troopers but I don't remember a reference to kinetic weapons in that one so maybe his researcher got them confused. Or my memory may be faulty.
@@rayraudebaugh5395 Hi Ray, the bugs wipe out Earth cities with "rocks from God" I loved both the book and the movie even though the two were completely different stories.
Loved Footfall. Such a great book.
I think we can all agree that "The Rods From God" is the best name of just about anything ever. You don't need to know what it means to feel the all powerful nature of it.
And you'd be wrong. "Rods from Satan" would be more appropriate.
@@UguysRnuts who on earth said a god is a an inherently good being.
@@jacewhite8540 Jesus
@@UguysRnuts when god flooded the earth according to the bible, was a that a good thing?
@@jacewhite8540 You'll have to read it to find out.
As Heinlein discusses in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," (glossing over the target guidance aspects) once you have a space-based economy you don't really need to manufacture "Rods From God", there are plenty of rocks out there that could be used as ammo without launching Tungsten up from Earth.
those rocks have to be BIG. If they are small, they shatter / explode in Earth's atmosphere. And if they are big, they will be detected in no time, even by capable amateurs. Well manufactured rods can survive re-entry way better and ca be hidden in any of the many classified satellites. once launched from orbit, they hit fast, leaving very limited time for detection. And even if they are detected, countermeasures are not too easy against those heavy, pointy, crazy-fast metal sticks.
If they exist, they are way more efficient than natural space rocks. (a professionally crafted spear cast from a short distance vs a lump of mud thrown from afar)
The problem with rocks is they’re less predictable for targeting and easier to target for defence systems than a rod.
I'd totally like a Vid about the beautiful deadly pebbles.
I imagine hunter killer satellites will follow very quickly after a kinetic launch platform is launched. If we can move an asteroid, we can also impact a satellite.
They have already been developed and tested.
what do you think an X37b is? "test bed" is euphemism for sabotage just like the USS Jimmy Carter was a "test bed" on all those oceanic fiber optic cables.
Yes and anti satellite missiles have existed for a long time, so those hunter killer satellites can be shot down rather easily as well, and so the cycle continues.
How are you all so behind in intel the current doctrine is drop hundreds of shoeboxes sizes satellites that go totally dark when not individually being used thus it’s not logical to try to knock out satellites
This theory was used in the Sci-fi series The Expanse. Most of the Navy ships had some sort of kinetic weapon to just throw at their enemies then sit back and wait. They don’t stop moving unless they run into something much bigger.
It’s probably not that foreign an idea.
And then the idea gets taken that horrific step further: fling asteroids at Earth to cause an extinction-level event.
@@Boiling_Seas They weren't asteroids, at least in the books, though they might as well have been. They were indeed tungsten slugs covered in the secretive "Martian stealth tech".
Halo does the same thing
With macs damm snipers
Can we all just take a quick moment to recognize the real and true OG of orbital kinetic bombardment, the Chicxulub Impactor.
Singlehandedly wiped the dinosaurs off the earth and nearly ended all life on the planet as we know it.
You the real MVP 🙌
It didn’t singlehandly do anything it was more the straw that broke the camels back although it was a heavy straw
Carl Sagan, writing 30 years ago in Pale Blue Dot implored humanity not to develop kinetic impactor weapons. He believed it only a matter of time before somebody decided to weaponise asteroids as their ease of use and availability would be totally irresistible. And it is unsettlingly easy to do:
1: Fly out (robot or human) to one of the billions of near Earth asteroids that best suits your needs (or you at least have the fuel to utilise).
2: Strap a rocket motor or ion drive to it.
3: Do some maths.
4: Wipe whatever city, nation or continent off the map that you don't like.
The worst part of the strikes is their stealth. Even if someone gets super lucky and detects the asteroid before impact, it can't be stopped and it would be impossible to know if the strike was a natural impact event or if it was the work of human beings. So long as the perpetrators keep quiet, they will never be accused. Anyone with access to space already has the tech knowhow to make it happen. Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk would be just as capable of it as NASA or CNSA.
It's going to be a continual fear for all of us going forward that some nutjob will decide it's time to dinosaur us.
At least it will be until we develop some serious star trek s**t to defend against it.
