China released a paper about a test of a tungsten rod/space kinetic test in the Gobi, A 140kg tungsten rod hit at Mach 14 and impact crater had diameter of 9m and a depth of only 3m. Muh nuke without radiation my ass lmao!

You really needed the chinks to tell you before you believed? I saw anons saying it was shit based on napkin math 15 years ago and that was enough for me.

>>63871536 (OP)
>test
if you'd read what the image you're posting says, this is not an experimental paper, they're trying to model it.

Well thats fucked up. Welp nothing more to do than destroy every chink satellite. The imperials were into those grandiose punishments so they'll understand

The concept of all powerful "rods from God" was always weird to me.
Yeah, we have heavy, dense rod, traveling at Mach fuck so it has huge amounts of energy, but wouldn't it just plunge deep into soil and use most of it's energy there?
Anything hit on it's way down would be obliterated, bit that would be building, maybe two.

yes
their speed isn't fast enough

to get significant amounts of energy on target (like kilotons to megatons), you need to hit small percentages of c to do it. and your material will vaporize as soon as it enter the atmosphere anyway.

Now do a 1t

>>63871626
that's only about 2 tons of tnt equivalent

>>63871608
as for what you want for a high energy kinetic event that realistically feasible:

you want a nuclear shaped charge that detonates at the required height that avoids fallout (fireball doesn't touch the ground), and the liner is orientated towards the target. you will still get some radiation from the liner hitting the target, but it won't be much.

>>63871536 (OP)
Installing propulsion systems into asteroids and sling shot them back to a planet would actually be able to achieve nuke like destruction without radiation. I'd call it "Rocks from God"

>>63871698
funnily, nukes don't leave fallout with airbursts, which is the most destructive way to use them. you just need to make sure the fireball doesn't touch the ground.

people often forget this.

>>63871633
Now do 10t

>>63871536 (OP)
>Muh nuke without radiation my ass lmao!
Only a retard with hollywood-as-education would say that, it's roughly equivalent to a 500lb bomb but the range is more important.

>>63871698
Yeah but at that point it's easier just to build a nuke with the appropriate yield than trying to fish for asteroids millions of miles away from your target

>>63871597
You could probably do something like a segmented rod, or something that expands like a hollowpoint on impact, so release all the energy on the surface, rather than underground.

It'd never be a "nuke" or anything like that, though.

>>63871536 (OP)
>140kg
>mach 14, which sounds fast but is still barely halfway to orbital velocity
proves nothing

>>63872592
atmospheric resistance will slow down the rod from orbital velocities.

>>63872603
Much less so with a significantly more massive rod

>>63871906
~27 tons of tnt at mach 14
still not all that much considering the effort to get it into space

>>63871536 (OP)
>Rods from God proven to be a meme
> A 140kg tungsten rod
.. your civilization is too poor to play the space game

>>63872611
>the effort to get it into space
its a weapon for an already space-faring civilization with industry already *in space*

>>63872623
If that’s the case, then they’re doubly a meme, because now the enemy could just blow them up in orbit.

>>63872603
Which is probabli why China decided to use hyper sonic glider vehicles to deliver a payload. Much more cost effective and you don't need tons of energy to put it up in the sky like a kinetic rod from orbit.

>>63872646
in the story humans are in 1980s without space weapons of their own, we're being invaded by a species armed with this weapon

>>63872672
yeah I mean if we were a spacefaring civilization they'd be great for freeing the shit out of some avatar style heyahoya primitive aliens but then so would any other type of weapon deployed from orbit

>>63872679
they want the planet for themselves so they're hesitant to use nukes, they have a smaller version of the rod thats effective against tanks and helicopters and mass deployable to take out an entire armored division in the open in one go

>>63872429
>release all the energy on the surface, rather than underground.
>crater had diameter of 9m and a depth of only 3m.
At high impact speeds penetrator destroys itself and energy is spend to expand crater diameter not depth.

>>63872679
>>63872691
Space fairning civilisations wouldn't need planets. Because they would space living machines. Jungle monkeys can't compete.

>>63872735
the Fithp did not develop their technology themselves, they inherited it from another species

>>63871536 (OP)
Basic physics would tell you that. Ignoring air resistance, a 1000kg mass falling from 100km would have just under 1GJ of kinetic energy on impact, which is slightly less than the energy contained in 500lbs of TNT, which in turn is roughly 2.5% of a B2's explosive payload.

If you make the rod somewhere between 215 and 480 meters in diameter, you get the equivalent of a 600 megaton bomb.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4581_Asclepius

12 Tsar Bombas. And you don't even need to make it out of tungsten.

>>63872831
for projectiles of that size the Fithp just threw rocks at the earth, causing a mega tsunami

>>63872831
How much does It weigh though?

>>63871536 (OP)
>China released a paper

>>63872831
That asteroid would have a mass of around 10 million tons

>>63872871
Only 250x the total mass humans have put in orbit

easy

>>63871536 (OP)
>godless communists
>can't into rods from God
Figures.

>>63872894
the economics change once you manage to build a facility in space that can be used to build another facility

>>63871536 (OP)
this is why you have MIRV ICBM's instead.

>>63873261
you could dedicate your entire economy to moving around 10 million ton rocks

or you could just build some regular bombs

>>63871597
>>63872429
As you increase velocity above mach 5 impact craters become increasingly wide faster than they become deeper regardless of what the projectile is made of. A longer and more dense and more durable projectile still goes deeper than a shorter or less dense one, but the point is hyper-sonic impacts scale increasingly wide as you increase speed.

>>63873278
Think of all the rockets and jet engines needed to move around all those bombs. If instead of trying to move bombs around, what if some country were to place all those rockets and jet engines on the back of the Moon? Try stopping the Moon with your bombs.

>>63873346
>Think of all the rockets and jet engines needed to move around all those bombs
far far far less than would be needed to move even just ten million tons of inert material

the moon has a mass of eighty one quintillion tons btw

>>63873346
Calculations suggest that it would take 6.6 billion times the current global nuclear arsenal to blow up the Moon. It's truly an unstoppable weapon.

>>63873346
you could do it they made a movie about it

>>63871536 (OP)
This is for a 4" wide, 2.75' long rod.
That's marginally larger than an RPG7 warhead with propellant, right?
And you're telling me that in their modeling, that made a crater up to 25' wide, and 9' deep?
Is that not impressive to you?

>>63873667
Now attach rocket to that warhead to achieve that velocity.

>>63873667
>the kinetic energy eq. to 350 kg of TNT (more than 700kg if you consider mechanical work) it isn't impressive

>>63871536 (OP)
What would 1000 of them do spread across an airbase?
Or if it hit a tank would there be much damage?

>>63872691
>>63872735
The aliens in question are descendants of semi intelligent pets of ancient race. They aren't the ones that developed the technology on their own. There is a faction IIRC that wants to live in space habitats and is against invading Earth.

>>63871597
High velocity physics is weird. I hate quote Reddit science nigger but when asked why there were essentially zero elliptical shaped craters on the moon, despite asteroids obviously not landing straight down all the time, he had an interesting explanation. When the amount of energy created by the impact is greater than the amount of energy holding one of the objects together, said object will just explode.

>>63873702
Anon it's effectively an ICBM with the amount of range it has, no matter what you're going to be using a lot of kinetic energy to get the payload where it needs to be.

>>63871536 (OP)
140 kg of tungsten is not that much, considering it's density

>>63874485
not all targets needs a tactical nuke, and the Rods of God concept had the KE of 10 tons of TNT (20 tons if you consider the efficiency of an explosive turning heat into mechanical work), that's a very low yield tactical nuke

>>63873384
>they made a movie about it
the novels were better, in the novels the moon is 52k years old *man-made* warship

>>63871536 (OP)
>OP is a retarded faggot who knocks down his perennial strawman yet again while failing to understand simple physics.
It's honestly kinda fascinating how one or two autists on /k/ have developed this weird obsessive hatred of theoretical kinetic weapons and have to invent these fantasies about them. A kinetic strike is simply E=1/2mv^2, that's it. It can be as small or as big as one can get E. The main potential advantages are difficulty of interception, cost of ammo (can just use simple steel and ceramic), penetration potential, zero pollution (can just use steel and ceramic), and infallibility (there's no such thing as UXO with kinetic weapons, whatever it hits gets the energy).
>mach 14
That's so slow though. A ballistic weapon is more like mach 28-30. But whatever, sure, 140kg@mach 14 would about 1.6e9 J, or about 380kg of TNT. No shit that's nothing special. At mach 30, that'd increase to equivalent of about 1.76 tons (around 3900 lbs) of TNT, which at least is getting into pretty sizable conventional bomb territory.

If instead we imagine the lower end payload capacity of Starship, that'd be at 1.25 kilotons of TNT equivalent. That's actually getting up there.
>nuke
Hyperkinetic weapons only become nuke-tier with a lot of mass and speed. A fully orbitally refueled Starship that did a TLI style slingshot and then let a top end target size cargo worth of kinetic strike (maybe 300 tons) could reach low end nuke range (~8 kilotons) energy levels. To actually get into serious nukes requires some sort of far future space war sort of thing, either people aiming enormous mass (via asteroids) at a planet or using some sort of torch drive propulsion or either ultra efficient or external propulsion (laser/particle) over very long distances.

But none of that is necessary for to be potentially interesting, nuke tier is arguably the most useless application.

>>63871536 (OP)
I said the same thing on this board after running some numbers and some wise guys called me a retard lmao

>>63874557
I've run "some numbers" too. You are indeed a retard.

The bugs might be retarded. Alternatively they may just be eager for trump not to get it into his head as something to pursue.

>>63874458
time (and thus velocity) is a social construct

>>63871969
He said he wanted to avoid radiation. Which means no nukes.

>>63874528
>tactical nuke
There is no such thing as a tactical nuke. There are nukes. They might be high yield or low yield. But there is no such thing as a 'tactical nuke'. How you use a nuke is what matters. I drop a 50Mt nuke on a aircraft carrier group just before I launch an invasion? I've used it tactically. I drop a 1Mt nuke on a population centre? I've used it strategically. The yield doesn't matter. Stop using the term 'tactical nuke' when you mean 'low yield'.

