Testing the US Military’s Worst Idea

This is the biggest, most ambitious and most expensive video I've ever made. And it will be scary too. We're strapping these giant metal weights to the belly of that helicopter, hoisting it several miles into the sky, and then dropping them onto a sandcastle city. I mean, we need luck. (dramatic music) Here we go. - Oh my. YEAH! And all this is for a very good reason. Let's do it. Come on. In the late 1950s, America had a problem. The Soviet Union placed the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit around the Earth on October 4, 1957, but less known is that just over a month before it successfully tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM.

It could transport a nuclear warhead from the Soviet Union to cities on the East Coast of the United States in about 30 minutes. Faced with this threat, a Boeing researcher named Jerry Pournelle came up with the

idea

of ​​a space weapon. He could reach any place on Earth in half that time, just 15 minutes. He could destroy targets buried 30 meters underground, such as the silos where Soviet nuclear weapons were kept. And, in theory, he could intercept the ICBM in mid-flight. His

idea

was to put pieces of tungsten the size of a telephone pole into orbit. So these pieces of tungsten could fall on a target basically at any time.

The idea was that within 15 minutes one of these tungsten rods could be released and re-entered the atmosphere and hit a target within minutes. And it would come so fast, you know, in orbit things go about eight kilometers per second, and when it enters the atmosphere, it will slow down due to atmospheric drag, but even on impact it will still go about 10 times. the speed of sound. Mach 10 or about three kilometers per second. This is MOAB, which stands for Mass Ordinance Aerial Explosion, but is more commonly known by its nickname Mother of All Bombs. It is one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosives on the planet.

When it detonated, it released the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT. Now, just one of these tungsten rods would have the same energy as the largest conventional explosive ever detonated. They are not bombs, they do not contain explosives, but the amount of energy they carry in their kinetic energy because they are very heavy and go so fast is as large as any conventional bomb ever detonated. Pournelle named his weapon Project Thor after the Norse god who shot lightning from the heavens. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration seriously considered the idea of ​​the kinetic missile interceptor. It was codenamed Brilliant Pebbles, but the project was abandoned.

In 2003 it was resurrected by the Air Force Transformation Plan which referred to this weapon as hypervelocity rod beams. But colloquially, the weapon is known as God Rods. The kinetic energy of an object is directly proportional to its mass and its speed squared. So, increasing the object's mass 10 times increases its kinetic energy 10 times. But if you increase the speed by a factor of 10, the kinetic energy grows by a factor of a hundred. Therefore, even very light objects can carry a lot of kinetic energy. This is what a 15-gram piece of plastic does to a block of aluminum when traveling at six kilometers per second.

And this is a real problem for satellites, since the enormous speeds in orbit, micrometeorites, small bolts or even specks of paint pose a serious risk to astronauts living on board the International Space Station. This chip in the ISS window was caused by a small speck of dust. And a small piece of space debris punched a hole in the robotic arm. Imagine something that weighs 10 tons traveling at that speed. Kinetic energy weapons appear in fiction, including dozens of movies, video games, and books. But how realistic are they? I mean, could this weapon ever become a reality? Well, that's why we are here in the middle of the desert.

We want to see how harmful a rod of God could be. And we really went all out, even hiring a team of professional sandcastle builders to build a city for us to drop the bars on. I have all the respect in the world for these sandcastle builders. - We are seven-time US Open Sand Castle champions. - That's so cool. It will withstand the test of the highest weight with the highest drop with very little damage. I'm really convinced of that. - The capital of the United States was great. - Yes, isn't it great? - Yes. - It's one of our favorites. - I love all the buildings there.

Who made the pickle? Gherkin? - Yes, the Gherkin here. - Very pretty. This is beautiful. I mean, I feel bad for trying to hit him. I'm just really worried about aiming, the city isn't that big. So before we get to that drop, we're going to try to hit this pool with a mass of 100 kilograms or 220 pounds. It probably goes up about 500 meters. Try dropping a weight directly into this pool. I don't think it's going to work. I don't think we'll get it. In fact, my main worry all day is that we won't be able to hit anything.

And so what was the point of coming here in the first place? These are going to be the questions I ask myself. So the way we aim is with GPS, we'll take a GPS mark from the center of the pool. Oh boy. We also have GPS on the helicopter. We'll use that to try to line up square over the middle of the pool. So if we are able to reach this pool from 500 meters, then I think we have a chance. (dramatic music) - Where's your GPS? - My GPS is my phone. And I have the coordinates written on my arm.

We are ready to go. We are professionals. First drop and it feels unstable, I gotta tell you. I'm surprised it can handle such a heavy load! - We have another 700 feet to get to 1500. - Okay. - I just don't know why they are spinning so high. Is it 500 meters? That seems really high. - Ryan to Rick, what's your altitude? - 500 meters. - We are at 1500 feet, that seems higher than 1500 feet. - They are 500 meters away right now. - That's crazy, okay? - Here we go. This is the one. - This is the one. -Up there he moves like crazy! - Yes.