De-orbiting one of these quickly requires a non-trivial amount of rocket power; which significantly increases the launch costs. Satellites and regular spacecraft get away with relatively small de-orbit burns because they can afford to wait hours before the drag of the upper atmosphere kicks in.
Another person who has a grasp of orbital kinetics! Hi there, it's three of us here now.
I came here to say this. Deorbiting is almost always neglected in these discussions.
@@jeffreypage1361 50 m/s or so. The launch platform acts as a targeting stage. It maneuvers into a suborbital trajectory, launches a rod and boosts back up.
@@user-lv7ph7hs7l That sounds terribly inefficient.
@@jeffreypage1361 This system isn't about efficiency, hauling 12 t rods to orbit isn't efficient, it's about fast relatively targeted strike capability. Once it up there it doesn't use that much fuel for targeting compared the mass of the system. ICBM's do the same, the third stage puts itself on a variety of trajectories for each warhead. Those then proceed on a ballistic trajectory
I think the G.I. JOE version was the most accurate as far has the projectile it self. Not necessarily the amount of damage or delivery of the weapon
in a sense, if you want to see the real thing, look up "the destruction of Mosul".
Yeah the damage was unrealistic but showing the concept was great. Looking at the damage. The game CoD Ghosts federation satellite rods was far more realistic. Keep in mind i mean only the federation satellites. Not ODIN from the US if you look it up
@@tlxatom7004 yeah, it's not a mushroom cloud, not unless they figured out how to deep space weld on the warheads....there just wasn't time pre launch to add those
Only the big one has a warhead. It's called T-Rex the rocket, and it's for shooting moon sized problems in space....
This guy is everywhere. Almost every video suggested by RUclips algorithm is narrated by this dude. I'm fed up
Your presentations are good for morale during a slow day at work. Thank you.
Been waiting for this.
Thank you for the nod to Babyon 5, that's the first thing that came to mind when I saw this video announced. J'Kar referred to it while screaming at Molari as "when you bombed our cities with asteroids".
I'd also like to point out that if you're going to try to reduce the cost of orbital deployment by saving weight and using something other than tungsten, you're forgetting that the mass of the rods represents their destructive yield. Lighter rods are easier to get to orbit, but will do far less damage on impact. I don't really see getting these to orbit as a problem, so long as you're only trying to haul up one at a time. Reloading it would just occupy Space-X for a month or two. The cost of getting things to orbit is falling through the floor right now, and is only picking up momentum.
Deployment and precision could also be a problem. I'd wager if you asked 100 random people how to get a rod in orbit to hit the earth most of them would say something like "well duh, just drop it over the target". Anyone with even a cursory understanding of orbital mechanics will get a good laugh out of that of course, because you have to slow the rod's orbital velocity or it will just stay in orbit. If you want it to de-orbit rapidly, that's a lot of force required. And if it's all being done at or near the platform, then you have the problem of basically a "butterfly effect" where you need insane precision at the starting point to hit a target, since minuscule errors in your orbital burn are wildly magnified by the time you get to the ground. So the rods would absolutely require some sort of guidance. Fins would be fine, but they would have to deal with the intense heat being conducted through the rod. I'd call the precision problem "trivial" in comparison to the de-orbit maneuver though. But the two problems are linked.
I’m glad Simon was accurate and honest about the power of the rods themselves. Some media has depicted them as being as powerful as nuclear weapons, which just isn’t even remotely possible.
a rod could do comparable damage to a meteorite, damage only limited by mass and speed
To get more power you need more speed.
Slingshot the rods around the moon or even jupiter to get maximum effect.
To get more energy, one simply needs to make the rods bigger, so yes they could be as powerful as nukes. Whether a rod of that size would be practical to use is another matter entirely!
@@dillonvandergriff4124 You need to get those giant rods into space and this is not practical.
Instead,as I mentioned above,steal some energy from the moon,mars or jupiter.
And then make these rods break apart in atmosphere at a set distance from the ground.
This would generate a massive shockwave with maximum area of effect.
Like the tunguska event.
@@dillonvandergriff4124 fair point, I meant in terms of the depictions in cinema. They’re about the size of those described in Project Thor yet hit with the power of a nuclear bomb.
