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‘Rods from God’: Why Mach 5 Hypersonic Tugeston Bombs Were Never Dropped
"Among the reasons the science fiction-esque idea literally never made it off the ground was thanks to cost.
Getting bundles of telephone pole-sized tungsten rods—1.7 time denser than lead—would require rockets of a massive scale that would have been prohibitively expensive.
- Caleb Larson
- The National Interest
So much for this far-out idea.”
Normally bombers drop explosive ordnance onto targets: conventional or nuclear.
These two payloads, as detailed below, however, were neither—though that didn’t make them any…
Rods from God
The Outer Space Treaty, a United Nations treaty ratified in the…