Does it have fins? - Jesus. No. No fins. Why didn't we have this conversation a week ago? - Looking good? - We are fine from left to right. That's good. We just have to move forward. - Oh wow. They don't seem to be in position, do they? Are you kidding me? -He never will. -He fell. - Oh my. That? What's that going to hit? Oh, it goes sideways. What hit? - Far beyond the sand castle. - Oh wow. That was much further out than he thought. - Oh Lord. - He was right. Did yours show the same thing back there? - Yes, we were right. - Yes ok.

Well, that's a little strange. That will just show you what will happen at altitude. We both said we were right and we weren't. -It didn't look like they were moving, but... -Yes, he's telling me that our horizontal velocity was zero. - And you were in the right place? - We were exactly in the right place. - Oh, wow. Oh, wow! Check it out. - Oh, wow. - Totally, totally buried. When falling from 500 meters, the rod accelerated for 10 seconds. And even taking air resistance into account, it fell to the ground at about 350 kilometers per hour. At that speed, with a mass of one hundred kilograms, it carried almost half a million joules of kinetic energy.

Our plan for the day is to drop something twice as heavy from six times as high. Then its energy on impact will be greater than the explosion of a kilogram of TNT. Kinetic impacts are explosive. If you look at the craters on the moon and look very closely, you will see that they are basically all circles. I don't think anyone stops to ask why they are circular? If you imagine that when the Moon is hit by asteroids, they will come from all different directions. So shouldn't we have these kinds of oblong shapes where the asteroid enters?

Well, the truth is that asteroids arrive with such incredible speed that it is not as if they are moving the earth out of the way and that is what creates the crater. No, they come so fast that when they collide their kinetic energy is explosive. It heats the ground, turns things into liquids and gases. They all get really hot and go off in a giant explosion. And this explosion is symmetrical. No matter what angle or how shallow the asteroid approaches, it will explode all radially because it is explosive. Kinetic energy is explosive. And I think to me that's what's really surprising.

It would be exactly the same when dropping these rods at Mach 10, when they hit a target they will create an explosion as if they were the largest conventional weapon ever launched. And because it goes so fast, it can penetrate about 30 meters of ground, enough to break bunkers or silos. And, therefore, the explosion is more localized. Therefore, it can be used for precise surgical strikes. Plus, unlike a nuclear weapon, there are no radioactive consequences to worry about and no international laws. Do these ideas contravene any current law or treaty? - No. The only international agreement that exists on putting weapons in space is on nuclear weapons.

The only real ban is on placing nuclear weapons in space. - Man, how I thought the goals would be difficult to achieve. Now I am super convinced that it is impossible to get it right. - What we're going to do now is we're going to do a much lower altitude and we're going to do it visually. - Yes, excellent. - So we'll make it, you know, 300 feet visually. - I love it. Let's do a cube drop. The cube drop is interesting because I thought we shouldn't do a cube drop. We are here talking about Rods of God.

They are cylinders right? Now I'm very grateful that we have the cubes because the cylinders, as Adam Savage told me, cylinders tend to fall on their side, if given enough chance. - Actually? Who would have thought that I would have thought that, you know, something like a pencil, would tend to point downwards? That still seems high. Is it a hundred meters? He does that? 30 second call, it doesn't look like they are over the pool. It's totally flapping in the wind. It is totally oscillating. - The GPS is perfect and I see it right below. - I still feel high. - We're on that.

We're on that. - Here we go. - Alright. That wasn't far away. - We're 60 feet away. - Yes. Oh, wow. Did it seem like we were right on top? - It seemed like it, yes. - Wow. Because I was right about that too. - That's something, from a hundred meters. I'll take it. Okay, we're getting ready to drop this dough. 200 kilograms, 440 pounds. What do you think? - Yes, we will get there. - Are we going to make it this time? - I hope so. This is the moment of truth. We have had two failures so far.

So we're going 50 meters or 150 feet above the pool, which to me is quite disappointing. But at this point I just want to hit something. - 30 seconds! 30 seconds! - Oh boy. The weight is oscillating there. It is being blown by the wind. I mean we need luck. There it goes, there it goes, there it goes. I'm tracking, tracking. I enjoyed the pool! - (screaming) Yes! (the whole team applauds) - He hit something. - Yeah! - I was like right on the edge. Right on the edge. - WOW! - This morning I was so worried that we weren't going to hit anything.

And I think the footage is very shaky because I was so excited. But seeing that from above was incredible. - Wow. He crossed the pool. - That's crazy. - Incredible. - Oh, look at the rubber ducks. - So, the next objective is the sand castle? And do you want to go a hundred meters? - I want to duplicate it. - It would be amazing if we could hit the sand castle from a hundred meters. That will be something in all the different incarnations of Rods of God. The rods are made of tungsten. And there are two reasons for this.

