Dropping a tungsten rod that weights around 12,000 kg from orbit has a similar destruction potential as nuclear weapons.
At present lunch prices bringing a tungsten rod that’s weighted 12,000 kg to orbit has a extreme cost for the defense industry that was labeled to be around $230 million a rod.
On the other hand, Starship is designed to be able to carry 100 tons with equals 8 rots to space in a single flight and given that Elon talked about being able to launch starship 3 times per day with a cost that would allow transporting humans from one place of the earth to another the launch cost might be less then a million.
I found tungsten prices to be around 25$/kilo for simple products, which suggest a million dollar might be a valid price for one of the rods.
When the rods are dropped they hit within 15 minutes which means that an attacked country has to react faster then towards nuclear weapons.
Having the weapons installed in a satellite creates the additional problem that there’s no human in the loop who makes the decision to launch. Any person who succeeds in hacking a satellite with tungsten rods can deploy them.
Starships barely meet any of the metrics needed for a good ballistic missile
The vehicle is too large to be easily intercepted, lacks stealth capability, intra-atmospheric re-orbiting capability may not have been designed to evade anti-missile systems, the launch platform is difficult to manoeuvre, and the fuel is not storage-resistant, resulting in long response times.
The advantage of a recoverable rocket in wartime is also reduced, as it may take even longer to recover and refurbish a rocket than to build a new one.
Since it can be used as a FOBS, no one would bet against it carrying a nuclear warhead, so its use would almost certainly mean at least a small-scale nuclear war.
If you try to fix these problems, you tend to get one of the DF61 or the B21.Maybe it’ll be 9K720.
Using the same mass of nukes in a carrier is more likely to destroy cities and armies than using a carrier to deliver tungsten rods.
If you want to use this weapon against geotechnical fortifications, then you should look at this.
A logical improvement to recoverable rockets for war purposes would be to use small recoverable rockets propelled by liquid fuel that can be stored for long periods of time to launch downsized ICBMs or satellites, which would allow your nuclear capability to last longer if you want a nuclear war and can’t expect to be able to produce missiles after the war but can refurbish them.
Elon Musks Starship might bring us a new x-risk.
Dropping a tungsten rod that weights around 12,000 kg from orbit has a similar destruction potential as nuclear weapons.
At present lunch prices bringing a tungsten rod that’s weighted 12,000 kg to orbit has a extreme cost for the defense industry that was labeled to be around $230 million a rod.
On the other hand, Starship is designed to be able to carry 100 tons with equals 8 rots to space in a single flight and given that Elon talked about being able to launch starship 3 times per day with a cost that would allow transporting humans from one place of the earth to another the launch cost might be less then a million.
I found tungsten prices to be around 25$/kilo for simple products, which suggest a million dollar might be a valid price for one of the rods.
When the rods are dropped they hit within 15 minutes which means that an attacked country has to react faster then towards nuclear weapons.
Having the weapons installed in a satellite creates the additional problem that there’s no human in the loop who makes the decision to launch. Any person who succeeds in hacking a satellite with tungsten rods can deploy them.
Interesting short thread on this here.
Starships barely meet any of the metrics needed for a good ballistic missile
The vehicle is too large to be easily intercepted, lacks stealth capability, intra-atmospheric re-orbiting capability may not have been designed to evade anti-missile systems, the launch platform is difficult to manoeuvre, and the fuel is not storage-resistant, resulting in long response times.
The advantage of a recoverable rocket in wartime is also reduced, as it may take even longer to recover and refurbish a rocket than to build a new one.
Since it can be used as a FOBS, no one would bet against it carrying a nuclear warhead, so its use would almost certainly mean at least a small-scale nuclear war.
If you try to fix these problems, you tend to get one of the DF61 or the B21.Maybe it’ll be 9K720.
Using the same mass of nukes in a carrier is more likely to destroy cities and armies than using a carrier to deliver tungsten rods.
If you want to use this weapon against geotechnical fortifications, then you should look at this.
https://rockmech.whrsm.ac.cn/CN/abstract/abstract30303.shtml
A logical improvement to recoverable rockets for war purposes would be to use small recoverable rockets propelled by liquid fuel that can be stored for long periods of time to launch downsized ICBMs or satellites, which would allow your nuclear capability to last longer if you want a nuclear war and can’t expect to be able to produce missiles after the war but can refurbish them.