MrDStroyer t1_j56m76h wrote
Also the premise of GI Joe 2 (terrible). It sounds like a good idea, at first, but getting that much tungsten into orbit in the first place is no small task.
GeorgeOlduvai t1_j56oh27 wrote
That's what asteroid mining is for.
cote112 t1_j57vh4w wrote
And then you watch 'The Expanse' and that's the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
noshore4me t1_j575cis wrote
Which is why Cobra Commander is an underappreciated genius
MrDStroyer t1_j57879d wrote
But he sounds just like my aunt who smokes too much.
NOVAbuddy t1_j594vxs wrote
How well do you know your aunt? She have any chrome faced friends with a temper?
thehazer t1_j578obz wrote
Serpentor just wouldn’t listen. Cobra Commander had been to Cobrala, really should have been consulted. Also never let anyone be in charge who has a body guard named Nemesis Enforcer, best character in the series though.
kelldricked t1_j578l5m wrote
I mean yeah but the benefits are also pretty big. Its not nuclear, its nearly impossible to deflect, hard to detect and have a striking range of the whole world.
Normal missles could be shot down, hacked or you could maybe fuck with the payload.
For fiction, its a really good concept. Because its basic as fuck. Yeah it cost a lot of effort to get it into space but its easily possible. And there is very little understanding needed to know its OP.
aupri t1_j57rxip wrote
There’s a recent Veritasium video about this where he talks about feasibility and the issue is that you’d need a ton of these in orbit to be able to strike anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. If you have one satellite in orbit loaded with these and it just passed the target zone you have to wait for it to come around the earth again, and it would only cover targets on a thin slice of the globe. You’d need a web of satellites, something like Starlink, but each loaded with really heavy rods, which gets pretty expensive
Nuffsaid98 t1_j5ae6p0 wrote
I think you're ignoring orbital mechanics here.
If a satellite is orbiting the Earth at a given speed then anything dropped from it would continue at that speed. You would need to retro thrust to scrub off that speed or factor it in.
In other words, anything dropped from orbit has to fall in a curved path.
Avoiding burnup in the atmosphere dictates the angle of entry.
The payload would be dropped when the satellite is over a completely different part of the Earth, not the target.
If you are firing the weapon at high speed instead of using the gravity well to do the work, you still need to allow for the spin. Also recoil will throw your satellite around.
Not as simple as you might think.
f16f4 t1_j57w2d3 wrote
I mean I doubt you’d really need to be able to strike anywhere, just sit the satellites over the countries you’re worried about.
Darrel-Yurychuk t1_j585po3 wrote
The only satellites that "sit" over a fixed spot on earth are geostationary satellites are directly over the equator but orbit from such a large height from where nothing can be "dropped" back to earth. So you'd need a constellation of satellites to cover any given spot in the world which may be impractical depending on how much they can be steered.
byllz t1_j598pfp wrote
Tungsten would be ideal, but iron nickel alloy from asteroids would do in a pinch.
SeanG909 t1_j578cta wrote
Yeah but the same is true for refining weapons grade uranium
karl2025 t1_j5aygi0 wrote
The United States is upgrading its nuclear arsenal at about $20 million a warhead. In order to get an impactor with, let's say, 100kt of kinetic energy (decent medium sized yield) you'd need somewhere around 160,000 kg of material smacking into the Earth at reentry speeds. That's three launches of a Falcon Heavy to get the material into LEO at a price tag of almost $300mil.
Nukes are way easier.
AgnosticAsian t1_j58goor wrote
It's not that hard to enrich uranium.
If North Korea, an impoverished hellhole, can do it, you can only imagine how easy it is for a country with a real economy.
HPmoni t1_j5kwv4o wrote
It wasn't Shakespeare.
But they blew up London and no one talked about it.
MrStayPuftSeesYou t1_j57aidt wrote
Why 0
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