Shit is deranged.
Someone should make a movie where we built and launched these but somehow lost control so they continue to loiter indefinitely.
Yeah, it is an absolutely terrifying concept.
"Let's make a weapon so awful, that it can fly around for basically forever, spreading nuclear fallout everywhere it travels at breakneck speeds, and load it up with a dozen or so nuclear bombs, only to cancel the project because the russians would absolutely make this machine as well"
What's worse is the implication of this being revealed to the public. The only way something like this gets unclassified if the military has something stronger/better. Maybe that's ICBMs, maybe something else. Spooky shit either way.
My “favorite” weapon in similar vein, but perhaps never actually developed. Rods of God
Nha that one is in another league of coolness. That’s scifi level of cool.
That's another favorite of mine as well.
And I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were a few sets of them in orbit right now.
~~Nah, the cost currently would be on the scale of the gdp of the US. We can say with 100% certainty that there are none currently. The closest we could possibly have is simply a kinetic kill satellite.~~ The cost to ship even a single tunsten telephone pole would be massive, not to mention the cost of shipping a hidden satellite capable of remotely launching them with precision eithout having to worry about it getting hacked or discovered
Edit: evidently not, see below
The space shuttle had a 60ft long bay, with a LEO payload capacity of 27,500 kg to LEO, 16,050 kg to the ISS, or 10,890 kg to geostationary orbit.
https://www.nasa.gov/reference/the-space-shuttle/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle
Tungsten has a density of 19.254 g/cm3
A 30ft tall, 1ft diameter cylinder is about 667,199 cm3. Made of tungsten, it would be 13,343.99 kg, or 13 metric tons. In 1995 the price per metric ton of tungsten was $20,674.11 after adjusting for inflation, or $268,763.43 for the entire rod.
https://www.metalary.com/tungsten-price/
Please check my math on this if you like, as I am very sleep deprived.
But the point is, it is well within the payload capacity of the tech we had, and the military budget. And the U.S. military would have absolutely been willing and able to hijack a ride on a shuttle, when the shuttle program was active.
Nah, too lazy to check the math, but ill stand corrected. Thanks, i hate it!
Fucking mood.
Take what I said with a massive grain of salt though. Even if I didn't oops a digit, the number of launches the military could have hijacked for this is very limited, and the number of them very limited.
If there are any in orbit, I'd wager its less than a dozen or so.
Yep, in levels of "coolness" or scale, it goes: fission bombs, fusion bombs, cluster fusion bombs, rods from god, nychro-dyson beam, black hole gun, then black hole bomb. Possibly vacuum decay as the strongest possible weapon.
There were a lot of crazy ideas during the 50s and 60s. In the same vein as this there was some investigation into the use of gaseous core nuclear thermal rockets and power reactors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb
https://atomic-skies.blogspot.com/2016/07/burning-gas.html?m=1
Extremely toxic, extremely radioactive, extremely oxidizing (CIF3 can set concrete on fire!), extremely hot, and under extremely high pressure (2500+ PSI!). What's not to love?
Unlike intercontinental ballistic missile these nuclear-powered ramjet cruise missiles could be recalled... I don't think I would want this thing coming back 😅
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