Interesting thing is that the Hellfire R9X missile that's been used several times in covert operations act as a kinetic kill projectile launched from UAVs. They just skipped the whole launch from orbit aspect of it, added knives as a payload and called it a day.
Thaad is also a kinetic weapon designed to take out ICBM's and probably more.
You should see what The Backyard Scientist has to say about that. ruclips.net/video/zEVPgnLbguI/видео.html&feature=shares
As superweapons go, there was a very similar 1 in the 2004 Ace Combat 5 game
It was called the - SOLG - Strategic Orbital Linear Gun
Seeing Ace Combat out in the wild makes me so happy :')
Although I prefer megalith shooting asteroids to bring them down onto targets, every superweapon in the series is great lol
@@KennyCnotGAgreed! Always loved Ace Combats fictional superweapons! 🤩
So Shooting asteroids?
Stonehenge then! 😏
In Ace Combat 2 then returning in 2019s 7!
(used to eradicate Arsenal Bird Liberty, the less powerful of the 2)
PNG dog ultimate super weapon
@@Tengu555 What is that from and what was its main feature and purpose?
@@eaphantom9214 It was experimental Belkan tech from Ace Combat 7
Although its thermal properties do help, there's an even bigger reason why the designers for Project Thor chose to make the rods out of solid tungsten. It's one of the densest materials you can use; only second to osmium, which is too brittle and too expensive for the job. The denser the material, the more massive that telephone pole sized rod will be. And the more mass the rod has, the more kinetic energy it will deliver to the target when it hits the ground
It's not going to be "more massive". It's not about size. It's the opposite. It's going to be heavier. You can say it will have more mass.
@@zaco-km3su both of you suck at sciencing.
Its denser.
Weight is a function of mass under gravity.
Mass stays the same regardless of where it is.
Weight changes, you weigh less on the moon. Your mass stays the same. It still takes same amount of force to push you regardless of if youre on earth or moon prior to factoring in resistances.
Denser objects have more mass while being physically smaller.
@@tianchi4423
There's no such think as "sciencing" Learn English. It's science.
I know the difference between mass and weight. You don't. You just tried to sound smart. You failed.
Also, massive refers to seize, not weight. Don't bring mass here. Shut up.
@@zaco-km3su density is mass per unit volume. So more density actually does mean more mass for a fixed physical size. 'Massive' used in the comment means more mass, not bigger physical dimensions.
It also experiences less atmospheric braking. Being a tungsten rod it has a very low surface area and a huge amount of mass so it "pierces" the atmosphere and doesn't slow down much. Usually you want the opposite. Large surface area for the mass so you have a capsule or spaceplane shape. In this case you want to maintain speed so a high density low surface area on the windward side, so a tungsten rod is the perfect candidate.
Excellent work bro
Simon, you’re the man! Thanks for all the interesting info.
In theory, if we combined the Railgun with the God-Rods, we could use them for a peaceful purpose: As a possible means of defending against or deflecting a small (relatively-speaking) asteroid. With a LOT of maths, a railgun could yeet a God-Rod at the Earth, slingshotting it around the planet, into the path of any incoming space rock, potentially deflecting it.
Anyone who played Call of Duty: Ghosts knows exactly what kinda devastation the Rods From God can do
Playing that first space mission was nuts. You just had to sit there and watch the country get obliterated.
Call of Duty was wrong in this area, though. The explosions are way smaller with real world tech, than what you have seen in Call of Duty. Destroying a Bunker or a house? Sure. Destroying a block? Possible, but if you want to destroy a whole city you already need a whole swarm. To destroy several cities, well...
I can’t imagine how much influence this project has on the rail gun
The Fermi Paradox is making a whole lot more sense now.
Absolute great reference to Anathem here - complete BEAST of a novel.
The "Rods from god" are terrifying in both concept and praxis . Much less terrifying were the scaled down test projectiles "Rods from Todd " which left a dent in the hood of Matt's Subaru. Still, damn you Todd!
It's been years since I actually laughed at a YT comment. Well done.
Made me snort. 🤣
Todd Howard: it just works
I learned about these from G.I. Joe: Retaliation, a movie that I mostly remember for how interesting the villain's plan was.
