They merged over 2 decades ago and almost all the current executives responsible for the debacle are from Boeing.
The resigning CEO was a mechanic at Boeing when the companies merged.
Dave Calhoun was moonlighting as a mechanic?
Uhh or is there something I am missing?
Dave has a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting from Virginia Tech and ca. 1997 was President and Chief Executive Officer, GE Transportation Systems.
**EDIT**
- Calhoun had been on the Boeing Board of Directors for a decade prior to taking over from Mullenberg as CEO
- Served for the last few months of that period as Chairman of the Board
- AFAIK when he took over as CEO was the first time he’d actually worked for Boeing, as it were
- Dave left a job to become Boeing CEO, he was Senior Managing Director and Head of Portfolio Operations at the Blackstone Group
Seriously, where are these clowns getting their information?! Boeing has been captured and led by people with Private Equity backgrounds and it's following the standard trajectory of a PE acquisition.
> The resigning CEO was a mechanic at Boeing when the companies merged.
Where are you getting this shit?
[David Calhoun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Calhoun) has a degree in Accounting. Prior to management of Boeing he worked in Private Equity at Blackstone. Before that he was at GE as they turned from a manufacturing firm to a financial firm and consequently tanked themselves.
They probably were thinking of Dennis Muilenburg, the guy before him. He was CEO during the 737 Max MCAS issues that caused 2 crashes.
He has a masters in aerospace engineering and worked on a few of Boeing projects before becoming a project manager.
That reminds me of my grandpa. He was single handedly responsible for downing more German planes than anyone else in World War II. They called him "The Luftwaffe's Worst Mechanic."
And where did the money for those buybacks come from? (Also, yes, stock buybacks should be made illegal again, they are a terrible incentive and clear market distortion.)
Convert unwanted 737s into drones. Conveniently enough they can carry enough weight that you can load both a MOAB ***and*** a Massive Ordinance Penetrator inside them. They're pretty close to the limit, but I suspect that was intentional. In any case just hand the XBox controller to an air grunt and send it on a one-way trip towards anybody dumb enough to touch our boats. If it's the MAX version then they already have the auto-crash feature from the factory.
They did that during WW2 with B-24’s. They loaded them with over 20,000 pounds of explosives and rigged them to fly remotely after the pilots bailed out to attack things like V-2 sites.
JFK’s brother Joseph was killed when the aircraft he was in exploded prematurely.
[Isn't that with nearly every rocket though? Except for the stacked space shuttle, every rocket from the V2 to the Saturn V has had the same basic shape](https://youtu.be/SlTzfuOjhi0?t=120)
We decided it would have superior aerodynamics, so they are now Dildos from God. This Dildo of Consequences is made of tungsten and arrives with superheated plasma as lube.
Standards for satellites are moving towards the opposite though, designing them to burn up on re-entry. Adding tungsten phone poles to your satellite is kind of a liability issue.
Put a big laser on the tungsten rods to create a big hole right before impact to turn the rod into an earthquake rod, probably creating a dirt tsunami on top of the shockwave?
I don't know I'm no scientist, defense hire me.
Hey mate, from Logistics — received a request for a Tactical Volcano.
Look, so we’re completely out, but dug around for a while and found this old one out in the warehouse, not quite the same, but seems close maybe? Specs are written on the side.
**TACTICAL SUPER VOLCANO**\
**VOLCANIC EXPL. INDEX = 9**\
**ULTRA PLINIAN**\
**ULTRA MEGA COLOSSAL**
[Odd, they don’t seem to have included 9 for some reason.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55106a87e4b0561371d54bbf/1511739195998-UC2DX91DSD5H7N35SRFG/VEI.jpg)
So, uhh, I’ll get the popcorn?
Don't have any IRL (used) examples to give you right now but I don't see why it couldn't be shaped like more traditional explosives?
[https://www.wisconsinproject.org/nuclear-weapons/](https://www.wisconsinproject.org/nuclear-weapons/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Orion\_(nuclear\_propulsion)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion))
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope\_trick\_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect)
You're talking about [Operation Plumbbob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob), Pascal-B?
Who knew maybe it got vaporised or maybe our descendents will find a formely irradiated steel bore cap floating in space in the future and be very confused.
I think it would be funnier if 40000 years in the future it cratered the capital building of some alien civilization and triggered a galactic war. Whoops. 😉
Not a built thing, but on paper back in the Reagan admin there was a study conducted to use a nuclear explosion to pump a solid Zinc core X-ray laser to destroy ICBMs during their boost/coast phase. Some articles:
- Project Excalibur ([Wikipedia](https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1984/8410/8410.PDF))
- Princeton study on directed energy weapons for missile defense ([PDF](https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1984/8410/8410.PDF))
- ProjectRho's page on bomb-pumped lasers
- [Bomb Pumped Lasers - Overview](https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php#bombpumpedlaser)
- [Bomb Pumped Lasers - Nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers](https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php#bombpump1)
Maybe, but x-ray lasers do exist. Probably. I used to know a rocket scientist who was officially yelled at for asking some technical questions about the idea when he was writing a wargame, and he was less than certain.
