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One thing they did not mention is that this solves the primary problem with orbital crowbars (fictionally called "Rods from God", "Thor", KEWs, and various othe
by dstorrs 16y ago
One thing they did not mention is that this solves the primary problem with orbital crowbars (fictionally called "Rods from God", "Thor", KEWs, and various other things). You could drop a kinetic warhead (basically a crowbar) from orbit to kill a tank / bunker / whatever, but you could also use them for a variety of peactime missions such as mining, emergency flood control (digging drainage ditches, causing controlled landslides), etc.
Each crowbar would need some sort of minimal steering system to account for atmospheric turbulence. This steering can't be locally controlled because the device can't see past the plasma sheath. It can't be remote controlled because the plasma sheath stops transmissions. With this new "plasma aerial" technology, you could steer each crowbar individually from the launcher platform.
- borism 16y agointeresting! what kind of materials need to be used so that crowbar doesn't burn-up on reentry? isn't it a little bit more expensive than using traditional explosives?
- dstorrs 16y agoIf you made it out of steel, it would survive just fine -- there would be some ablation, but it would still get to the ground. As to the "more expensive"...no, not really. Basically, it's just a crowbar with a simple camera and some fins on it. Using this technology it would trade in the camera for a radio back to the launch vehicle. You'd need all the same bits on a missile, plus more besides, and the missile would need to be larger.
- borism 16y agoyes, but you don't need a missile to build a dam :) sure, it will be less expensive to kill a lot of people with this. those are not cost savings I had in mind.