Finally, the US in ~2016 said there is no such thing as a 'tactical nuclear weapon'. Any weapon used is a strategical game changer.

>>63874687
I'm tired of that shitty copypasta

>>63874687
>I drop a 50Mt nuke on a aircraft carrier group just before I launch an invasion? I've used it tactically.
I think that counts a strategic strike

>>63871698
Isnt this the plot to that one 80s Gundam movie

>>63871933
>500lb bomb.
We could do that with a rocket and it’d be cheaper.

>>63874694
I see you also use 'copypasta' incorrectly.

>>63874698
Tactical nukes are used to change the outcome of a battle, not to wipe out your opponent. Hence shit like Davey Crockets. No such thing exists now, it's just a retarded term that people misunderstand and has been pushed to try and make the idea of a nuclear weapon being used as no big deal 'well it's only a ickle tactical nuke not a big boy strategic nuke!'. They don't exist. No nation with even a modicum of intellect considers any nuclear weapon usage to be 'tactical'. If Russia nukes a Ukrainian armored push, they can't suddenly go 'well it was only a ickle tactical nuke =UwU='. You've just completely changed the entire geopolitical arena. Because if you're willing to use a nuke on an armored thrust, you could use it on other things.

>>63874732
"Small rockets" are expensive, one Pershing II was as expensive (inflation adjusted) as a F9 launch and the range was limited. The LRHW is similar.

>>63871536 (OP)
>140kg
>of tungsten
What was it, a 10 inch long cylinder?

>>63871698
Aww how cute somebody watched "The Expanse"

>chitungstenum

>>63871698
>Rocks from Grug
>Unga Bunga Rockstop

>>63871536 (OP)
Okay now imagine that slamming into some kind of command center without warning.

>>63871536 (OP)

>>63876067
>abusing of the Mach number
This is just another case of Football-fields units

>>63871544
>>63871536 (OP)
Anyone who has played ksp could tell you how shit of an idea this is
You need so many satellites to have comparable response times to conventional munitions and the effect on target is poor

>>63871536 (OP)
Aren't you better off just using rods against deep underground bunkers rather than nuke alternatives? Would adding a rocket of sorts at the help with the reduction in speed from air resistance?

>>63876211
No, keeping as much mass as possible is better, a rocket would waste a lot of kinetic energy and in the best case it wouldn't be a net gain. Adding speed before the atmosphere is worse because it increase drag, and in the atmosphere the dynamic pressure on the nose is even higher than the combustion chamber of a modern rocket engine, ie you're wasting time and mass, just keep it long and compact.
And the idea of pure kinetic is simplicity and cost.

>>63871536 (OP)
>Rods from God prove--

>>63876335
ponko!

>>63871558
Anon doesn't know what trial and error are. America got the nuke right on the first try, no testing at all

>>63871536 (OP)
>GI Joe lied to us
I feel betray

>>63874554
>>mach 14
>That's so slow though. A ballistic weapon is more like mach 28-30.
Except that not all ballistic missiles can reach that speed only ICBMs due to their high apogee. The experiment that the Chinese conducted was most likely dropped from the altitude closer to the apogee of MRBMs, which explains their Mach speed and effect on target were so similar (except that the rod carried no explosive payload). Even from the crater dimensions described on the paper seem to match up with the effects of MRBM used by Iran against Israel right now.
So the question right now is wether the cost of sending these rods into orbit is cheaper than making a similar MRBM or ICBM with conventional warheads.

>>63871536 (OP)
Could yields close to nukes be theoretically be achievable if the rod was heavier and was dropped from GEO or even HEO.
The Chinese experiment most likely it was only conducted from LEO:>>63877196

>>63871536 (OP)
Rods from god have always been a meme. The kinetic power needed to get them into orbit makes it better to just use icbms

>>63871698
The power isn't the advantage.
The lack of radiation isn't the advantage.

The advantage is, that you could destroy an enemies economy without declaring war.
You could vaporize Shanghai, and all evidence (small thrusters) would go up in smoke with the space rock.

>>63877283
That's stupid. Cities don't randonly explode. They'll if Shanghai just fucking exploded they'd know it was the US and just do the math for where the obkect could of come from.

>>63877283
You're not going to stealthily deorbit an asteroid from the asteroid belt and send it towards the earth without astronomers on Earth detecting it. Also good luck aiming that thing.

>>63871698
P Reeve's Mortal Engines series has the world destroyed by directed asteroids - when each country is nuked by it's neighbour, they also activate pre-prepared directed asteroids that arrive randomly over the next few years/decades as revenge weapons, pummeling the planet even further. causing earthquakes, new continental plate faults, volcanoes, tidal waves, etc worldwide. Nothing could be done about them as most nations are fucked up after multiple nuclear strikes and any space forces wiped each other out in the first few days. They called them 'Slow Bombs'.

>>63877603
>Also good luck aiming that thing.
People said the same thing about the first trebuchet. Give it a few years. We are an innovative species, especially if it involves killing or threatening each other.

