Tungsten Rods From Space

A tungsten rod that could hit a city with the explosive power of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Tungsten rods from space. These would be made out of tungsten a rare metal that can stand the intense heat generated by entering earth s atmosphere. But popular science makes it clear that the technology for the hypothetical kinetic energy space weapon it described was. What they didn t count on was the u s. The navy considered two types of warheads in the near term for kinetic weapons.

Natural news cites a 2004 article by popular science describing the operation of a hypothetical space based weapons system dubbed rods from god to support its conspiracy theory speculation that the chinese were hit by a spaced based weapon fired by pentagon. The rods could be dropped from orbit at the right moment accelerating during their thousand mile plummet to earth to more than 10 times the speed of sound. But there are numerous other obstacles to making such a system work. Launching heavy tungsten rods into space will require substantially cheaper rocket technology than we have today.

One satellite fires the rods towards the earth s atmosphere while the. More properly known as hypervelocity rod bundles these weapons would simply be slender solid tungsten cylinders 20 or 30 feet long and one or two feet in diameter with impact speeds of mach 10. Now if someone could only get those space lasers to work. A fully deployed tungsten rod would be about 3 million each.

A system described in the 2003 united states air force report was that of 20 foot long 6 1 m 1 foot diameter 0 30 m tungsten rods that are satellite controlled and have global strike capability with impact speeds of mach 10. The rods would be sent into space and fired from satellites at bunkers on the ground which they would hit at speeds of more than 10 000 feet per second penetrating deep into the earth without any explosives. Dropping the atomic bombs that essentially forced japan to end world war ii led to a number of weapons and munitions developments. The proposal involves placing into orbit a bundle of telephone pole sized rods made out of tungsten an extremely durable metal with the highest melting point of any element.

One warhead would be designed to destroy or disable area targets like airfields or buildings using a reentry vehicle loaded with tungsten rods known as flechettes that would rain down on the target. The 107 country outer space treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear biological or chemical weapons from being placed or used from earth s orbit. Amongst them was research. If rods from god could make that happen odds are the u s.