Rods of God

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Your target is under ground. Drop it from the spaceship, let it go at 17300 horizontally to the target. It will go down REALLY fast after a while and might be going at a 45 degree angle. It then hits near the target still going horizontal a bit, keeps going till it hits the target, and blows up.

Remember, when it goes up, it goes down with the same force so it will go down as fast as it initially came up.

[Radical Edward]

if you drop it, it will just stay in orbit. have you seen videos and things of people in space shuttles or the space station while they are in space with all that stuff floating around? that will happen if you drop a uranium rod too.

[Sayonara]

Even if you got it into a descent path, you'd have no means of compensating for atmospheric motion in order to keep it on target. BECAUSE IT'S A ROD.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Or a rod with a guidance system.

[Radical Edward]

right. so lets get this straight. we now have a uranium rod with an accelerating device, lets call it a rocket, and a guidance system, and possibly some explosives attached too. Lets call this a missile.

 

these already exist. mounting your uranium rods in space is completely pointless.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

NO ACCELERATING DEVICE!

In space makes them faster (17300 mph)

[Radical Edward]

told you already, it would just stay in orbit if you dropped it. in order to get it out of orbit, you have to accelerate it.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Let me just clarify the whole thing.

There are guided uranium rods mounted on a space station or satelite. The satelite ejects them downward and so it now gets out of orbit and is hurtling toward the target. When it is high above the target (I'm revising what I said previously) it turns so it is going straight down toward the target. It steadily accelerates until it plows into the under groundtarget, destroying it.

The advantages of mounting it in space is that it can be ready all the time, instead of launched at a certain time. It also gives it 17300 mph.

Oh, and if you wonder "but the satelite will be over the target every 90 minutes because it's orbiting" hows about mountint it in geosynchrous orbit 22.300 miles high. Then you need only four satelites to cover the whole earth.

[Radical Edward]

but it does not get 17,300 mph of velocity. it only gets a little bit of velocity that you put into it. the rest is gained from gravity, and lost again because of terminal velocity when it hits the atmosphere unless the rod is guided and has a propulsion system (aka a guided missile). You also have friction to contend with and heat problems, especially if your missile is to be a high velocity guided one. think the recent problems with the space shuttle. There would be no advantage mounting it in space, because you couldn't make the missile any more effective than it already is on earth, not very easily at any rate. It has to be launched into space, it has to be completely unhackable, and it has to be cost effective. This is highly unlikely since current bunker busters already do a bloody good job.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

But modern bunker busters can't even go a hundred feet down. They are limited to about 20.

Yes, it is guided. Yes, if the nose is thick enough it will melt slowly away like an ablative heat shield and keep it from being fried.

Why doesn't it get 17300 of velocity? The satelite is going that fast so if it is launched from the satelite it will be going that fast.

<edit> I just realized, the lower the orbit the faster. So it will get even faster before getting out of orbit. What do you say I make a new thread so this one can GET ON TOPIC! This thread is going down the toilet! :toilet: It's supposed to be anti-energy weapons!

[JaKiri]

The 17,300mph is the centripetal velocity (I doubt that any weapons satellite would be in geostationary orbit; they'd be in low, small, quick orbits like the spy satellites).

 

Here's an example of why you don't add that on:

 

When you drop a ball from (say) 2m, does it move forward?

 

No.

 

That's because it's attracted to a central point, and all rest frames are valid (remember, from the perspective of the surface of the earth, a geostationary orbit is, well, stationary).

[YT2095]

why not use existing space materials instead of the Uranium, then all you`de need to do would be send up a load of rocket packs and guidence systems, strap them to a meteorite and guide it towards the country you wanted splattered. using energy to lift the Uranium from here would take too much energy, and you`de only get out what you put in (and it may burn up before it could do damage) whereas using existing materials already up there, you`de bypass that prob, AND you choose your own yeild

Just a thought

[Sayonara]

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3

 

Episode 160 - "Rise"

 

[Radical Edward]

YT2095 said in post #57 :

why not use existing space materials instead of the Uranium, then all you`de need to do would be send up a load of rocket packs and guidence systems, strap them to a meteorite and guide it towards the country you wanted splattered. using energy to lift the Uranium from here would take too much energy, and you`de only get out what you put in (and it may burn up before it could do damage) whereas using existing materials already up there, you`de bypass that prob, AND you choose your own yeild

Just a thought

 

just hope that the war isn't over in the few months/years it takes to get the rockets there and back. A better solution would be constructing a solar powered mass driver on the moon. you could launch big lumps of rock into space with a relatively low energy cost (zero effectively, since it is all free solar anergy anyway) and hace a more or less continual supply.