>>63871536 (OP)
It was obviously too light, the GBU-57 used against Iran weights 13.000 kg (13 tons). I wonder if the Chinese dropped a 10.000 kg (10 ton) tugsten rod would It have achieved a crater of 300m depth and 900m in diameter?

>>63877196
even icbms slow down to like mach 8-9 upon impact. atmospheric density is a bitch.

rods have the best velocity retention, but they still slow down by quite a bit.

>>63877754
>Mortal Engines s
https://youtube.com/watch?v=plA7N05y81M

>>63878150
So the only variable that can be increased would be the weight? How much would It cost to make a 10 ton rod of tungsten?

>>63878250
~ 50 million for the raw tungsten alone (order today and get a free coupon). Finding an operator with the right experience (and equipment) to actually melt it and shape it is going to set you back another few million (~10% + tip) but it's neglectable and there might be discount on bulk or they have jannies working for them, so let's stick with the 50 mill.

>>63877254
Deorbiting from GEO would require more Δv. Putting them into a highly elliptic orbit could work, but the most efficient deorbiting burn would give an earlier advance warning.

>>63877196
>Except that not all ballistic missiles can reach that speed only ICBMs due to their high apogee
Fucking retard. The ENTIRE POINT of even bothering to consider "rods from god" (dumb name, rods is an awful shape) is if you have cheap, orbital class launch like Starship will be. The advantage comes from being able to use inexpensive cryo liquid fueled rockets instead of ultra expensive ICBMs.

>>63878150
>even icbms slow down to like mach 8-9
And here's this bit of 1960s fuddlore rearing its head yet again. Yes, original ancient obsolete ICBMs went slow. An entire massive R&D program happened to ensure delivery vehicles were going near full speed precisely to make it hard to intercept them. Try to get into the 70s and 80s instead of 50s and 60s ok?

>>63873366
The actual ultimate weapon would be fuck huge railgun artillery station on the Moon. With no atmosphere you could just fire whatever you want where ever on the Earth.

>>63878299
>but the most efficient deorbiting burn would give an earlier advance warning.
- only to advanced enough powers
- launching bombers or missiles gives "advance warning" too lol

Why would that be militarily relevant? The obvious use for such high pen is stuff like dug in facilities, factories etc. They're not fucking going anywhere! If you're in a shooting war with someone like America then you can reasonably assume America is going to try to blow up your shit. But can you actually stop that from happening, and in a way that doesn't cripple you anyway?

>>63878310
>With no atmosphere you could just fire whatever you want where ever on the Earth
And only an 8 hour to 3 day lead time between firing and impact.

Moon's far as fuck yo.

>>63877267
Correct

>>63879882
nta, but what's the problem with that? If you want prompt strike then yeah, it's an issue. But looking at every modern war ever, huge amounts of bombing/missiles attacks are planned way, way more then 8 hours (or even 3 days) in advance. It's going after assets that aren't mobile, or it's to initiate a war and catch the enemy by surprise. Since kinetic projectiles coming in from the moon could be stealthed pretty easily, there won't be much warning even for a fairly advanced (by present standards) nation before they hit. Yeah you can't have front line units calling for support against a tank rush from them, they don't replace CAS one bit, but they might well replace the sort of mission a B-2 would get used for.

So just a thing, but try sourcing the original article. You can't. You can narrow it down to the school and author of the paper, but none of it is available for public reading. I'm calling bullshit, but I am admittedly a biased Rods from God enthusiast. Don't blindly believe a chinese media hitpiece without a proper source.

>>63877267
>I have no idea what "Isp" is
>ICBMs are identical in cost to reusable kerolox or methalox
Holy retard.
>>63879933
Double retard.

>>63879944
>huge amounts of bombing/missiles attacks are planned way, way more then 8 hours (or even 3 days) in advance
Yeah but you don't usually get to watch the bomb fall towards you for that long. Why build and use your multi-fucktillion dollar lunar railgun when you could just relocate some bombers in a similar timeframe and achieve the same results far less conspicuously.

>or it's to initiate a war and catch the enemy by surprise
Again, they would literally be able to watch the projectile coming towards them on a set course for hours or days before it hits. There is no element of surprise with space based weapons.

Shit, if you aren't afraid to use ICBMs you can hit any point on the globe within the hour. The goal for decades has been to expedite the kill chain as much as possible.

>>63879983
>Yeah but you don't usually get to watch the bomb fall towards you for that long
>Again, they would literally be able to watch the projectile coming towards them on a set course for hours or days before it hits
Anon, we're talking about reality, not fantasy video games or anime. It's not actually trivial to detect a tiny, cold inert object with stealth geometry tens to hundreds of thousands of fucking miles away. You do know that, right?

>>63880003
>we're talking about reality, not fantasy video games or anime
Using this argument to defend the idea of building a massive lunar railcannon for the purposes of launching kinetic impactors over the myriad of more practical options is certainly a choice.