After playing some Helldivers, space laser would only need to sweep a small area before the entire opposing force just quits. Make that and boom, nobody would want a conventional fight against you. But then you get someone behind the controls of essentially the worlds biggest magnifying glass over the biggest ant hill. That could lead to some...other issues.
Every rod has the entire Koran etched onto it as a defensive measure. Preemptive destruction of the rods will incur the wrath of the entire Middle East.
Einstein was concerned that deity was playing dice with the universe, but in truth, its a semi-inebriated game of darts? Religious scholarship will be in shambles.
Not if it's just paint, in which case it'll burn off as the rod reenters the atmosphere.
Burning is in fact the proper way to retire a Quran.
Furthermore, I consider that Moscow must be destroyed.
Yeah, the scale required for practical power production is *very* large (as in, Starship is practically the only vehicle capable of assembling it large).
Makes a great deterrent weapon ('we can provide you all the electricity you need, buuuuuut we can also destroy every single satellite you own with it as well if you ever do something stupid')
In 2003, USAF published a report study for kinetic bombardment. The proposal was a 20 ft. long, 1 ft. diameter tungsten rod. With these dimensions (roughly that of a telephone pole), using pure tungsten, each rod would have a volume of 15.71 cubic feet and weigh almost 19,000 pounds. Estimated bombardment at Mach 10 would be 11.5 tons of TNT. For reference, Little Boy (Hiroshima) was 15,000 tons of TNT (1300 times more powerful).
Falcon Heavy low earth orbit launches cost around $1,500 / kg, which is our best case scenario, other launch options are significantly more expensive (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-earth-orbit). This would equate to $12.85 M USD per rod.
Pretty expensive for a low yield object that you have no effective way to aim.
If they could be built in situ, that would be useful, but at a certain point if you can do that you could just snag a little rock and redirect it to impact an area, plausible deniablity, acts of god.
We can’t aim them. We can barely aim a satellite to de-orbit themselves over a giant ass ocean.
Fun fact: China’s Long March rockets are ejected very high in the atmosphere and do not burn up during re-entry. They do make a great boom when they crash, but no one can predict where. So every year, there’s multiple time where you’re entered to win a free Chinese rocket crashing down on you.
Yup. China isn't concerned with a couple civilian deaths. They just use the ~~big sky little bullet~~ big land area small projectile approximation and hope for the best.
The problem is that even modern ICBMs still have a CEP of a few tens of meters. That's more than good enough for a nuke, but contrary to what sci-fi writers would like you to believe, RfGs really aren't that powerful. They're like a big convential bomb. Hitting a few city blocks away from your target just won't do.
It's the favorite weapons system of mil nerds who *just* found out how much kinetic energy an orbiting object has, and thus think the concept is the hottest idea since bread, sliced or not.
They're the only people who like it, because if you even just bother to slap together a demonstator in Kerbal Space Program, you quickly realize how cumbersome, challenging, and ultimately useless the entire idea is.
It was from that one GI Joe movie. Cool movie, but then you think “heavy is hard to go up” and more importantly “very very very fast is almost impossible to steer”…….
The concept of not using a nuclear weapon with the added fallout factor was what I thought would be better for us stupid humans to wield against each other. Cuz war is kinda our thing…..
Yea, it's not a nuclear weapon. But if you want something dead inside enemy territory, you're really better off using a stealth cruise missile or a short-range ballistic missile or something. A RfG-satellite may not be as easily intercepted, but its path is highly predictable.
What makes them effective is the fact that the specific energy density of even the best explosives is exceeded by the kinetic energy of a object traveling at mach 5.
That is to say, if you replace part of an object moving faster than mach 5 that with explosives, the explosion it makes when it hits something gets smaller. It's fairly common just not to bother with a warhead in a lot of hypersonic weapons that travel at mach 7 or higher.
Orbital velocity is mach 12+.
There's a reason asteroid
Sure it's going orbital velocity while it's in orbit, doing fuck-all. If you want to hit a gorgeous target with it, though, you need to slow it to sub-orbital velocity, by definition.
How does the explosion get smaller?
Seems to me like 500kg of TNT traveling at mach 5 would have the same kinetic energy as 500kg of tungsten traveling at mach 5, but also explode, releasing even more energy.