It seems that the main reason for using an orbital platform is the surprise that can be attained....except it has been shown that you can't just "drop" something from orbit. It has to slow down to de-orbit which would require a de-orbiting burn of some kind which can be detected. You also might have to wait as much as 90 minutes for the platform to be in the right position before a launch. So not much in the way of a surprise attack is gained by the cost of launching and maintaining the platform.
the kinetic projectiles are only expensive if you need to get them into space from earth, refine the materials in space from asteroids or the moon, or even space junk, and you solve that issue, of course the cost of a space refinery is probably at least as expensive initially but it does serve multiple purposes.
It takes more energy to lift the projectiles to orbit than what they can deliver on impact. This is only considered because once the projectile is in orbit then you can target things conveniently.
The energy needed to redirect an asteroid's orbit is tremendous. Not to mention that we don't have space refineries. Just to get lightweight analysis packages to comets/asteroids takes years with orbits boosted by planetary fly-by paths.
Even with the hugely reduced cost of lifting to orbit that re-usable rockets give us, it's still prohibitive to lift heavy equipment out of Earth's gravity well. This will probably only become feasible if industry on the Moon is developed to the point that the hardware and rocket fuel can be built/made there out of local materials refined on the Moon, and if the energy requirements can be satisfied by solar power harvested there including rail guns to boost things to orbit and to manufacture fuel to provide later maneuvering.
@@pault151The saddest part is where noone understands that It takes exactly the same amount of energy to get your projectile back to earth. ruclips.net/video/i5XPFjqPLik/видео.html
@@pault151 I would say that orbital/Lunar refineries and manufacturing facilities are more than worthwhile in the long, even with the monumental investment to start them.
Anything and everything you find here, will be on the Moon as well, and floating about in the asteroid belt, and in infinitely more quantity once the belt is in reach reliably. “Moon Base” or “Orbital Platform” 1 makes drones and robotics, which are sent to break down and gather supplies. Those supplies are used to create Platform 2, which makes even more robotics and drones, more platforms, along with refining materials for other purposes on Earth and abroad. Once you’re in orbit, energy is never an issue since there is always far more solar energy than we could ever possibly capture. Water refined from the Moon is fuel for navigation and return trips, solar sails can be made for outbound trips to save even more.
Once the “ball gets rolling”, the potential is staggering.
1:50 the concept
5:32 sponsorship
7:14 the history
9:49 present and future
I saw Jerry Pournelle's name and was trying to think where I remember it from. Then I realised it was from appearances on Leo Laporte's shows on the TWiT network.
Unlike some in the comments, I was only really aware of his work as an author and his commentary on technology. So, I've definitely learned something here!
I liked the spin that The Expanse put on the idea. To hell with metal rods or nukes… just throw asteroids at your enemy 💪
I also mentioned it...but with a spoiler warning. 🙂
I think this concept was present in a light novel Heavy object volume 12 or 13. The one where they have to shoot at multiple incoming projectiles from the heavy objects.
How many of those scientists who were involved in any of the different projects grew up playing with Lawn Darts, and thought; “I wonder what it would be like to drop a telephone pole sized one of these from space?”
Great doc again ! Regarding a separate doc about the Brilliant Peebles project: yes please! I read about it for a while on aviation & defence magazines when I was a kid and then it just sort of vanished. I'd like to hear what came out of it, if anything at all.
I read a lot of science fiction from Christopher Nuttall. In his "Cast Adrift" Series he mentions the Pournelle Shipyards orbiting Earth. Now I know who that is! Nuttall also writes a lot about KEW strikes on planets as a convenient way to beat them into submission.
Also, I think the big space laser imagery is probably from (Star Trek) Enterprise. There was a whole series of episodes in the show where some aliens carved a big trench across Florida and killed one of the Character's family and friends.
It does require quite some delta-v (“fuel”) to decelerate the rods enough so they leave their orbit and renter the atmosphere.
Well, literally noone here, Simon included gets that. So sad. Let's go watch another Scott Manley vid. Maybe this one ruclips.net/video/i5XPFjqPLik/видео.html
The launch platform does that. Just like the third stage of an ICBM. It puts the entire stage on an intersect with the target and releases the warhead or rod in this case then maneuvers again before releasing the next. Each maneuver for the rods would be 50-100 m/s so not a great amount. The rods themselves are completely unpowered, they might have a spin up motor not sure. ICBM warheads have some solid motor jets at the back to spin them up just prior to reentry but that's more important with the irregular density of a nuke. A tungsten rod is probably fine even without spin stabilisation.