>>63880059
You not just could but people did say the same fucking thing about the transcontinental railway or Saturn or a lot of other big projects. Whether it actually makes economic or military SENSE vs putting the same amount of money into alternatives is always a very valid argument to have. But that's a different argument then raw physics or engineering anon. I have zero issue with anyone saying
>"this is dumb because for $XYZ BILLION we could build tens of millions of drones which would do way better"
or whatever. But that wasn't your argument.

>>63880084
>But that wasn't your argument
>>63879983
>Why build and use your multi-fucktillion dollar lunar railgun when you could just relocate some bombers in a similar timeframe and achieve the same results far less conspicuously

>>63880095
>>63879983
>Yeah but you don't usually get to watch the bomb fall towards you for that long
>Again, they would literally be able to watch the projectile coming towards them on a set course for hours or days before it hits
No, they wouldn't.

>>63880111
Ok
How about the other part?
Why chose to build what could be the single most heinously expensive, wildly impractical weapon over literally any other option?

>>63880084
If you're some trillionaire corporate feudal lord in the glorious cyberpunk future who gets a hardon from not ruthlessly efficient but rather flashy demonstrations of overengineered war machines, sure, go ahead, build your moon railgun array.
But beware that there will be other lords who don't share your fetish (or at least don't want to be on the receiving end) and will lob whatever neat atomizers they have at your facility or you long before its operational.

>>63880125
>How about the other part?
Fair!
>Why chose to build what could be the single most heinously expensive, wildly impractical weapon over literally any other option?
Because it'd neither be heinously expensive or impractical, that's why. If we're assuming launch from earth, we're assuming something like a gen2 Starship, so launch costs on the order of $40-70/kg. If we're assuming moon, then we're assuming some future with a fully functional lunar base that would be doing mining and electromagnetic launch infrastructure to pay for itself ANYWAY. You're mixing it all up by assuming present day conditions and an absolute cost building from nothing. Obviously in present day conditions, we don't have any such weapon, because it makes zero sense under present day conditions. But it's completely plausible as a matter of engineering and physics that we may relatively soon enter an era where the MARGINAL cost is actually pretty low. The bulk cost would get paid for by non-military stuff (Starship's primary value for awhile would be better and more profitable Starlink), same as a lot of conventional tech. So the only difference in cost is the marginal delta between that and military specifics.

And there's nothing "impractical" about an inert reasonably high precision hypersonic reentry vehicle. It's not a wanderwaffe just another potential tool in the bag, with things it'd be useful against and things it wouldn't be.

>>63874458
The explosive energy produced from the impact has no inherent velocity.
The energy released is enough to self vaporise any such impactor and the impacted material, and spread the force over a wider area that expands circular from the impact point.
The bonds keeping the impactor together are not strong enough to stop even itself from crushing through itself. It acts like a liquid on contact with the rear pushing through the front of the object rather than like a solid penetrator. The energy from the initial impact creates enough force not only vaporise the impactor but several feet ahead of the impactor.
Any further penetration of the object into the now vaporised surface immediately vaporises that same impactor again by contact with exploding gases, and that then also creates enough stopping force to blow away more material from ahead of the point of contact and the impactor.
That's your answer.

Rods from gods only works if you cheaply create the rods in space and they're already pretty far away from the planet (to take advantage of the gravity for longer)
You're essentially throwing asteroids at the planet.

They do not work if you're having to launch them into space first, you might as well just use something with higher energy density than purely mass.

>>63878301
Why not inexpensive cryo liquid ICBMs.

>>63880159
>It's not a wanderwaffe
A lunar railgun is quite literally one of the wunder-est waffe imaginable.
Makes the V-3 look downright cute in comparison.

>>63880141
Moon "rail gun" (retard, a coil launcher isn't a railgun) "arrays" is actually
>"cheap way to export materials mined/refined on the moon out to lagrange points or earth orbit for profit"
anon. Any self-sustaining effort would build that pretty promptly because in a hard vacuum with 1/6 gravity it's stupid to use pure chemical rockets when you can just send off hundreds of tons with solar and then use some minimal propulsion for course correction and velocity matching to your destination. Even raw regolith would be very useful if cheap enough, because you can use it for radiation shielding for an O'Neil Cylinder or whatever actual habitation or space stations exist. 10m or so is plenty to protect anything inside from cosmic rays, solar wind and so on.

I can see lots of reasons to wonder about timelines and specifics, but if nothing ever happens then sure, it makes no sense. But conversely, the timelines under which it would make sense are ones where you've got actually profitable lunar operations (probably unmanned or minimally manned). Under that assumption there's nothing weird about it. The only way those work is by cheaply getting mass off the moon, that'd be the main value of the moon, that you can do it way way more cheaply then out of Earth's gravity well.

>>63880195
>Why not inexpensive cryo liquid ICBMs.
Why do you not see such things already anon? Because "cryo liquid' doesn't work with "ICBM". It takes too long to fuel up, too hard to store. And there's no mass production, because ICBMs aren't getting used hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of times per year. The only way you get mass production is commercial.
>>63880196
I honestly am trying to get into your mindset where you're thinking of all "rockets" or "electromagnetic accelerators in a vaccum" as "purely weapons" and I just can't do it anon. The multiple use and COTS aspects are fundamental to the entire fields and ideas.