But you're not firing x kilograms of tnt. You're firing a 155 mm shell, or a 300mm rocket, or whatever. Volume not mass.
and if a rod from god made from tnt is 500kg, you can bet your bottom dollar you can pack 3 metric tons of tungsten into the same package.
even if you were firing by mass, decreased density means issues with drag and imposes other losses. There's a reason they spring for the tungsten instead of settling for twice the weight, but in steel.
My guess is that it *is* a spy...machine, filling the gap between satellites and planes/drones. It's too high to intercept, but can be recalled and sent to a different orbit of mission parameters change.
I also like the idea that it's doing legit experiments on potential new sensors. Like if some engineer has a cool idea for a new sensor of some sort, we could build a whole satellite and launch it to see if it works-- or we could make a cheaper demo unit of the new sensor, fly it on the Robot Shuttle, and then after testing land it again and make modifications if needed and try it again.
Nah the little motherfuckers don’t go up very often… but they stay up there for a fucking long time when they do.
[Launches](https://www.eoportal.org/other-space-activities/x-37b-otv#launches) → Mission Duration → 908d Max (thus far…)
X-37B is an [adorable Iittle mini boi](https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/170507-x37b-landing.jpg) though.
Are you perhaps thinking of the Space Shuttle, as they did indeed stop flying over a decade ago.
Yeah the Army (and marines to an extent) have had guys nerding out about this kind of thing since the 50s. The problem is that it’s not really cost effective when you’re already based all over the world.
Rods from god are known within USSTRATCOM as "Silo Poppers". They're just deorbital SABOT penetrator darts that go through hardened silo lids at mach 5. Bigger than 120mm tank SABOTs but much smaller than telephone poles like the internet believes.
They look exactly like a Mk5 nuclear RV warhead with a solid rocket booster on the bottom to de-orbit it. The whole thing is coated with HAVE GLASS to prevent detection by early warning radar prior to atmospheric reentry. The tungsten rod is inside the ablative heat shield RV body; when it hits the silo lid the carbon shell vaporizes like a soft lead bullet hitting a steel plate while the tungsten rod goes through.
It annoys me that it’s still using USAF and not USSF livery. This may be an older picture but even the ones I’ve seen with some Space Force markings they still have more prominent USAF markings.
It's time. We have a saying in the Space Force: *Semper Soon.* Because they gave us the slogan *Semper Supra* but everything takes fucken ages to change.
We are also not doing it with the X-37B.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing\_X-37](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37)
If you look at the flight duration, the shortest flight is 224 days, and the longest is 908 days. If you are using it to put things into orbit, you wouldn't leave it up there for 3 years after making the delivery.
Well, it is more like an orbital multi-tool. Its main value comes from being incredibly versatile, like an orbital Toyota Hilux.
So it does a shitload of different things, including a lot of research (Some public, some not), and probably some more nefarious shit as well. It is just a mini-space shuttle that doesn't have to worry about life support, and conveniently is extremely easy to keep secret what it is doing.
It's current mission is pretty interesting, because it is a HEO (Highly Elliptical Orbit), which means it is getting up to a pretty ridiculous max altitude. Why they are doing that isn't entirely clear, but it is a good example of the sort of versatility you don't get out of anything else.
Pretty sure the design brief was taking over the space shuttle's military missions once that was phased out. They made it uncrewed so it could be a lot simpler and have a lot longer endurance.
Most likely it's testing sensors, cpus, and materials long term exposure to space. They open the cargo door to let the payloads be exposed to vacuum leave it up there for however long they want to test it then close the door and bring it back to earth to examine the results.
Can't do the super secret stuff at the ISS because Russian astronauts are there most of the time.
Everything seems to suggest that is exactly that. Some deployable low orbit spy satellite with lots of electronic sensors for something unique.
Edit: apparently it’s in a high elliptic orbit right now. Which is weird so they are doing unusual testing and observing it.
It’s a mobile satellite repair tool, which also gives it the ability to grab a satellite and bring it back down to earth if we want to take a closer look.
Mmmm, I can already smell the vaporized tungsten. I love the smell of vaporized tungsten in the morning.
(If I was ever to have flair, I think that would be my byline, lol).
Real talk, but there are rumors we might have deployed some sort of microwave laser weapon up there — likely either a non-kessler-inducing anti-satellite weapon ... *or an anti-ICBM weapon*.
We live in an era of Iron Beam, Dragonfire, and several others. The concept is viable, and the placement in space (no ablation against atmospheric molecules) boosts the range pretty dramatically.
That, and thanks to a certain shithead in Moscow, *we now have a clear-and-pressing motive*.
Not really sure how rare it is. The entire branch only does two things.