[YT2095]

ahhh yeah, I`ve seen something similar to that proposed, it`s like a huge rail with sequentialy switched EM Coils, with a gradual decrease in switching lag between coils. I think some Russian experimenteer made a hand held version too LOL

I`m fairly sure when I saw the program on it, it was used for more peacefull purposes though. But then again, wasn`t Dynamite? ))

[aman]

Radical Edward said in post #59 :

 

just hope that the war isn't over in the few months/years it takes to get the rockets there and back. A better solution would be constructing a solar powered mass driver on the moon. you could launch big lumps of rock into space with a relatively low energy cost (zero effectively, since it is all free solar anergy anyway) and hace a more or less continual supply.

 

A moon launch would still take days to hit the Earth. Situations change and we need quick response. I don't think there are any massive bodies orbiting this planet other than the moon, at least one that I know of. Probably a defense secret. Does anybody know what the most massive object is we have orbiting Earth and whether it might be considered a quick weapon?

The hardes part as earlier stated is getting the mass up first. We have the guidence tech.

Just aman

[JaKiri]

I think you've missed his point.

 

It's much easier to get masses into earth orbit from the moon than the earth. He didn't say anything about using them directly after launch, after all.

[aman]

Thank you MrL, There is an easy source of mass on the moon and I think the escape velocity from the equator there is less than 2,000 mph.

I imagine we might be able to mine ore and park it in orbit for the future for a quick response but from the moon I was questioning the 200,000+ mile distance.

Would a cable attached to the moons surface with a projectile attached to it's end be able to accelerate the mass to have a very lethal impact with a guidance system attached and a few minutes warning

Just aman?

[JaKiri]

Where did anyone say you'd have to store it in orbit around the moon? If you've got a rocket system set up anyway, you may as well have them transported to CEO.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

MrL_JaKiri said in post #56 :

The 17,300mph is the centripetal velocity (I doubt that any weapons satellite would be in geostationary orbit; they'd be in low, small, quick orbits like the spy satellites).

 

Here's an example of why you don't add that on:

 

When you drop a ball from (say) 2m, does it move forward?

 

No.

 

That's because it's attracted to a central point, and all rest frames are valid (remember, from the perspective of the surface of the earth, a geostationary orbit is, well, stationary).

That 17,300 is relative to the earth. If it was moving around the equator, it would be going 17300 faster than the rotation of the earth. When you drop a ball like that, of course it doesn't move forward, it's moving just as fast as the earth. Any satelite except ones in geostationary orbit (the correct term being geosynchrous orbit) are moving faster than the earth, unless they are in a high inclination orbit.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

aman said in post #63 :

Thank you MrL, There is an easy source of mass on the moon and I think the escape velocity from the equator there is less than 2,000 mph.

Escape velecity is around 5000 mph.

[aman]

If you mine it and put it in orbit around Earth then it's handy on a few minutes notice. Then as was taken for granted you would decelerate and drop it like a big load. I can't believe that my little PC could probably calculate the info needed. Is there a realative ratio so the moon has 1/6 the gravity would have 1/6 the escape velocity? That would be handy accelerating small projectiles towards Earth, like heat shielded UF6 pellets.

 

Just aman

[JaKiri]

Cap'n Refsmmat said in post #65 :

the correct term being geosynchrous orbit

 

If 'geostationary' is good enough for my physics supervisor, it's good enough for me.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

But it's not goot enough for other people.

[Radical Edward]

Cap'n Refsmmat said in post #65 :

That 17,300 is relative to the earth. If it was moving around the equator, it would be going 17300 faster than the rotation of the earth. When you drop a ball like that, of course it doesn't move forward, it's moving just as fast as the earth. Any satelite except ones in geostationary orbit (the correct term being geosynchrous orbit) are moving faster than the earth, unless they are in a high inclination orbit.

 

so how are you going to get the rod to hit the earth at 17,300 mph, give or take a bit.

 

imagine a little thought experiment. you have a bucket full of water, and you are spinning it round on a rope, and the bucket is travelling with a velocity of say, 5m/s. your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hit yourself in the head with this bucket at a velocity of at least 5m/s.