Air Force 'rods from god' kinetic weapon could hit with nuclear-weapon force

Re:Air Force 'rods from god' kinetic weapon could hit with n... by ars on Sunday February 17, 2019 @03:36AM (#19183362)

If this has "nuclear weapon force", then the rocket used to launch it also contains that much energy.

A quick bit of match says the space shuttle energy is about 1 kiloton of TNT equivalent. That's a pretty small bomb.

Maybe the new launch systems are more powerful.

Although it seems simpler to just fly a rocket full of fuel at the target.

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Re:Air Force 'rods from god' kinetic weapon could hit with n... by darkpuma on Sunday February 17, 2019 @03:44AM (#19183389)

With a series of rocket launches, bringing multiple boosters up to the rod, you could raise it to a higher orbit incrementally than a single rocket would permit. But this would be very expensive and I'm skeptical of the practical value of this sort of weapon in the first place, even if we assume the rod is given equivalent energy.

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