>>63880223
>build a multi-shitzillion dollar electromagnetic accelerator on the moon to cheaply send large amounts of mass into orbit
cool, good thinking
>use it as an offensive weapon all but guaranteeing it's prompt destruction
very not cool, really bad idea, massive waste of time and resources

>>63880207
Grounddwellers might insist that they are built to point in a direction that will only allow orbits that are of limited military value.

>>63880234
OK, so you're just angrily rando contrarian? Sure, no problem. You've already given up on your retarded bullshit about "detected from days away" so whatever.
>>63880236
>the common man's reasonable concerns over "predictable someday risks" ever successfully getting in the way of even 1% extra next quarter profit ever
>even when it's massive amounts of fluorine polymers feminizing our testicles and appearing in water worldwide or something equally obvious let alone "someday military risk"
You have a much higher opinion of future humanity over present day humanity than I do anon and I admire your utopian optimism. Shine on you gorgeous diamond, I hope you're right.

>>63880261
It's not random at all. I think this idea in particular is fucking retarded. Even more so than just having your rods hanging out in low orbit. No one is going to invest obscene amounts of money into a one off megastructure with massive economic benefits just to use it as a weapon and get it blown to hell.

>>63880261
Humans are weird about what kinds of risks they care about and which ones they ignore, yes. But having projectile throwers pointed at them is an easy to grasp, salient risk. Especially when those projectile throwers are owned by THEM rather than US.

>>63880270
>No one is going to invest obscene amounts of money into a one off megastructure with massive economic benefits just to use it as a weapon and get it blown to hell.
In the United States we call those "oil refineries" or "uranium enrichment facilities" or "mega presses" or "armament production factories" or "chemical synthesis plants" etc anon. It turns out that, at least so far, it's not actually easy to blow big vulnerable valuable structures to hell when they are a long ways away and in the borders of a superpower with a lot of defenses. Like, imagine it's 2035 and the 2035-US launches a bunch of hyperkinetic impactors at 2035-Iran for their "yeah we're trying for nukes yet again" plan of that decade. How, exactly, do you expect an extrapolation of Iran over a mere decade (or two for that matter if you want to change this to 2045) to go hit a buried facility on the moon, or for that matter to even hit Starship (or New Armstrong or whatever Rocket Lab or Relativity or whomever are up to at that point) launch facilities in the CONUS? The chinks? Sure, but we're not using our B-2s against China either. I'm saying the potential I see, to the extent there is any, is in place of conventional boring stuff where the World Police™ is punching at lesser powers. Not peer war, which goes right to nukes regardless. Highly elliptic orbit or moon launched or ballistic kinetic kill vehicles don't help you hit nuclear submarines at all afaict, so they have zero impact on MAD.

>>63880283
>But having projectile throwers pointed at them is an easy to grasp, salient risk. Especially when those projectile throwers are owned by THEM rather than US.
Sure, but you're describing America or whomever having tons of strategic bombers and tomahawks and nuke subs and so on, while they don't. Which is exactly the case right now. And sure, it makes lots of nations very nervous/afraid. But that's not the same as being able to do anything about it right? Do you think the space programs of the US & China are going to be at an identical place to shitholistan or africa or the like in a decade or two or three? Or even Russia, their space program is on life support already, ISS is toast within the next 5 years if not less, the Chinese didn't even bother offering the smallest figleaf to Russia on the China space station. Russia may well be dead as a space power in well under a decade. I mean, if the US or Chinese deploy this stuff against some rando, and then the UN sends a very mean and angry letter, ok, now what?

>>63880317
>In the United States we call those "oil refineries" or "uranium enrichment facilities" or "mega presses" or "armament production factories" or "chemical synthesis plants" etc
Primary difference being that these things aren't a literal gun that they use to shoot people. A more fitting analogy would be turning your merchant fleet into guided missile cruisers. Just use your magnetic accelerator to make money and leave the bombing to your dedicated weapons systems. It's the more practical option by far.

>>63880345
Any Power, even non-nuclear ones, will look at the capabilities being built and if they upset the existing balance they'll demand changes. For example if it's controlled entirely by a corporation they'd insist on oversight by the host country. If the stated goal is to get things to a lagrange point they'll prefer it being towards earth-moon L2.
If someone built a facility that can do targeted launches on a direct earth intercept that'd raise a lot more questions. People aren't blind or dumb. It's the difference between building an ICBM missile silo and a starship launchpad.