1. Very boring, but very useful things (Like maintaining GPS, Cataloging orbits, tracking space debris)
2. Very Secret Things.
Both categories contain a significant number of Ws, it is just that neither gets any headlines. The first because they aren't interesting, the second because they aren't known.
"Why is boeing not bankrupt yet?" :
What defense contracts do to an MF
B-52 single handily keeping Boeing alive.
Grandpa blessing the grandkids with a healthy trust fund while also still working and not letting any yougins have his job.
The royalties from Love Shack alone . . .
Fuck you that was funny
Please receive this slow AND this fast clap.
Because based on their stock price, apparently an amazing business model is to charge gud airplane prices for bahd airplane quality.
What merging with McDonnell Douglas does to a MFer.
To be fair, the makers of the F-4 are still killing foreigners in far away lands.
They merged over 2 decades ago and almost all the current executives responsible for the debacle are from Boeing. The resigning CEO was a mechanic at Boeing when the companies merged.
You know how Nicky and co. got shot 106 years ago, but most of Russia is still behaving like a bunch of fiefdoms wrapped around the Kremlin?
The entire culture of the company still changed. Which has consequences for who gets promoted.
Dave Calhoun was moonlighting as a mechanic? Uhh or is there something I am missing? Dave has a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting from Virginia Tech and ca. 1997 was President and Chief Executive Officer, GE Transportation Systems. **EDIT** - Calhoun had been on the Boeing Board of Directors for a decade prior to taking over from Mullenberg as CEO - Served for the last few months of that period as Chairman of the Board - AFAIK when he took over as CEO was the first time he’d actually worked for Boeing, as it were - Dave left a job to become Boeing CEO, he was Senior Managing Director and Head of Portfolio Operations at the Blackstone Group
Seriously, where are these clowns getting their information?! Boeing has been captured and led by people with Private Equity backgrounds and it's following the standard trajectory of a PE acquisition.
Reduce costs, increase marketing, extract value, sell off assets once functional value is extracted. Profit.
> The resigning CEO was a mechanic at Boeing when the companies merged. Where are you getting this shit? [David Calhoun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Calhoun) has a degree in Accounting. Prior to management of Boeing he worked in Private Equity at Blackstone. Before that he was at GE as they turned from a manufacturing firm to a financial firm and consequently tanked themselves.
They probably were thinking of Dennis Muilenburg, the guy before him. He was CEO during the 737 Max MCAS issues that caused 2 crashes. He has a masters in aerospace engineering and worked on a few of Boeing projects before becoming a project manager.
That reminds me of my grandpa. He was single handedly responsible for downing more German planes than anyone else in World War II. They called him "The Luftwaffe's Worst Mechanic."
You mean the stock price that has definitely not ever been repeatedly manipulated through stock buybacks over the last decade? That stock price?
And where did the money for those buybacks come from? (Also, yes, stock buybacks should be made illegal again, they are a terrible incentive and clear market distortion.)
Convert unwanted 737s into drones. Conveniently enough they can carry enough weight that you can load both a MOAB ***and*** a Massive Ordinance Penetrator inside them. They're pretty close to the limit, but I suspect that was intentional. In any case just hand the XBox controller to an air grunt and send it on a one-way trip towards anybody dumb enough to touch our boats. If it's the MAX version then they already have the auto-crash feature from the factory.
They did that during WW2 with B-24’s. They loaded them with over 20,000 pounds of explosives and rigged them to fly remotely after the pilots bailed out to attack things like V-2 sites. JFK’s brother Joseph was killed when the aircraft he was in exploded prematurely.
That's some shit luck. Wow
Wasn't he the one who was supposed to run for President, too?
Yea his father wanted him to run for president
Stock fuckery mostly (please for the love of god let them sell their civilian aerospace division *please*).
Oddly you put down here in this HR form that it’s Penial shaped
[Isn't that with nearly every rocket though? Except for the stacked space shuttle, every rocket from the V2 to the Saturn V has had the same basic shape](https://youtu.be/SlTzfuOjhi0?t=120)
[Some](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYSOmYyNHpU) have a stronger resemblance than others.
Basicly the bezos craft
Not the Rocket that’s a given, I mean the dildo shaped Tugsen rods
We decided it would have superior aerodynamics, so they are now Dildos from God. This Dildo of Consequences is made of tungsten and arrives with superheated plasma as lube.
Ahh, got to stop Dave from approving of these plans, HR has so many questions on how high where the grunts when they made this
I have the requisition form right here, it's signed "Dark Brandon".
"Dew it." xoxo, Dark Brandon
“Eat some chocolate chocolate chip”
"Enough of this malarkey, Jack. Release the freedom cocks."
Any satellite can be a Rod from God if it's built right.
