5 ms·
Can someone please enlighten me, because I was under the impression that there is no ABM system on the planet capable of intercepting, let alone destroying, a l
by JPKab 14y ago
Can someone please enlighten me, because I was under the impression that there is no ABM system on the planet capable of intercepting, let alone destroying, a large rock moving at 10km/second.
I'm not saying its impossible, but it just seems to me that there is a lot of misinformation as to what actually happened.
- lutorm 14y agoI'm with you here. The RIM-161 standard anti-ballistic missile used by the US is quoted by wikipedia as having a speed of 9600km/h or 2.7km/s. Speeds in low-Earth orbit are about 7-8 km/s, objects entering from a solar orbit likely several times that. There is absolutely no way you would have significant success probability of intercepting it with a missile unless you knew the incoming orbit very precisely. Just look at that dashcam footage: from entering the atmosphere to breakup was just a couple of seconds. On a very tangential orbit, no less.
- madaxe 14y agoGazelle does at least 5.5km/s.
- lutorm 14y agoBut how long does it take to get to that speed?
- madaxe 14y agoBy the time its left the silo. Russians are dead keen on their one-shot silos packed to the gills with various devices (pneumatic, hydraulic, explosive) to bring a missile up to ludicrous speed very, very quickly. Spent a very enlightening afternoon down an old bunker near pervomaisk. Found some stats in the tourist brochure from there. 9.4m high,1.1m dia, 4km/s in 4s, which gives an acceleration if about 102g. 80-100km range. Max speed 7km/s. "directional blast" also, which is interesting.
- wiml 14y agoThe US Nike-X Sprint had similar performance (Wikipedia says only 90 gravities, and there's some nonphysical-looking footage of test launches on youtube somewhere). Pretty crazy, and I gather that MIRVs made that whole category of ABM obsolete.
- madaxe 14y agoYup. Aforementioned satan missile can carry hundreds of warheads, and an equal number of decoys. Two of them, they said, could wipe out all US cities.
- danielweber 14y agoI'm skeptical there exists a system to automatically fire nukes at something and it has never had a false positive. Especially (chauvinistically) under control of the Russians through the fall of the the USSR. I'm not sure a terrestrial power could do this without being way visible ahead of time.
- Ingaz 14y agoI agree with you. Even (not chauvinistacally) under control of the USA, EU, China, Japan, India or Australia.
- joseph_cooney 14y agoIn a few cases Russian military officers like Stanislav Petrov have ignored protocol, not fired their nukes, and prevented global nuclear war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov