28 km/s? It would be more than escape velocity (11.2 km/s), where did you get that? Low earth orbit is around 8 km/s. Still not totally the same as and ICBM, bu

28 km/s? It would be more than escape velocity (11.2 km/s), where did you get that? Low earth orbit is around 8 km/s. Still not totally the same as and ICBM, but could be done. But why would you stuff the rods in an X-37B? You could just launch a light satellite without all this re-entry stuff and you'd get many more rods for the same mass... or then you could use a smaller launcher. The X-37B is basically a reusable payload fairing, a very heavy one at that. Oh well, it isn't even that because the rocket requires another outer expendable payload fairing.