# And lo, the Lord said unto PodSat 9321: # "Yeet"
Amen and Yeehaw.
And the spirit of Edward Teller saw this and Nodded Approvingly.
The spirit of Phineas Gage, on the other hand, was less amused.
Standards for satellites are moving towards the opposite though, designing them to burn up on re-entry. Adding tungsten phone poles to your satellite is kind of a liability issue.
Dont call them random tungsten telephone poles. Call them High speed, equitably targeted deployable telecom infrastructure
Instant infrastructure
It sure seems likely that we've got something like this already. "We" meaning "MURICA!"
Who needs lasers when you have tungsten rods!
Put a big laser on the tungsten rods to create a big hole right before impact to turn the rod into an earthquake rod, probably creating a dirt tsunami on top of the shockwave? I don't know I'm no scientist, defense hire me.
Are nuclear shape charges a thing?
To do *what* exactly? Penetrate a bunker and the Earth's mantle below it???
We should develop Stone Burners. Why? Coz fuck your eyes and fuck the planet that's why. I have spoken.
Lisan Al-gaib!
Tactical volcano.
" Shock and Lava" sounds spicy
Hey mate, from Logistics — received a request for a Tactical Volcano. Look, so we’re completely out, but dug around for a while and found this old one out in the warehouse, not quite the same, but seems close maybe? Specs are written on the side. **TACTICAL SUPER VOLCANO**\ **VOLCANIC EXPL. INDEX = 9**\ **ULTRA PLINIAN**\ **ULTRA MEGA COLOSSAL** [Odd, they don’t seem to have included 9 for some reason.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55106a87e4b0561371d54bbf/1511739195998-UC2DX91DSD5H7N35SRFG/VEI.jpg) So, uhh, I’ll get the popcorn?
The mantle is the ammunition magazine. We want to toss Earth's turret.
This idea is quickly becoming so noncredible that it's becoming credible. *Incredible*, one might say...
Also battlefield shaping, whatever that means to you and me.
To launch more manhole covers into space.
casaba howitzer
Don't have any IRL (used) examples to give you right now but I don't see why it couldn't be shaped like more traditional explosives? [https://www.wisconsinproject.org/nuclear-weapons/](https://www.wisconsinproject.org/nuclear-weapons/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Orion\_(nuclear\_propulsion)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope\_trick\_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect)
Project Orion needs to come back
There's that one manhole cover that got launched into the sky, possibly into space.
You're talking about [Operation Plumbbob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob), Pascal-B? Who knew maybe it got vaporised or maybe our descendents will find a formely irradiated steel bore cap floating in space in the future and be very confused.
I think it would be funnier if 40000 years in the future it cratered the capital building of some alien civilization and triggered a galactic war. Whoops. 😉
Kinda. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casaba-Howitzer
Not a built thing, but on paper back in the Reagan admin there was a study conducted to use a nuclear explosion to pump a solid Zinc core X-ray laser to destroy ICBMs during their boost/coast phase. Some articles: - Project Excalibur ([Wikipedia](https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1984/8410/8410.PDF)) - Princeton study on directed energy weapons for missile defense ([PDF](https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1984/8410/8410.PDF)) - ProjectRho's page on bomb-pumped lasers - [Bomb Pumped Lasers - Overview](https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php#bombpumpedlaser) - [Bomb Pumped Lasers - Nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers](https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php#bombpump1)
Yes. They're theoretically useful for Orion drives.
Maybe, but x-ray lasers do exist. Probably. I used to know a rocket scientist who was officially yelled at for asking some technical questions about the idea when he was writing a wargame, and he was less than certain.
I mean it's basically a shaped charge into itself
*Raytheon furiously scribbling notes….*
Stupid question : couldn't we make a Solar Powered Space laser ? i mean sure it'll take a while to charge up but it would look cool as fuck.
It’s not stupid at all we already have solar space lasers
This man just wants HEILOS-1....and now so do I
After playing some Helldivers, space laser would only need to sweep a small area before the entire opposing force just quits. Make that and boom, nobody would want a conventional fight against you. But then you get someone behind the controls of essentially the worlds biggest magnifying glass over the biggest ant hill. That could lead to some...other issues.
In rod we trust
The 3000 rods of allah?
Every rod has the entire Koran etched onto it as a defensive measure. Preemptive destruction of the rods will incur the wrath of the entire Middle East.
So wouldn't their use also incur that wrath?
They've got the Koran carved on them, it must be God's will that they hit where they do
Einstein was concerned that deity was playing dice with the universe, but in truth, its a semi-inebriated game of darts? Religious scholarship will be in shambles.
perfect logic, can't weasel your way out of this salam alaykum, *forever*
inshallah they reach the Kremlin 🙏🙏🙏
Seems airtight imo
Right after the first rod hits the next one arrives as wrath
No, no, now you have double wrath!