>>63874539
that's basically the story in the movie yeah

>>63874436
they are thumbless retard elephants, they do genocide all the Indians so that'd probably make them popular around here

>>63880407
>Any Power, even non-nuclear ones, will look at the capabilities being built and if they upset the existing balance they'll demand changes
They can "demand" whatever the fuck they want anon, just like the UN can demand Russia cease their flagrantly illegal invasion of Ukraine. In international politics it doesn't matter though if you can't back it up.
>For example if it's controlled entirely by a corporation they'd insist on oversight by the host country
But what if it is in fact overseen (and controlled entirely) by the host country? Which is the actual scenario under discussion and the on that's more realistic.
>If someone built a facility that can do targeted launches on a direct earth intercept that'd raise a lot more questions
No, because there is no such thing anon. Just a "facility that launches stuff and gives you the first few km/s of delta-v". A launcher won't do targeted launches at all, that makes no sense and would be a lot of extra effort for nothing. You get 99% of the energy needed via it, then course correction can happen via onboard rockets like normal. "Impact earth" vs "TLI to orbit" or whatever else would just be a programming choice not a function of the launcher yourself.

To that point worth adding that electromagnetic launch isn't even necessary. Even if you use in-situ fueled rockets the rocket equation and vacuum makes launching from the moon so fantastically more favorable then from Earth that flinging mass at Earth from the moon is still just as dangerous with any thing at all. The launcher part might make it more economic for profit but from a military perspective it's only mildly relevant. Remember anon, it took a fucking Saturn V to get from Earth surface to the moon. The little command module via the even littler LEM was plenty to get from the moon surface back to Earth.

>>63880361
>Primary difference being that these things aren't a literal gun that they use to shoot people
Neither is an electromagnetic mass launcher. It just gives mass delta-v somewhat more cheaply and efficiently since it's not bound by the rocket equation. From a pure military pov it'd also work fine to build a bigger fuel plant on the moon and then use rockets, though having things be cheaper and higher cadence never hurts of course.

Ultimately, if there's any human activity in space then the same "issue" (or not) arises, because the energy to get to Mars or the asteroid belt or whatever and then develop other nations necessarily implies the energy to do a lot of damage to anything that much kinetic energy is applied to. And unlike nukes there's no very rare challenging to work with restricted material involved. A couple metric tons of solid steel in a reasonable flattened tear drop shape would mostly survive reentry to the surface just fine and fuck up whatever it landed on pretty good. Far from optimal but no joke either. How to address that is an interesting question.

>>63881070
>Neither is an electromagnetic mass launcher.
It is if you use it to launch kinetic impactors at your enemies you fucking turd.

>>63881082
>It is if you use it to launch kinetic impactors at your enemies you fucking turd.
By that "logic" any rocket at all is a "literal missile that they use shoot people" yet somehow I don't see the world coming together to eliminate Falcon 9, Ariane etc anon.
>anon learns about "dual use technologies" for the very time
Well, better late than never.

>>63881106
>yet somehow I don't see the world coming together to eliminate Falcon 9, Ariane etc anon.
Probably because they aren't mounting warheads on them and launching them into military facilities.

>>63881109
>Probably because they aren't mounting warheads on them and launching them into military facilities.
But not because they can't! And they've long since gone ahead and effectively literally done that for decades dude, major part of the point of solid fuel rocket boosters is to keep missile manufacturers eating and in practice. Who made the SRBs? Thiokol, who made the engines for Nike-Zeus, the Trident II SLBMs etc. Expertise in big solid fuel rockets is direct military technology.

And you're high on your supply if you think it would matter if the US did do that either. Your posts remind me of the impotent screech from vatniks about how "OMG NOW SPACEX IS MILITARIZED NOW STARLINK IS VALID TARGET" as if that ever fucking mattered an iota.

>>63871698
>Rocks from God
Lucifer's Hammer.

>>63881136
worth mentioning too that all the original civilian rocket tech including liquid was military originally. 1st mercury dudes were literally launching on V2s that they took the warheads off of. atlas for second set of missions was just man rated version of america's first ICBM

>>63881136
I'm just saying that painting a massive target on your one-off generational megaproject because you're insistent on using it as an offensive weapon rather than any one of the cheaper, more practical, just as effective options is silly.

>>63881213
>I'm just saying that painting a massive target
And I'm saying it does no such thing. It makes absolutely zero difference whether you use it as a weapon or not, because the threat is identical either way. If you go to war with someone capable of shooting back at you, then that they might attack dual-use tech whether you use it directly for military or not is something that might happen. Always has. But if the US decided it was important to utilize their moon colony mass launcher for kinetic strike as well against anyone who WASN'T China (and maybe the EU, or India eventually) then I see zero difference vs right now. I'm sure Iran would love to have the ability to strike back at US stuff on the mainland. But they just plain don't. They wouldn't have any ability to strike back at a moon base either.
>your one-off generational megaproject
It's not a megaproject though, it's far, far less involved then developing the moon industrial/mining base to make it worth it in the first place. Almost all the expensive bits go away on the moon.
>any one of the cheaper, more practical, just as effective options
If it existed, then there would not be any more cheaper, practical or effective options anon. That'd be the whole point! It wouldn't be profitable if it cost more to launch mass from the lunar surface via solar electric then via chemical rockets.

>>63881162
Based and Niven pilled

Orbital velocities, DUH!

>>63881272
>it's far, far less involved then developing the moon industrial/mining base to make it worth it in the first place
Right, I'm including this as part of the project. If you decided you wanted to build a mass driver on the moon tomorrow you would have to do all of this stuff first.

>If it existed, then there would not be any more cheaper, practical or effective options anon. That'd be the whole point! It wouldn't be profitable if it cost more to launch mass from the lunar surface via solar electric then via chemical rockets.
I meant cheaper more practical options for striking earth-based adversaries. Launching missiles from the moon is obviously not one of those options.

>>63877603
>Hw can't deorbit behind the moon
You havent played enough COaDE

>>63881686
>Right, I'm including this as part of the project. If you decided you wanted to build a mass driver on the moon tomorrow you would have to do all of this stuff first.
>I meant cheaper more practical options for striking earth-based adversaries. Launching missiles from the moon is obviously not one of those options.
I sort of figured it went without saying anon that we're talking an amortization of something done anyway, for other reasons. There's a significant number of powerful, well financed entities (both state and private actors) that want to do space colonization/exploitation of various flavors. Moon mass would be useful for a lot of them, as I said even if you had zero intention of any human colonies there (o'neill cylinder designs have a lot of attractive advantages) construction material and simple radiation shielding would still be quite useful. IF you've already got that far, then the extra marginal cost of also using some of that infra for military purposes is pretty reasonable. Obviously if that never happens then neither would moon-based bombardment.

But in terms of kinetic strike, there are certain earth paths where it may become valuable too. Ever increasing development in drones/hv guns/lasers/AI etc may ultimately obsolete conventional bombers. Even missiles may become too economically unfavorable, because it'd take too many to saturate even a medium AD. Missiles are also really fundamentally vulnerable, due to the nature of being thin walled tubes of chemicals that want to go boom already. Huge amounts of inert mass going very fast could end up being part of the necessary kit to saturate an opponents defense in a feasible way. That'd shift the economics.

Again certainly this is all extrapolation, and certainly might not happen. I'm just arguing the fundamentals aren't bad at all given the right incentives. This isn't magical warp drive we're talking about.

>>63880223
>The only way you get mass production is commercial.
No. The only way you get mass production is investment. You can do that privately.

>kinetic bombardment is useless
1 SH can launch an 1,500 tons SS at 3-3.2 km/s, if you replace it with concrete that is nearly 1kt of KE. Now replace it with coal + concrete and you can delete a city

>>63877603
>You're not going to stealthily deorbit an asteroid from the asteroid belt and send it towards the earth without astronomers on Earth detecting it.
Asteroids definitely are not the best choice, though better shapes carved from them and darkened might work. But you're also not taking this seriously and thinking of it adversarially enough anon. If we're talking a scenario of nuke-energy level bombardment, why do you think the first task wouldn't be to destroy every significant telescope, space radar, target the enemy's top astronomers, and so on? Space version of SEAD/DEAD. If all that stuff becomes militarily significant then it'll be a potential military target as well right? It's not actually trivial to find tiny (and a few miles across is tiny in space) dark stuff a long ways away if it's not actively radiating. Shifting the trajectory of a lot of mass requires a lot of energy, so that would be visible, but it's situation specific on whether a given force could work around it or not. Someone could set the trajectory with burns while the sun is between Earth and the drive flare, then the question is if anyone else in the solar system (who isn't on the same side) has a functional system surveillance network remaining that can watch everything that's going on. If so it won't work, if not maybe it could.

That's getting way too far future though for any reasonable speculation imo. Using stuff via Starship could in theory be doable within 5 years and the moon within 10-20, though I doubt it goes that fast myself. But it's not like, post-singularity wackiness. Asteroid/Oort cloud shit is so far into the curve gets too crazy.

>>63881731
You can't though. Chode must have very shit orbital mechanics if you can.

>>63881858
You can't get sufficient private investment without commercial, the return isn't there. Even if you're a billionaire, a billion dollars isn't enough even for developing a heavy lift vehicle. SpaceX is like 3-4x that for Starship (which I will note is still ungodly efficient vs the senate launch vehicle which last estimate was pegged at like $4 billion per fucking launch, complete white elephant trash). You need some sort of commercial service to drive the cadence and mass production required. For SpaceX that's Starlink right now.

There isn't anything equivalent for ICBMs, which have awful individual economics too. Then on top you build them and some get used sometimes for tests and that's it. That's why lots of serious military nations tried to figure out non-military use cases like SRBs to keep their ballistic missile companies from going out of business/losing institutional knowledge.

>>63881904
>The return isn't there
Bombing your enemies and winning is your return.
Do you think those commercial rockets working for mostly government projects before starlink had any funding outside of investors and the government? No.
You just need enough money to make the process efficient.

>>63881875
What if you replaced it with explosives?
What if you only used enough explosives to achieve comparable effects and were able to use a smaller, cheaper launch vehicle instead?

>>63881997
You don't need explosives if your payload, a block of bonded coal dust gets vaporized and moves at many km/s, a thermobaric far cheaper, safer and powerful (for superficial blasts) than any explosive

>>63871536 (OP)
It's not about the crater, it's about collapsing underground bunkers with shock and pressure.

>>63877254
Sure but then you have a less accurate nuke at 100 times the cost. If it makes the big boom of a nuke countries will treat it like a nuke, radiation is irrelevant.