I hope you're not just finding out politicians know diddly squat about most things.
Most of the stuff I've read from arms control "experts" sounds like it was written by POGO. Only American nuclear programs will cause an arms race for example. (Which I guess is true. If only one side is running it's not a race.)I hope you're not just finding out politicians know diddly squat about most things.
He's not a politician. Based upon his title, he's "Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control" and his bio indicates he's a subject matter expert in arms control. I'd assume that somebody in that position would know that the "rods from god" idea is baloney and therefore would not be tweeting about it. But I'm probably assuming too much.
Or worse CATO or QuincyMost of the stuff I've read from arms control "experts" sounds like it was written by POGO. Only American nuclear programs will cause an arms race for example. (Which I guess is true. If only one side is running it's not a race.)I hope you're not just finding out politicians know diddly squat about most things.
He's not a politician. Based upon his title, he's "Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control" and his bio indicates he's a subject matter expert in arms control. I'd assume that somebody in that position would know that the "rods from god" idea is baloney and therefore would not be tweeting about it. But I'm probably assuming too much.
And why would the target care, whether the island fort was razed using a nuke, or using something else with similar power?
While you are correct that dead is dead, the TARGET would care because any survivors could crawl out of the rubble and maybe recover and survive, without dying of rad poison. The WORLD cares because there's no radioactive clouds floating around crapping fallout.
Assuming these rods are on some orbiting structure, the motors could be taken up separately.
True but the purpose is to have the weapon in orbit ready to strike.
??? Having it in orbit doesn't automatically give it the power of a nuclear weapon.
Never said it did. But it's quicker than launching it from the ground to strike.
You would probably use a reusable launcher. You wouldn't slow the orbital velocity you would use the booster to divert the path towards the target.
If you slow the rod down, you defeat the purposes of the exercise. The lethality of the rod IS its velocity. I think it was mentioned early in the thread that friction with the air alone will slow them from 11 kps to about 3 kps. A rocket was mentioned as an option earlier, but if used, it would realistically only reduce velocity loss to friction rather than add any.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Real_life_concepts_and_theories OK its Wikipedia, but it mentions that 6-8 satellites in an orbit will have one passing over a given point at 12-15 minute intervals, which has global implications for a polar or Molniya orbit. However that particular datum is crying out for a "citation needed" flag, (or better yet, a citation). I've seen this figure quoted several places but not found any authoritative source on it. Does anyone know if this is true?
The Soviets feared that the Space Shuttle could be used to nuke Moscow. I wonder about the possibility of the Starship being converted into a similar role as a carrier for the rods. Musk has promised aviation-like availability rates and if flying in a LEO could probably hit the target within 45 minutes of launch. The Starship could carry around 10 of them.
No need to station them in orbit and start an arms race or militarize space. Leaving them in orbit also makes them more vulnerable and would cost 10s of trillion vs launching from the ground.
What do you guys think? I included the links on the Space Shuttle below.
Bombing missions
Okhotsimsky and Sikharulidze stated in their report that the shuttle would offer several advantages over intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as so-called “global missiles,” the term the Russians used for rockets that would place nuclear weapons into orbit, after which they would de-orbit themselves and approach US territory from the south. The Soviet Union actually performed flight tests of such a system using the R-36 missile of the Yangel design bureau in the late 1960s and early 1970s (in the West this was known as a Fractional Orbit Bombardment System, or FOBS, and the Russian development of such a system may have led Okhotsimsky and Sikharulidze to assume that the Americans sought a similar capability.) While an ICBM needs just 30 or 40 minutes to reach its target, it spends much of its time at high altitudes (up to 800–1000 kilometers), making it easy to detect. In contrast, because it flies over the South Pole, the shuttle would need 70–80 minutes to reach its target, but flying at an altitude of 185–200 kilometers and approaching the Soviet Union from the south, it would be much harder to detect by Soviet early warning systems. An orbiting nuclear weapon is also easy to detect and its trajectory can be quite easily predicted, making it easy to take countermeasures. It also has a much lower strike accuracy, so they thought the shuttle would be better for this mission.
Okhotsimsky and Sikharulidze then provided an alarming scenario for the American shuttle: a mission with the aim of dropping a “special payload” (in other words, a bomb) on Moscow.