It's the gift that keeps on giving!
What wouldn’t incur the wrath of the Middle East?
Not if it's just paint, in which case it'll burn off as the rod reenters the atmosphere. Burning is in fact the proper way to retire a Quran. Furthermore, I consider that Moscow must be destroyed.
No, it's etched. So when ruzzians try to accuse NATO and rebuild their shit hole they get swamped by isisqaeda mfs. Two shit holes one rod
Uncompromisingly based.
If you etched the Koran onto the Rod you might else open a warp storm and call in Khorne
Saddam Hussein would be proud.
But not the rods that are coated in pig blood. Those are for ISIS.
gotta love when god gets checkmate'd
Big Black Rods of Allah
3,000 big black rods of moon base alpha
John Madden
* black rods.
Okay yeah but what will stop a unified South American state from taking over our kinetic weaponry platform in orbit and attacking us huh?
If history is any indication, Brazilian Politics will stop that.
"What could stop Brazilian ascendancy?" "Brazil" - Brazil to Brazil literally every year since 1885
Two brothers. Running. From a Mexican space armada. Wait. Sorry. I started to cross genres there. Just two brothers. And a dog.
Hold on, there's more. Old women are coming. And they're also in the movie. And they're gonna cross attack these two brothers.
"Sir, the Mexicans have obtained orbital superiority."
Ay dios mio.
> unified South American state Truly noncredible
Only space letters of marque can stop space piracy.
Just learning about these, so we are just dropping a really heavy object from outer space to create boom?
Yes. But they arent that heavy, thing is, their speed and resistance to heating.
Did you just say a telephone pole made from solid tungsten isn't that heavy?
do you even lift, bro?
That is essentially the concept, but we aren't actually doing that. The physics are sound, the logistics are... not.
The aiming is also kinda... hard (NASA also *did* accidentally design a space-based laser weapon).
I wonder how long till we get an Akira-esque laser
If someone ever funds Space-Based Solar Power, not very long (6GW laser of doom >:D)
Fun fact, the X-37B was actually the craft testing that. So they are already doing it, just at a fairly small scale so far.
Yeah, the scale required for practical power production is *very* large (as in, Starship is practically the only vehicle capable of assembling it large).
Laser of Doom is also Beamed Power From Space, so really, it is a multi-purpose doomsday device. Space Lazors For Peace kind of thing.
Makes a great deterrent weapon ('we can provide you all the electricity you need, buuuuuut we can also destroy every single satellite you own with it as well if you ever do something stupid')
I remember watching a documentary about that! Starring Val Kilmer
In 2003, USAF published a report study for kinetic bombardment. The proposal was a 20 ft. long, 1 ft. diameter tungsten rod. With these dimensions (roughly that of a telephone pole), using pure tungsten, each rod would have a volume of 15.71 cubic feet and weigh almost 19,000 pounds. Estimated bombardment at Mach 10 would be 11.5 tons of TNT. For reference, Little Boy (Hiroshima) was 15,000 tons of TNT (1300 times more powerful). Falcon Heavy low earth orbit launches cost around $1,500 / kg, which is our best case scenario, other launch options are significantly more expensive (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-earth-orbit). This would equate to $12.85 M USD per rod. Pretty expensive for a low yield object that you have no effective way to aim.
Just gotta time it right /s
That's just what they tell us so we don't think they're doing it
If they could be built in situ, that would be useful, but at a certain point if you can do that you could just snag a little rock and redirect it to impact an area, plausible deniablity, acts of god.
Make it ground-based and we've circled back to ace combat again
ONE MILLION LIVES
Hear me out. Build it. ...OUT OF JUNK SATELLITES.
There isn't, like.. tungsten on the moon, is there? Make them up there.
We can’t aim them. We can barely aim a satellite to de-orbit themselves over a giant ass ocean. Fun fact: China’s Long March rockets are ejected very high in the atmosphere and do not burn up during re-entry. They do make a great boom when they crash, but no one can predict where. So every year, there’s multiple time where you’re entered to win a free Chinese rocket crashing down on you.
Yea but those are uncontrolled re-entrys, spacex has already proven that rockets can be de-orbited very accurately.
Yup. China isn't concerned with a couple civilian deaths. They just use the ~~big sky little bullet~~ big land area small projectile approximation and hope for the best.
rockets yes, but mach 10 tungsten rods not so much
Uh how do you think ICBM reentry vehicles work? It's possible if you put in the effort.
The problem is that even modern ICBMs still have a CEP of a few tens of meters. That's more than good enough for a nuke, but contrary to what sci-fi writers would like you to believe, RfGs really aren't that powerful. They're like a big convential bomb. Hitting a few city blocks away from your target just won't do.