@@user-lv7ph7hs7l makes more sense to fire it from orbital railgun more speed greater accuracy
@@xdabus No it is already traveling at 27000 kph. If you make it go faster it will never hit Earth it will go into a higher orbit it needs to be slowed down to fall back on Earth. To about 26500 kph. So a simple engine burn will do, railguns that can fire 12 t rods don't exist anyway.
The illustration that you're panning over in close-up is from a 2004 cover story I did for Popular Science. The rods were described to me at the time as depleted uranium, similar to the artillery shell. The expendable magazine satellite was meant to be controlled from from the larger control satellite that's cropped out in the picture.
The piercing power of this weapon would make it perfect for taking out Kaiju in a Monster Movie.
To a gear's of war player
The hammer of dawn
Rods from god were a good idea then and even more so now. The falling prices of launch costs make them much more feasible and the capabilities they bring to the table are priceless.
I'm sure one day a variant will make it's way to the stars, if it hasn't already.
Imagine the sight of that falling on a city or military installation. Like a targeted meteor strike 😬🤯
Nasty little first strike weapon. I can't see how it could prevent all retribution but it could certainly be used to mess up leadership and also in the years to come it may be difficult to impossible to determine who the aggressors are. Look at the ambiguity on who damaged the gas lines in the Baltic for an example.
@@niagaramike528 True. I see it more as a command strike weapon for targets in areas with a short window of opportunity to make a strike. World leaders would never feel safe.
While "Starship Troopers" was mentioned in passing, it was another of Robert A. Heinlein's books that really explored and developed the idea of kinetic impactors as a weapons system, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress". In that book published in the 1960s, a lunar colony established as a penal institution declared independence from Earthbound governments and used large rocks launched with an electromagnetically-powered catapult off the Moon to drop onto a couple of cities to discourage reprisal from Earth governments. The basic idea is that a big enough rock moving at speeds only attainable outside an atmosphere can shed significant mass during reentry and STILL do enormous damage to a ground target. Heinlein and Pournelle were contemporaries and peers.
@dianh70 they were also both engineers of a very practical nature. Very gifted writers and truly brilliant men. Both have books in the five greatest science fiction novels of all time Pournelle with moat in God's eye and Heinlein with stranger in Strange Land.
Jerry Pournelle was one of the greats of science fiction. He was one who's novels had Hard science bases.
Read a few of his collaborative books with Larry Niven and they were amazing. Thor's Hammer being the subject of this reply. Which I think was used in Footfall.
Being,a hard science kind of guy,I think that I liked about him
I remember the first time that I heard about this concept was in a book by Mr. Pournelle along with Larry Niven, Footfall. It was an alien invasion novel, and the aliens used a Kinetic Energy Warhead system against an armour column that was moving in place to fight them, after another character had mentioned the possibility, of course. They already had the high ground, you see.
The book also introduced me to the Orion Project.
That's my favorite alien invasion story of all time. The aliens were using small asteroids as weapons, steering them onto surface targets, but they also had some laser weapons.
Excellent book!
Another great video Simon! Please do one on those "Space Pebbles" bro.
I lov this concept
The Shadowrun novel "House of the Sun" mentions that setting's "Rods from God," dubbed "Thor Shot." Which, other than being operated by extraterritorial megacorporations, are exactly the original concept.
The scientists and engineers in the starfire series of novels are last seen still banging their head on the wall coz they didn't think to put their man portable hypervelocity missile onto spaceships and point it down towards the ground....
I think the Americans had an idea for this called project thor
The RODS from God would have been a good deterrent weapon but transporting the telephone-size tungsten was enormously expensive. The US government also decided to cancel the program in favor of the SDS Iniatiative or STAR WARS program (which also got axed out). Today, the hypersonic arms race reigned above.
