Comments on: The THOR system is composed of a thousand or more cheap satellites

By: Harry Jones

Harry Jones — Thu, 09 May 2019 22:20:52 +0000

You can’t get more energy out than you put in. Look at the fuel you burn to get the projectile up there, and imagine using that same amount of fuel in a fuel-air bomb. That’s a basis of comparison.

Oh, but the rod is more concentrated, you say, to drill through a bunker roof? Yes, only you can’t aim it with any kind of precision, so it’s scattershot or forget it.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 17:30:45 +0000

Depends entirely on how you define your terms, though…

The best write-up on the concept is in the supporting literature for Project Thor; it’s been a few years since I dug into that stuff, but there’s a set of equations somewhere that calculates just how much damage such a kinetic strike would work up to. While it is true that you’d have a hard time getting up to thermonuclear levels of energy with something like a flying telephone pole, the damage is a lot more localized and concentrated, such that you might not flatten a city, but that bunker you were aiming it at would get the effect of having had a nuke go off near it. It’s all about the kinetic energy; mass times speed…

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:28:24 +0000

The two salient flaws in that depiction are that you can’t simply drop something from orbit — you need to propel it out of orbit — and it won’t hit with anywhere near the energy of a nuke.

By: Edgewise

Edgewise — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:04:34 +0000

A cinematic conception? How “accurate”/“plausible” is this?

https://youtu.be/jOKf5r_JMAo

By: Kirk

Kirk — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 16:16:51 +0000

The engineering and aerodynamics on these things were already worked out in excruciating detail back in the ’70s by guys like Jerry Pournelle and some others who were working in that arena. The idea works–Issue is the supporting tech, and the economics of it all.

At some point, this will be a real weapons system we will have to factor in and contend with. Countermeasures will no doubt be found, but the question is how they will work, and what they will consist of.

By: Wan Wei Lin

Wan Wei Lin — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 02:59:34 +0000

Travis Cocoran's Causes of Separation SF novel uses GPS-guided kinetics loaded with lunar regolith. Deals with air resistance, guidance, and failure modes.

By: Sam J.

Sam J. — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 02:11:50 +0000

I believe it would work. There’s extremely low air resistance to a needle. As for heat shields there’s videos online that show someone figured out how the stuff called starlite, a heat shield made by a hair dresser that protected an object to 10,000 degrees Celsius, worked and what it might have been made of. Turns out, if I remember correctly, it just releases a small amount of carbon dioxide and that gas protects it. I see no reason it couldn’t be made to work.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/Starlite-the-nuclear-blast-defying-plastic-that-could-change-the-world.html

There’s also a tactical anti-personal version of the darts dropped off planes.

http://texastradingpost.com/militaria/lazydog.html

https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/terrifying-steel-darts-wwi

By: Freddo

Freddo — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 21:34:41 +0000

Pie in the sky daydreaming. Air resistance leads to a much lower terminal velocity. Heat friction would severely damage the projectile; the plasma from the heat friction would also prevent sensor packages from operating. The slightest instability would cause the projectile to tumble and shatter.

If the technology was there you would expect it to show up in current weapon systems at a much higher rate.

By: Adar

Adar — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 17:51:08 +0000

I think this is Global Strike in the most recent version. A B-52 carries a missile to 40,000 feet and releases. That missile can hit any spot on the planet within a 30 minute span. Downward plunging warhead releases thousand of tungsten rods each having twelve times the amount of energy as a fifty caliber round. Everything within a mile radius of ground zero obliterated. A nuclear like destructive capacity without the nuclear detonation. Those thousands of tungsten rods creating a lot of secondary debris flying all over the place also very deadly.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 17:21:52 +0000

According to Ben Rich's Skunk Works, they thought of dropping an iron spear off the SR-71 at Mach 3. It would penetrate most bunkers, and be cheap, but they called it a "kinetic energy weapon" when they ran it past McNamara, and he said he didn't believe in that Buck Rogers energy weapons stuff.