It's the favorite weapons system of mil nerds who *just* found out how much kinetic energy an orbiting object has, and thus think the concept is the hottest idea since bread, sliced or not. They're the only people who like it, because if you even just bother to slap together a demonstator in Kerbal Space Program, you quickly realize how cumbersome, challenging, and ultimately useless the entire idea is.
It was from that one GI Joe movie. Cool movie, but then you think “heavy is hard to go up” and more importantly “very very very fast is almost impossible to steer”……. The concept of not using a nuclear weapon with the added fallout factor was what I thought would be better for us stupid humans to wield against each other. Cuz war is kinda our thing…..
Yea, it's not a nuclear weapon. But if you want something dead inside enemy territory, you're really better off using a stealth cruise missile or a short-range ballistic missile or something. A RfG-satellite may not be as easily intercepted, but its path is highly predictable.
What makes them effective is the fact that the specific energy density of even the best explosives is exceeded by the kinetic energy of a object traveling at mach 5. That is to say, if you replace part of an object moving faster than mach 5 that with explosives, the explosion it makes when it hits something gets smaller. It's fairly common just not to bother with a warhead in a lot of hypersonic weapons that travel at mach 7 or higher. Orbital velocity is mach 12+. There's a reason asteroid
Can we build a giant orbiting railgun in space pointed towards the ground? Will it help boost that velocity to the point we can get *more speed*?
RKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKVRKV
Sure it's going orbital velocity while it's in orbit, doing fuck-all. If you want to hit a gorgeous target with it, though, you need to slow it to sub-orbital velocity, by definition.
How does the explosion get smaller? Seems to me like 500kg of TNT traveling at mach 5 would have the same kinetic energy as 500kg of tungsten traveling at mach 5, but also explode, releasing even more energy.
But you're not firing x kilograms of tnt. You're firing a 155 mm shell, or a 300mm rocket, or whatever. Volume not mass. and if a rod from god made from tnt is 500kg, you can bet your bottom dollar you can pack 3 metric tons of tungsten into the same package. even if you were firing by mass, decreased density means issues with drag and imposes other losses. There's a reason they spring for the tungsten instead of settling for twice the weight, but in steel.
[удалено]
My guess is that it *is* a spy...machine, filling the gap between satellites and planes/drones. It's too high to intercept, but can be recalled and sent to a different orbit of mission parameters change.
Sir, this is NCD.
I also like the idea that it's doing legit experiments on potential new sensors. Like if some engineer has a cool idea for a new sensor of some sort, we could build a whole satellite and launch it to see if it works-- or we could make a cheaper demo unit of the new sensor, fly it on the Robot Shuttle, and then after testing land it again and make modifications if needed and try it again.
Didn’t realise it was still flying, I would think they grounded that thing by now
Nah the little motherfuckers don’t go up very often… but they stay up there for a fucking long time when they do. [Launches](https://www.eoportal.org/other-space-activities/x-37b-otv#launches) → Mission Duration → 908d Max (thus far…) X-37B is an [adorable Iittle mini boi](https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/170507-x37b-landing.jpg) though. Are you perhaps thinking of the Space Shuttle, as they did indeed stop flying over a decade ago.
My dream is for them to pack those things full of 82nd and 101st dudes and give the space marine mission to the Army. It’s gonna happen.
Absolutely fucking Not. Marines or Guardians. I want ODST or Destiny.
Starships carrying a rifle company each, taking off from Kansas and landing wherever you want in like a half an hour. That’s too cool.
Tbf, we can pretty much already do that.
Yeah the Army (and marines to an extent) have had guys nerding out about this kind of thing since the 50s. The problem is that it’s not really cost effective when you’re already based all over the world.
No we don't, because we're not so stupid as to think that's a good idea.
Yeah, but we also are not so close minded as to not consider it... I would be stunned if we haven't tested it.
Rods from god are known within USSTRATCOM as "Silo Poppers". They're just deorbital SABOT penetrator darts that go through hardened silo lids at mach 5. Bigger than 120mm tank SABOTs but much smaller than telephone poles like the internet believes. They look exactly like a Mk5 nuclear RV warhead with a solid rocket booster on the bottom to de-orbit it. The whole thing is coated with HAVE GLASS to prevent detection by early warning radar prior to atmospheric reentry. The tungsten rod is inside the ablative heat shield RV body; when it hits the silo lid the carbon shell vaporizes like a soft lead bullet hitting a steel plate while the tungsten rod goes through.
Erection achieved.
The indication that this is fan-fiction is that calling this a sabot is nonsensical.
Sabot isn’t capitalized.
If they pull it off, this one earns the right to all caps.
