The Real Reason USA is bombing the Moon ~ A NEW Weapon!

reply to post by Where2Hide2006

The point of a weapons test is to test said weapon in the most realistic possible way. Testing Rod From God on the moon would be great, if we were going to attack the moon. The point of the weapon is to launch it ballistically through the atmosphere to impact a target. If this was an actual RFG test, you would meet NONE of those parameters. You are artificially accelerating the projectile, dropping it through a non-existant atmosphere with zero air resistance, not to mention the accel would be ALL wrong because of the rocket and moons gravity...

Stop bombing the frikkin' moon for Christ sake!

You just have to bomb something, huh!

LUNATICS!!

Originally posted by debunky
The math:
F=m*a
E=m*v

F=ma
FEma

I would imagine it's cheaper to drop a house sized metal block from space than it is to engineer nukes, safeguard them until use, and properly deploy them... as well as clean up afterward.

So, a "Jerry Pournelle, a science-fiction writer and space-weapons expert, conceived it while working for Boeing in the late 1950s" (Quote from New York Times Magazine, dated December 2006)

Not very original, if you ask me!

In 1942, somewhere in England, there was this chap called Barnes Wallis. He had a theory that if a 'hardened' bomb was dropped from a certain height, velocity alone would assure that the bomb would penetrate even deeply constructed bunkers.

By 1943/44, Barnes Wallis (later Sir) had developed the Tallyboy and Grand Slam 'earthquake' bombs.

Dropped from Lancasters flying at a height of just 8 kms, these 5 tonne bombs could smash through hardened concrete, granite and limestone with ease.

Indeed many V2 sites visited by 617 Sqn were given such a pasting with these 'earthquake' bombs, that German scientists were forced to suspend operations. www.v2rocket.com...

These 'earthquake' bombs were used to destroy the submarine bases at Lorient, the V1 & V2 sites and they also sunk the Tirpitz, off Håkøy Island near Tromsø on 12 November 1944 after being hit by 5.4-ton "Tallboy" bombs.

I believe the article in the NYT is just a rehash of another brilliant British invention.

Nobody here seems to have heard of conservation of energy. The only way to get energy out equivalent to a thousand tons of explosive it to put the equivalent energy in. And a rocket is not a particularly efficient way of converting into kinetic energy. So, no free superweapons.

Kinetic penetrators are already widely used in tank warfare (they're made of depleted uranium for all the obvious reasons). A larger version might be useful for attacking deeply buried or hardened bunkers, but doesn't have many other applications.

Interesting theory, but why would the test so public.

You guys have it all wrong....the rod isn't some HUGE rod that's dropped from space...yes, it is a metal rod made from tungstin (if I remember what I have read correctly), but it isn't enormous...It's actually rather small in size, and is ment as a tactical weapon for removing "individual targets" while reducing the amount of collateral damage that so commonly occurs during the detonation of conventional munitions.

The weapon is also dropped from a "defense satellite", and is called the "Finger of God"...sorry if I'm coming off as being pushy, this being my first post and everything...

Yea,that is right. They already knew there is water on the moon before that bombing. Sooo,even if it wasnt to test "the rod from god" it still wasnt just to find something they already knew existed.

reply to post by Where2Hide2006


I'm sorry but wouldnt the rod need to be travelling in excess of 20,000mph to destry a whole city? Asteroids travel at about this speed so simply falling to earth wouldnt be fast enough. They would need to be propelled. And i would imagine the distance required to get to 20,000+ mph would be quite vast even with an engine.

No???

While we're doing thread-necromancy,

reply to post by jrmcleod


Pretty much. In terms of energy, you're only getting back a fraction of how much energy there was in the fuel it took to launch the thing into space in the first place. Even the biggest tungsten rod we could launch with any rocket ever built falling down from orbital velocity wouldn't deliver the energy of a kiloton level nuke.

They were never intended to flatten cities, and they will never be deployed because it would look just like a nuclear attack right up until it actually hit, and that is the sort of thing you shouldn't be giving people false alarms over.

And like has been said before, shooting one at the moon would be an awful test because de-orbiting a tungsten rod through atmosphere accurately onto a buried bunker is the hard part, and throwing something at the moon wouldn't teach us anything useful about that. We have already known for several thousand years that throwing something really heavy at something will tend to damage it.

Originally posted by Chevalerous
Stop bombing the frikkin' moon for Christ sake!

You just have to bomb something, huh!

LUNATICS!!

During the Apollo Missions we had Bendix manufacture explosive charges to use in space and the Astronauts placed the bombs around the moons surface and set up some mortaring equipment. After they lifted off the explosives were set off.

We've bombed the crap out of the moon more than once. Were they using the Bendix explosives back then for any scientific purpose? Kinda. We wanted to have bombs capable of working in space to use against other countries. Turns out the company that makes brake pads for cars makes some good space bombs too!

I wonder when we'll bomb the moon again? Somebody should run a betting website so the world could put money down on when America will bomb the moon next.

An Australian manufactured one of the Lunar Surface Dust experiments which the Apollo missions put on the moon. NASA recorded data from the equipment onto reels and to this day, nobody ever looked at the reels to see if that experiment discovered water in the dust. You can google the story. They are saying now there is no equipment to even reveal whats on the reels of data.

Maybe if they looked at those reels they could have avoided Bombing the moon. Nahh....americans are more of a blow it up country aren't we? Read something.......nahhh C-4 dat chet!