Rods From God: The Truth of Call of Duty's Killer Satellite

[E. T. Brooking]

Rods From God: The Truth of Call of Duty's Killer Satellite

Call of Duty: Ghosts posits a satellite capable of bombarding the planet with superfast, destructive rods. The truth of that weapon is stranger, and more real, than you think.

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[gigastar]

Theres a quote somewhere that explains the rationalisation behind weaponised sattelites.

And thanks be to TvTropes, i can paste it right here.

In war, one should seek to take and hold the high ground. From there, the enemy's movements are clearly visible, and he will struggle just to reach you, let alone fight you. High orbit is the highest ground there is.
?Dade Leviathan, Star Wars Expanded Universe

 

[Macematten]

I wish these would be awesome weapons of destruction, but it seems they would just be similar to conventional weapons...for WAAAAAAY more money.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/reel-physics/7296-GI-Joe-Retaliation-Tungsten-Rod-Drop

 

[Nghtgnt]

Like the article says, it just isn't cost efficient, especially when you have cruise missiles and strategic bombers like the B-52 (which is so good it's been used for 60 years).

Also, I found it odd that an article on this subject on The Escapist didn't link this:

 

[piinyouri]

This article made me want to go find the space scene in question.
I was not disappointed.

I'd say this series still does (as far as the oft neglected single player is concerned) what it does best.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Theres a quote somewhere that explains the rationalisation behind weaponised sattelites.

And thanks be to TvTropes, i can paste it right here.

In war, one should seek to take and hold the high ground. From there, the enemy's movements are clearly visible, and he will struggle just to reach you, let alone fight you. High orbit is the highest ground there is.
?Dade Leviathan, Star Wars Expanded Universe

That quote used to be from Warhammer 40k, and was repurpoesd by the fanfic writer who created Dade Levithan.

http://swfanon.wikia.com/wiki/Dade_Leviathan

Untill lifting mass becomes much much cheaper I doubt we'll see city killer rods anytime soon. Besides, such a system is vunerable to someone deliberatly attemting to create a Kessler syndrome to deny any satellite advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

 

[Alleged_Alec]

Apart from having actually not all that much energy and being very hard to put into orbit, let's look at how you'd aim this. You'd have to launch the rod with delta-v so that it actually does reenter, and doesn't just float next to your satellite. You'd have to calculate, taking very annoying mechanisms like the increasing air density, drag, missile profile into account, and even that isn't enough. Wind could throw off your aim by kilometres, and even increased/decreased air pressure due to differences in warmth and humidity could make you miss the target.

 

[The Ubermensch]

>Put simply, doing so would open all of space to militarization - and push nations across the world to build their own variants. The result would be an arms race not seen since the invention of the atom bomb. The U.S. alone has spent roughly $8 trillion (in 2013 dollars) on the development, testing, and maintenance of nuclear weapons in the years since. It's difficult to see where this new arms race would end once begun - or how it could do anyone much good.


We are not creatures of peace dear journalist. The greatest creations of our time; the internet, space flight, the Turing Machine, all have their roots in military projects resulting from active or the threat of armed conflict.

The militarisation of space might be the push we need to leave our cradle.

 

[Micalas]

If I recall, wasn't one of the other barriers to "Rods From God" the fact that instead of causing large-scale kinetic damage, the rod would shatter on impact?

 

[E. T. Brooking]

Nghtght - Oddly I missed that video in my research (Escapist is far from monolithic). Thanks for sharing - I learned something.

Ubermensch - may be true, but blow two of those suckers up and we won't be leaving our cradle at all.

Micalas - there's a lot of ambiguity on that point. Some sources suggested slowing rods down to 1 km/s to avoid that very thing. Either way, even 1 km/s is going to do some serious kinetic damage.

 

[Olas]

Apart from having actually not all that much energy and being very hard to put into orbit, let's look at how you'd aim this. You'd have to launch the rod with delta-v so that it actually does reenter, and doesn't just float next to your satellite. You'd have to calculate, taking very annoying mechanisms like the increasing air density, drag, missile profile into account, and even that isn't enough. Wind could throw off your aim by kilometres, and even increased/decreased air pressure due to differences in warmth and humidity could make you miss the target.

Pretty much my thoughts, you'd need an incredibly powerful device to quickly thrust it out of orbital velocity, and then some sort of onboard guidance system to have any hope of hitting a target, at which point you might as well just be launching from the ground on a gigantic catapult.

Though impractical or not it's still a neat idea.

 

[lolcatize]

i found this to be a good read

 

[Alexander Competitor]

yeah, they don't do nearly as much damage as people think. For sheer destruction, nuclear weapons are far more efficient and practical.

 

[TheSYLOH]

So with the sky literally falling and millions dead. Why doesn't the US nuke the Federation? Seriously once civilian casualties start hitting 6 figures I think it justifies the nuclear option.
Even assuming ODIN wiped out all the ICBM Silos before they could launch, that still leaves the entire submarine launched nuclear arsenal.
It wouldn't even make sense to say the US launched ALL its nukes at the mid east. There comes a point where you can't make the entire region deader then it is. Did a Kaiju appear there or something?
In anycase, step two of the ODIN crisis would have been the prelude to the Fallout series, rather than COD Ghosts.