The first is that tungsten is very, very dense. One cubic meter of tungsten weighs 19 tons. That's more than double the density of steel, which is what we use here simply because it's so much cheaper. But that means that for a given amount of mass, tungsten rods could be less than half the volume of steel and therefore encounter less resistance as they pass through the atmosphere. More importantly for reentry, tungsten also has an incredibly high melting point. The highest of all metals, at almost three thousand five hundred degrees Celsius. This is important because as the rod decelerates through the atmosphere, a lot of heat builds up around it.

And tungsten's high melting point means the rods require much less protection to prevent them from melting. The shape is also important. The goal is to reach the target as quickly as possible. Therefore, a sleek, streamlined shape is best and reeds are a great shape for that. Aerodynamics is the reason arrows, bullets, and ballistic missiles look the way they do. It is to minimize resistance. Honestly, one of the big mistakes we made was not welding fins on our rods. We will climb about a hundred meters or 300 feet before falling. Let's go to the city of sandcastles. That's the goal. - Any minute, any second. - There it goes, there it goes, there it goes.

Is going. Did it hit head on? - Only in source. - Hit right in front. - Just do itwe lost - We were close. We were very close. So the tractor will take out the weight right now. - Yes. - Just pick it up. -That's how he landed. - So close to taking out the capital. - Yes. Look at that. - 30 seconds to fall. - Ah, that wind. - 20 seconds. - 20 seconds. That wind is brutal. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. Did you hit something to the left? But I don't think it was the city. Seeing all the challenges we are going through reminds me how difficult it is to aim a kinetic projectile. 10 seconds. - Three, two, one and let go. - There it goes.

Did they hit a building? The Capitol is still here. That? That? - That? - I can not believe it. Direct hit to the building, but only knocked down that side. - It seems incredible to me, that it hit right there - Look at the cracks. - Look at the cracks on the back - and it's like they created cracks but they didn't form the whole - they didn't destroy the whole building. This is not what you would use if you wanted to cause mass devastation. It's like you want to point out a goal. Now, if I'm honest, we didn't manage to give Rods from God a fair test, even on a small scale.

You know I wanted to lose 200 kilograms from three kilometers. But aiming was so difficult that we didn't get anywhere close to that. So we couldn't see the explosive power of kinetic energy. When we made a last desperate attempt to go back down from 500 meters. I was terrified that we were going to hit something or someone. Care, care, care, care, care. Oh! Oh! Squawk! I was happy to end the day with everyone safe. I didn't shoot that because I was so terrified. Ah, I see it. Wow. You're right that he bounced. But given the amount of time and money we spent on this video, I'd say it's my biggest fail of all time and it turns out that's also something you could say about the actual Rods from God weapon.

I mean, just start aiming. In theory, it is possible to direct a rod from God; You could use adjustable thrusters or fins or change the center of mass of the rod. But in practice it is incredibly difficult to target an object traveling at hypersonic speeds. Not only that, communicating with the rod from the ground or from space would be nearly impossible due to the superheated plasma surrounding it. And there are other problems. You know, let's say you want to hit a target in 15 minutes, you would think the simplest thing would be to place a rod right above the target in geostationary orbit.

But the geostationary orbit is more than 35,000 kilometers away. That's almost a tenth of the distance to the moon. So from there it would take several hours for a rod to fall to the ground. And if you put it in low Earth orbit, say about 350 kilometers above the Earth, the rod will move relative to the ground and make one revolution around the Earth every 90 minutes. So between ordering an attack and the rod hitting the target, that could take up to an hour and a half. Now you might think that you could reduce that time to about 30 minutes by placing, say, 10 satellites in that orbit.

But remember, the Earth rotates so orbits deviate; you would actually need hundreds of satellites to make sure there is always a rod near the target. So let's say you want to put a hundred bars in space. Well, the cost of launching them will be billions of dollars. And over time the thrusters will break down and malfunction. Therefore, there will be ongoing maintenance costs. But what if you only want to use it for missile defense? Well then you don't need something that weighs 10 tons, a smaller rod would do. But even then it's really complicated. And to successfully intercept an ICBM, you have to hit it during the boost phase;

Modern ICBMs are divided into a series of payloads after boost, some of which are decoys to overwhelm ICBM defense missiles. To stop North Korea's ICBM launches, for example, the United States would need about 400 rods spread across eight orbits to be able to intercept missiles in time. A global defense system would require at least a few times that amount. And it is estimated that even a very limited system would cost around $300 billion, representing almost half of the annual US

military

budget. And even that wouldn't work because enemies could evade the defense by launching several missiles at the same time.

Since there is only one rod in the right place at any time, one rod could intercept one of the missiles but the rest would pass through it. So Rods from God is unfeasible to execute in reality. After his time at Boeing, Jerry Pournelle, who came up with the idea, became a science fiction writer. And in his 1985 New York Times bestselling book, Footfall, an alien race uses kinetic weapons to invade Earth. And honestly, I'm really glad that this weapon is only feasible in science fiction. Engineering is about trying, failing, and sometimes ruining things. And if you can't handle dropping giant steel bars in the desert, then your best option is Brilliant, the sponsor of this video.

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