This treaty is worth about as much as the paper it's printed on. It's only a matter of time
The yield of the rods is just about the same as that of a MOAB
the penetration is probably of more importance.
its not surface explosion tho!
grandad was the engineer of the rods, he used to say "if you can see the target, you are standing to close"
@1:00 LOL Good luck with that! Capitalism and greed knows no bound. As soon as someone (i.e. a country, a corporation) finds some valuable mineral on another planet (the moon included) that's worth mining, you can say goodbye to that treaty. It is or will be no different from how nations are portrayed in Black Panther 2 when everyone finds out about the existence of Vibranium.
My favorite use of these weapons in media was in Warren Ellis' "Global Frequency" series. It was the first I had heard of the concept, and made for a terrifying doomsday weapon in the plot.
COD ghosts is the best example of orbital bombardment, Odin space station
The "Ion Cannon" from the Command and Conquer game series was always a unique idea put forth by the "Global Defense Initiative" and seemed more practical as an energy weapon hypothetically could recharge and be reused repeatedly rather than a limited physical payload from a bombardment system. I honestly think that with the advancement of SpaceX and reusable launch platforms, we will see military functions creep into that amazing ability. I mean... if you could get an entire battalion of Navy Seals / Green Beret / Marines in country and boots on the ground, precisely where you want them to be, within 30 minutes of some extremist leader doing something extreme... then there is less emphasis on needing global bases, and all the threat of immediate application of conventional warfare for any circumstance. It really circumnavigates all typical defense systems / measures.
I miss Tiberian Sun on PC
And the similar messy SciFi weapon that doesn't go away: deorbiting rocks. Guidance non-existent but damaging anyways…
Drop heavy thing, heavy thing go boom
The concept is only impractical as long as the cost to make orbit is high. The decreasing cost of orbital launches and the higher precision of orbit injection is making the concept more practical every year. Further the rapid reusability of launch vehicles also makes putting large numbers of these systems faster, more affordable and easier to manage.
Glad this is finally being covered! I only asked for it forever ago 😝! Lol
On a serious note, tungsten is chosen I'm sure for it's resistance to atmospheric reentry temps, but also it's density. But I wonder, how would an iridium or osmium (at least filled) rod perform? Tungsten is also immensely cheaper than those metals, but also a fair bit less dense.
Honestly
A tactical dirty bomb.
This is madness!!! We are going to have to find out why in the hell Simion and his cronies have ignored you!
Best choice would be depleted uranium, almost as dense as Tungsten, high temp resistant, and sets things on fire when impacting due to its properties.
Let’s be honest. The treaty approach hasn’t really held up well in the fields of war-crime and biological weapon development over the last decade. The main problem with orbital nukes is they need regular servicing which would be expensive and fortunately easily observable. No amount of face saving would be able to cover up the sudden rise in fissile material in the atmosphere if one were to de-orbit and burn up.
Absolutely correct. One has to simply look back through history at the countless treaty violations by any number of signatories and participants to various treaties in the past.
The concept will return with the advent of astromining. If you can source tungsten in space and manufacture rods in orbit, then you're golden.
My goodness that's a lot of words for "it's metal pole falling from the sky with lots of force".
I know, I know...thanks for posting, very informative.
It takes more energy to put the rod into orbit than it does release on impact, therefore a many-hundred tonne rocket contains more energy than a single rod impact could. The explosion of a big rocket is fairly large, but not like a super weapon that the rods are often implied to be. As a bunker buster weapon it makes sense, I guess, given it would have crazy penetrative power.
whats stopping the tungsten rod from being fired into space with a railgun, seems like that would be the most efficent manner.
THOR's premise was that you could not intercept them, those massive rockets were and still are easily countered.
You can't just drop them, or even fire them directly downwards... all you'll do is slightly modify their existing orbit. De-orbiting needs you to get rid of the 16-20,000 miles per hour of orbital velocity before you "drop" onto your target - and no spacecraft yet invented can carry enough fuel to do that without using atmospheric braking. This entire concept fails at just about every engineering level possible.
All you need to do is make the orbit elliptical enough to intersect the surface of the earth - then you get an orbital velocity impact instead of a mere terminal velocity one.
@@muninrob fair point actually... However there's still a chunk of energy involved which would make these far more sophisticated than "tungsten telephone poles".