Okhotsimsky and Sikharulidze stated that the shuttle’s crew would make it possible to increase flexibility and even to call off the operation at the last moment. Strike accuracy would be increased by the ability to accurately determine the position of the orbiter before the de-orbit burn. With the help of the US Air Force’s Global Positioning System (GPS) then in development, that accuracy was expected to improve to 50 meters by 1981, and to 10 meters by 1984.
Okhotsimsky and Sikharulidze then provided an alarming scenario for the American shuttle: a mission with the aim of dropping a “special payload” (in other words, a bomb) on Moscow. The shuttle would enter the atmosphere at an altitude of 110 kilometers some 17 minutes after the de-orbit burn at 30 degree northern latitude. Four minutes after entry interface, at an altitude of 67 kilometers and with the orbiter at 47 degrees north, it would drop the bomb, which would hit its target about three to four minutes later at a speed varying between 200 and 500 meters per second. Detection would be made even more difficult by the fact that the orbiter and the bomb would be enveloped by a cloud of ionized gas at altitudes between 45 and 75 kilometers which cannot be penetrated by radio signals. Meanwhile, the orbiter would “turn in such a way that its lift would be aimed upwards with a roll angle of about –30°.” This would enable it to “come out of its dive and perform a lateral manoeuvre” to place it on a trajectory back to Vandenberg. Not having enough speed to reach the launch site, it would fire its Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines (ideally at an altitude of about 100 kilometers) to provide a delta-V of about 200 meters per second. Exiting the atmosphere at a speed of 7.2 kilometers per second at 61 degrees north, the orbiter would reach a maximum altitude of 120 kilometers and then begin its final descent to Vandenberg. In contrast to the initial dive, which would take just 7.5 minutes, this gradual descent would take about 35 minutes.
Illustration from the IPM study showing the shuttle’s dive into the atmosphere and subsequent re-boost maneuver. The light line represents the trajectory of the shuttle and the dark line that of the “special payload”.
One major problem with the scenario portrayed by Okhotsimsky and Sikharulidze was that the shuttle did not have a bomb bay on the bottom of the spacecraft. Instead, it had a payload bay with large doors mounted on its top that could not be opened during reentry. They did not address this issue in their report.
Okhotsimsky and Sikharulidze expected the shuttle to be used to strike “major administrative and military-industrial complexes,” the sudden destruction of which would offer the “attacking side” a major advantage. The shuttle could also be used to destroy mobile targets or “new targets of high military importance detected at the last moment.”
That's why I think the BFR/Starship will just be too attractive to not militarize, if Musk can hit magnitudes close to what he quoted on price.
My understanding of the paranoia was that you can put several hundred city-killling MIRVs in a thirty-tonne payload bay.
SBFOBS? Shuttle Based Fractional Orbital Bombardment System
Depends how many systems you have in orbit and their distribution.
That's what he said. You'd need a metric fook-tonne just to get limited utility and it would cost a fortune.
That just gets added on. How big are the rods? How many per satellite? How many satellites? How much for each rod? How much for each satellite? Even a rough SWAG says the cost would make it an immediate non-starter.
Tungsten costs something like thirty grand per metric ton. A log of tungsten ten centimeters in diameter by three meters long would be about 23,500 cubic cm; at 19.3 gm/cm3 that's four and a half tons, or $135,000 just in raw materials. A tungsten rod like that placed into a stable orbit is likely to *stay* in a stable orbit, since drag will be of little consequence to it, but the system will need a pretty badass de-orbit system as well as a complex and expensive guidance system that can control it from de-orbit down to impact. Rocket systems that can sit in LEO for years and fire up reliably at a moments notice ain't cheap. Guidance and control systems ain't cheap. Turning raw tungsten or tungsten carbide or some other alloy or cermet of tungsten into a shaped rod ain't cheap. I can easily see a single weapon costing ten million dollars just to build. Now assume you need ten thousand of them to provide the sort of coverage you need, and you start butting up against noticeable sums of money.
Speaking of tungsten you should see Demolition Ranch try to destroy a cube of it. 50 BMG is about the only thing that does more than put a smudge on it.
Well I do agree with that, with Brilliant Pebbles (which was a proposed ABM system) it was reckoned that 4063 were needed. It would also be very easy to knock out these floating monstrosities with missiles unless they had some major laser CIWS integrated. Space hijack would also be a possibility.
