Is kinetic bombardment possible?

Kinetic bombardment is technically legal under the Outer Space Treaty, as it is a conventional weapon and not a WMD in technical terms.

How effective is kinetic bombardment?

However, there are variants of the MAC platforms mounted to various ships and stations, with the most powerful being able to fire a 3,000 ton projectile at anywhere between 0.4% and 25% the speed of light.

How much damage would the rods of God do?

The “rods from god” idea was a bundle of telephone-pole-size (20 feet long, 1 foot in diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to 10 times the speed of sound. The rod itself would penetrate hundreds of feet into the Earth, destroying any potential hardened bunkers or secret underground sites.

Do rods from God exist?

If so-called “Rods from God”–an informal nickname of untraceable origin–ever do materialize, it won’t be for at least 15 years. Launching heavy tungsten rods into space will require substantially cheaper rocket technology than we have today. But there are numerous other obstacles to making such a system work.

What is orbital bombardment?

Orbital bombardment, also known as an orbital strike, was a military strategy, where huge star cruisers (such as Star Destroyers) would fire their main cannons to the surface of a planet, causing heavy damage to the enemy.

Are rods from God possible?

No. Such an weapon isn’t feasible due to orbital physics. Such rods would strike your house/target sideways, negating their use as a bunkerbuster. And they have no other use.

Is the Zeus weapon from GI Joe possible?

No. It’s highly unrealistic. It would have to be a very massive rod to carry that much kinetic energy, given that it would probably impact at less than 10,000 mph, or about 16,000 m/s after air resistance from reentry to impact were taken account of.

Do astronauts carry guns?

Cosmonauts regularly carry handguns on their Soyuz spacecraft — and actually, that’s not unreasonable.

Is orbital bombardment feasible?

Orbital bombardment is only even a possibility for large military-grade capital ships, and even then it’s not 100% effective.

Is orbital bombardment a war crime?

As for Orbital Bombardment, it simply means bombardment (of a surface) using anything in orbit, so using orbital bombardment on earth, as long as it isn’t nuclear weapons, it’s perfectly allowed, as long as you don’t intend to commit crimes or actually commit war crimes using it.