True Tom K, although I am sure that cities or locational targets rarely move, except when relative to an orbiting object itself;
...which means tit is likely hat atmospheric & the corialis effect iwould be figured into the prepositioning prior to a launch/drop.
Simon did it seem misunderstand or misconvey that, perhaps on purpose, but orbit to surface targeting from directly above could be viable , when with a directed energy weapon of some future devising.
@Gerald H Hubble does not get boosted in any way. It has no thrusters. I also don’t think any Spring Loaded mechanism could ever be strong enough to DeOrbit anything that is in a stable enough orbit as is require here. I still think this entire idea is mythical.
@Gerald H You are strawmanning me left and right. I said Hubble is in a stable ENOUGH orbit... I never said it wasn't affected nor that it decayed... nor did I even mention shuttle missions... it's like you didn't even read anything I wrote LOL. Have fun.
OH... oh we do want that separate video, sir. That is wild.
I'm so glad that someone knows about these, last time I was trying to tell my friends this they thought it was nonsense
Then what is the point of Space Force, purely for reconnaissance and surveillance?
Officially, yeah.
There is no point. It's just the part of the Air Force that operated satellites.
But what if Space Force was created to have a "system" outside of that which had U.S. at war for the last 20+ years? Seems to me that our (new) wars stopped post S.F.
The gi Joe movie in question did not come out in 03, it was 13.
Y'all need better researchers.
Simon: "....space is a peaceful place."
Ultron: "I think you're confusing peace with quiet."
Funnily enough, COD Ghosts probably has one of the best representations of an orbital kinetic weapon.
If a tungsten telephone pole dropped from outer space has the destructive potential of thousands of pounds of TNT wouldn't that make it a WMD?
Context and intent matters in law. There is no practical use for large tungsten objects in orbit other than to be used as a weapon to cause mass destruction.
I don't see how any government could argue with a straight face that they're not in violation of the space treaty when and if they start lugging tungsten telephone poles into space.
I'm gonna guess that the script writer accidentally conflated WMD with nuclear weapons
They're for... construction... yeah, that's it, that's the ticket, construction.... >.>
WMDs are classified as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Kinetic weapons regardless of damage potential does not fall under any of those categories.
It's destructive power is also roughly on par with the MOAB. So while it is powerful its still only 1/250th the power of the bombs dropped on Japan in ww2.
The MOABs blast is the equivalent of 8-12 tons of tnt. The Fat Man nuke was the equivalent of 20000-22000 tons of tnt. Based on those numbers it's not even close to being a WMD.
@@johnrodgers8457 I looked up the definition of WMDs, it's not exclusive to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. When the term is used, it's often used to describe those things, but included in the definition are devices or weapons intended to cause comparable large-scale damage to infrastructure and humans. I think you're right that a single tungsten pole wouldn't be a WMD, but if you have a satellite in orbit with a dozen of them ready to launch, the weapon system as a whole is inching close to the definition.
Additionally there's a provision of the space treaty that reads "States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects.". Tungsten telephone poles would certainly fall under that category, so theoretically any damage caused would have to be repaid. It's kind of a moot point though; any country that's deploying kinetic weapons in space is violating the spirit of the space treaty, if not the letter, and would have no intention of paying back any damages.
@@MrGouldilocks only definition that matters is the one coming from the UN. They are the ones who are going to do something about it if someone actually uses one. According to them these things don't qualify.
RUclips deleted my comment when I posted the link but put "wmd according to the UN" into Google and it spell it out pretty clearly.
I thought you said "11 and a half tonnes of D&D", and I got really excited.
British science opera author Peter F. Hamilton makes use of these weapons in his "Night's Dawn Trilogy" (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, The Naked God). Except he refers to them as kinetic harpoons, which when used in mass, could turn whole continents into quagmires
When did the size of the rods increase to "telephone pole" dimensions? When I read Dr. Pournelle's original paper back in '81-ish, his idea was for bundles of 20lb projectiles, roughly 1" x 36", to be dropped shotgun style. It was estimated that each rod would impact with a force of roughly 250lbs of TNT.
I have a friend that works on hypersonics and has been since about 2016/17 when the whole “russia has a hypersonic missile” stuff popped off while he couldn’t tell me about any classified stuff he’s always been open to showing and giving me examples of “public knowledge stuff” and this was one of them.