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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Has 'rods from the gods' been brought up in here yet?

[GiglameshDespair]

Not technically illegal like stationing nukes in space, but if they were done, they no doubt soon would be.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

They aren't illegal.
They are tungsten rods with no explosives or anything.
They are entirly legal and follow those Cold War weapons agreements



For those who don't know what they are
It is an orbiting space station with several heavy metal non nuclear rods with no warheads that can be dropped from orbit onto stationary targets on ground with the possible ability to level an entire city or bust through quite a bit of ground and take out a heavily 'armored' bunker with ease

[x2yzh9]

They aren't illegal.
They are tungsten rods with no explosives or anything.
They are entirly legal and follow those Cold War weapons agreements



For those who don't know what they are
It is an orbiting space station with several heavy metal non nuclear rods with no warheads that can be dropped from orbit onto stationary targets on ground with the possible ability to level an entire city or bust through quite a bit of ground and take out a heavily 'armored' bunker with ease

Kinetic Bombardment would probably do irreparable damage to the Earth/the tectonic plates/whatever

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

If the rods were the right size and they struck the right place
If not they won't do much more than a normal earthquake does

[sneakey pete]

Not as effective as nukes anyway due to slow deployment time. Also don't think its just a matter of "dropping" one down, you'd need to give it a serious push out of orbit.
That being said you dont need to worry about doing damage to the plate tectonics... unless you're dropping something the size of Manhattan that is.

Anyway, hydraulic fluid int he space X? not rocket fuel?
Any pictures of the aftermath?

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Actualy you don't have to push it to much since ya know zero g
Gravity does the rest, remember these are Tungsten rods. They weigh a lot and they deploy and impact twice as fast as any ICBM as long as you have IIRC 15 satellites in the proper orbits
You could level any city you wanted in 15 minutes no mater what
And it's almost impossible to stop the rod once it's dropped, or see it coming for that matter since they are so small compared to other things like rockets (we are talking about a 20 ft long, 1-4ft in diameter rod) and upon impact (if you listen to my friend who first got me interested in this idea) a proper sized rod can liquify anything in a 30 meter diameter around the impact point.

[TheDarkStar]

It's just as hard to move it out of orbit as anything that weight (and because they are fairly heavy, that makes it hard). Gravity might be pulling them, but they have a sizable amount of inertia keeping them in orbit.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

It's zero g, just put a small thruster on it and it's good to go
It would require a lot less fuel to drop one of those (drop not put them up there) than it would to get an ICBM to it's target

[andrea]

here is the thing: you can't get more energy from the rod than you put in. Lifting it up to orbit takes a rocket of energy ( much less, actually. most of the mass you accelerated is dropped during the flight.).
A rocket of energy is nice, especially concentrated in a rod. But that is not a weapon of mass distruction comparable to nukes. Unless you get a nuke level power source in orbit to push the rod.
Gravity won't do all the work for you and saying zero-g doesn't negate inertia. If you want a powerful weapon, you need to push nearly as hard as you want to hit.

Interception being more difficult is an excellent point however.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Check the wiki
And about anything else
Most things say you just have to drop it and it's good, or drop it with little effort
And ya it'll take a lot of energy to get it up there but it's just as effective as a tactical nuke and much less nuclear aftermathy
I would much rather kinetic bombardment be the weapon of world war three rather than nukes, much less if any fallout at all.

[alway]

They are highly problematic. Blatant nation-state warfare is dead, done in by nuclear weapons capable of turning Earth into Venus several times over. Militarization of space is taboo, due to the cost of launching and the permanent cost of debris in space to the point where it could prevent all access to space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome A threat like that is existential to the long term survival of humanity, and entirely pointless due to how unnecessary it is.

There are two sorts of wars now: subversive proxy wars, in which hiding the involvement of the patron is key, and counter-insurgencies like Iraq and Afganistan. In the former, space weapons are straight out, as it is immediately obvious to all whole launched it, and if there were any still up there, they would become a diplomatic nightmare. In the latter, they are highly ineffective compared to drones and similar low cost solutions.

[Rose]

Anyway, back to current events, the Falcon 9 first stage rand out of hydraulic fuel for the fins before it made it to the ground. The next one they launch will have 50% more.

[sneakey pete]

I think someone needs to go play a bit of KSP to learn how orbital mechanics works.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I would if I could but I can't .-.