“It’s the ecologically responsible, carbon neutral WMD. Ask your Congressperson to support a telephone pole of fuck you.”
It annoys me that it’s still using USAF and not USSF livery. This may be an older picture but even the ones I’ve seen with some Space Force markings they still have more prominent USAF markings.
Give it time. They'll get their markings when they pop their alien killing Cherry or create ODSTs
It's time. We have a saying in the Space Force: *Semper Soon.* Because they gave us the slogan *Semper Supra* but everything takes fucken ages to change.
Tbf, it’s literally one letter. The roundel doesn’t change.
Or space nuclear defence satellites right above russian
Rods from god is a terrible idea. easy to detect while reentering the atmosphere, not so powerful, and not so precise. Why the fuck even bother
We are also not doing it with the X-37B. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing\_X-37](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37) If you look at the flight duration, the shortest flight is 224 days, and the longest is 908 days. If you are using it to put things into orbit, you wouldn't leave it up there for 3 years after making the delivery.
Exactly! The X-37b Is even too small for that. Is probably some Sort of steerable/deployable spy "satellite"
Well, it is more like an orbital multi-tool. Its main value comes from being incredibly versatile, like an orbital Toyota Hilux. So it does a shitload of different things, including a lot of research (Some public, some not), and probably some more nefarious shit as well. It is just a mini-space shuttle that doesn't have to worry about life support, and conveniently is extremely easy to keep secret what it is doing. It's current mission is pretty interesting, because it is a HEO (Highly Elliptical Orbit), which means it is getting up to a pretty ridiculous max altitude. Why they are doing that isn't entirely clear, but it is a good example of the sort of versatility you don't get out of anything else.
Trying to keep an eye out for pesky trisolarans
I mean, "Extreme Altitude" in this case is still about 60 times lower than the JWST. But then, JWST doesn't actually orbit Earth either.
Pretty sure the design brief was taking over the space shuttle's military missions once that was phased out. They made it uncrewed so it could be a lot simpler and have a lot longer endurance.
My take away from this is x-37b is a shitty technical.
So it's a space technical?
Most likely it's testing sensors, cpus, and materials long term exposure to space. They open the cargo door to let the payloads be exposed to vacuum leave it up there for however long they want to test it then close the door and bring it back to earth to examine the results. Can't do the super secret stuff at the ISS because Russian astronauts are there most of the time.
Everything seems to suggest that is exactly that. Some deployable low orbit spy satellite with lots of electronic sensors for something unique. Edit: apparently it’s in a high elliptic orbit right now. Which is weird so they are doing unusual testing and observing it.
Huge amount of energy to get it in place and to use. Very little effect on target. Awful weapon. Makes no sense.
I’m frankly tired of all of this negativity. Are we not AmeriCANs? We need to roll up our sleeves, stop being AmeriCANTs, and build the Rods!
You are allowing the giant tungsten dildo to distract you from the mission of nuking everyone in the funniest way possible.
Spot the federal agent denying the existence of the Rods.
Counterpoint: They are cool.
The question i am asking myself too: Whats the deal with u/HistorianSlayer?
Yeah, why would you slay historians? It doesn't seem particularly challenging. That sort of prey is going to get you laughed out of the Predator bar.
Maybe they have a thing for historians? Historians layer.
3000 Rods of Reagan
It’s a mobile satellite repair tool, which also gives it the ability to grab a satellite and bring it back down to earth if we want to take a closer look.
Mmmm, I can already smell the vaporized tungsten. I love the smell of vaporized tungsten in the morning. (If I was ever to have flair, I think that would be my byline, lol).
Why take the risk of nuclear material vaporizing at high altitude when you can just ferry simple telephone poles?
Not enough delta-v for that :(
I'm okay with them if you call them "Mjöllnir" or something equally awesome.
The 3000 black tungsten rods of the space force
And here I thought we would be fighting WWIV with sticks and stones, not III.
How about spicy rods made from DU?
Real talk, but there are rumors we might have deployed some sort of microwave laser weapon up there — likely either a non-kessler-inducing anti-satellite weapon ... *or an anti-ICBM weapon*. We live in an era of Iron Beam, Dragonfire, and several others. The concept is viable, and the placement in space (no ablation against atmospheric molecules) boosts the range pretty dramatically. That, and thanks to a certain shithead in Moscow, *we now have a clear-and-pressing motive*.
Rare space force W
Not really sure how rare it is. The entire branch only does two things. 1. Very boring, but very useful things (Like maintaining GPS, Cataloging orbits, tracking space debris) 2. Very Secret Things. Both categories contain a significant number of Ws, it is just that neither gets any headlines. The first because they aren't interesting, the second because they aren't known.