Why hasn't this been made yet? Better than nuclear fallout
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@teto a lot of energy and expense hauling ultra dense inert projectiles up to space then send them back down with targeting packages when you can just put some HE on the tip of a missile for better effect
1. Obscenely expensive to get them up there, because "you need fuel to lift the fuel to lift the fuel" rockery problem...
2. Guidance during the drop is an unsolved problem - how do you make flaps that don't burn up?
2. Guidance during the drop is an unsolved problem - how do you make flaps that don't burn up?
@cjd but it would be so cool. Therefore we need to do it
Hypersonics are almost the same thing, it's just that instead of using rocket fuel to wind up the "gravity spring" and then release it later, you just use the rocket fuel to make the thing go fast fast
@cjd we should rename hypersonics to thor's hammer at least or "rockets from God"
Imagine a nuclear powered ramjet... You just put a bunch of fuel inside of a tungsten crucible (so it can get very hot) and you launch it with a conventional rocket and once it's doing about mach 1 you blow the control rods out of it and let it run by heating the air...
@Paultron @teto @cjd @apropos "a lot of energy and expense hauling ultra dense inert projectiles up to space"
That's very much not the plan, you mine the tungsten or whatever in space far enough away from Earth's gravity field.
The whole idea back then was to make Project Thor's Rods From God so cheap, with rudimentary sensors, that if you wanted to stop an armored division with a thousand vehicles you'd saturate it by dropping something like ten thousand rods.
As for guidance flaps, perhaps you use something else like gas/tiny rocket jets, or you have them emerge after things get cool enough. Pournelle was more than knowledgeable enough to have avoided pushing an impracticable idea.
Dropping big "rocks" like in the Moon is a Harsh Mistress is more a strategic than tactical thing. The specific novel about this to read about this is Footfall by Niven and Pournelle.
@All_bonesJones @merchantHelios "violates the 1967 outer space treaty" and we should care about that why?? I mean, the first entity to do this will literally own the Earth....
@brimshae "Don't worry about the spinning [akin to rifling]. It's gonna hit with the force of a small meteor anyway." Something like twenty five tones of TNT. Don't even have to quite directly hit a tank to take it out of commission.