Wasn't a fan of this video (Veritasium's, not yours). It seemed like the video was mostly about trying to do his mock demonstration, but wasn't really researched super well, instead of just talking about the science and concept of the Rods From God project. Whole thing had a weird vibe

@rog2224

4 ай бұрын

When you're hoping that some form of aerodynamics from a static drop is going to overcome the acceleration of the "centre of gravity" of a cylinder to prevent tumbling shows how little it was considered in depth.

@BigStinker_14

4 ай бұрын

Yeah, seems like the lack of research, and effort made this a huge waste of time and resources. If you’re going to do something, why not try and do it right the first time?

@queefyg490

4 ай бұрын

You're right the vibe is so weird. I think he is turning into mark rober v2; his videos are trying to appeal to children so instead of discussing the science it's about showing a crazy demo.

@bami2

4 ай бұрын

He spent more time hiring a prize winning sandcastle team than investigating/researching the actual goal of the video. Like the formula for kinetic energy has a square in it for velocity, what is even the point of then dropping 1/10th the weight (with half the density) from 1/300th-1/3000th the altitude. You're going to be off by so many orders of magnitude of a full scale test and basically just rendered everything completely useless and a waste of time. Let alone just the deadbrained idea of dropping a metal cylinder swaying below a helicopter without any stabilization and no actual sense of targeting except for a mk1 eyeball and a consumer GPS unit, to finish it off with no real safety plan in place. When this video was released I lost a whole lot of respect for Veritasium.

@rd400d

4 ай бұрын

@@bami2 I didn't... because I had none for the guy. He always comes off as a pretentious douchebag. That's most likely because he is one.

A 10 lb tungsten rod dropped from say 10000 ft into a spot in the desert would have told us more.

That Veritasium video basically always struck me as the same as someone saying "We couldn't destroy this building by tossing a bowling ball at it by hand so therefore cannons are a terrible idea."

@sphaera2520

4 ай бұрын

If you watch the video unbiased, you’ll see it as here’s a scaled down demo for funzies which I will use to talk about the real system with teams of specialists considering all the constraints. Coincidentally both the funzies and real system failed, though for different reasons.

@retromodernart4426

4 ай бұрын

@@sphaera2520 Post some references to "the real system" [tests] failing, thanks.

@lbochtler

4 ай бұрын

@@retromodernart4426 it will likely work, just be inefficient and expensive beyond belief. You might as well throw an aircraft carrier at the target for the price of a single "rod from god". The original concept as i recall, was to yeet them at about 0.99C, not 0.000011441C. far too slow to be useful.

@retromodernart4426

4 ай бұрын

@@lbochtler Neither you or I "spent loads of money and time" recording a half-baked "experiment" that proves or disproves absolutely nothing like this pack of nitwits in the "Veriatsium" video pulled on us. Therefore, neither they, nor you nor I can say anything about it except "it seems to me [fill in the rest of the argument and facts it's based on]". The main issue is, as the dude who made this reaction video said, is [the cost of] getting the "rods" into orbit, the rest is a matter of already solved ballistics and guidance engineering. The actual physics and effects of the impact of "rods" from orbit is the "motivation"/justification for them as a weapons system.

@catagamas

4 ай бұрын

@@retromodernart4426 the test never happened cause it is too expensive, therefore, a failure

It's great that you identified the flaws in the scale model representation so immediately. I was pretty disappointed by the video since it didn't really say anything other than aiming it precisely would probably be difficult. It's pretty telling the lack of forethought when Adam immediately asks if it has fins on it to stabilize it and the response is "why didn't we have this conversation a week ago?". The whole experiment just seems poorly planned and lacking rigor.

@emperorxenu519

5 ай бұрын

I've read about this topic and iirc it's less that targeting them is actually impossible but more that by the time you equip them well enough to target them you've probably made something that would violate a treaty so there's just no point

@barefootalien

4 ай бұрын

@@emperorxenu519 Exactly. And even if it didn't technically violate a treaty, you've still built a weapon of mass destruction, so the treaties would just be swiftly altered to cover them.

@6gradosproducciones

4 ай бұрын

do you see them writting anything down? this isn't science

@Dr.Spatula

4 ай бұрын

​@@6gradosproducciones "didn't see them writing." That's... not what dictates science...

@EwanMarshall

4 ай бұрын

And aiming wouldn't be as difficult for an object with a lot of mass and going that fast from space, inertia will make it hard for wind to move it around. You don't need much surface area to adjust course, spacex's titanium grid fin's do that on falcon 9 boosters. But even those are going slow compared to these things and those grid fins are titanium to survive the forces involved.

35:07 his whole concept from the beginning is really poorly planned. If the goal was to simulate an actual hypersonic projectile, he would have been better off trying to use a firearm from the chopper from high up. The problem there is he'd have to be mile or more away for safety, and that also doesn't solve the guidance problem. This whole "experiment" was nothing more than a poorly planned excursion that wasted a lot of money and time.

@ivanpetrov5255

4 ай бұрын

I don't think they thought more that 10 minutes on this. - Check this wild idea. What if we replicate it? - Cool. But how? - Hmmm... let's drop something heavy from a helicopter. - And build a sand castle city for target. - Are you good at building sand castles? - Don't worry. I know a guy.

@user-it7lf7kk8m

4 ай бұрын

That's what he does.

Whenever you try to do a crazy dangerous experiment in the desert Adam will always appear.

@FanEAW

4 ай бұрын

out of the mists like silent hill 👀

@ebnertra0004

4 ай бұрын

Adam probably has an alert on his phone every time someone's about to do craxy experiments in the desert

@ivanpetrov5255

4 ай бұрын

@@FanEAW Materializes at a spot nobody was observing.

@ReallyRealBenMills

4 ай бұрын

Adam, or Tom Scott.

@marianmarkovic5881

3 ай бұрын

Especialy, if explosions are possibility.

Another problem I pointed out before is that not only are they dropping something unguided with no fins, they are doing it under the turbulent downforce of helicopter rotors AND from a tether instead of a fixed hardpoint. It is almost like they were trying to make it as hard as possible to hit a target.

@ninjalectualx

16 күн бұрын

Oh so THATS why the air force doesn't use bomb tethers lmao

Vertiasium forgot the guidance package in Jerry Pournelle's design.

@ScibbieGames

2 ай бұрын

Forgot a lot more than that lmao

@themediocrates

2 ай бұрын

he forgot the hypervelocity part too lol

@billgaudette5524

8 күн бұрын

And the space-elephants. My friend Chintithpit-Mang could have debunked this in 30 seconds!

I think the better representation is to find the thinnest fastest APFSDS round you can, and overpressure it from the longest barrel you can. You probably won't get 4-10 km/s but you might get 2.5 which should begin to give you some idea of the dynamics at play.

In "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" (Heinlein, 1966), the lunar colonies attack Earth by basically "throwing rocks at them". Using electromagnetic catapults that were up there for launching freightage back to Earth from the moon, they instead just loaded the cans full of rocks, and have it hit on Earth where they want it to. Note that it's mostly used as a show of power, and they do not aim it at populated areas. It's a good book if you haven't read it.

@colinsmith1495

4 ай бұрын

VERY good book. Also worth noting that Heinlein assumed a working, regularly used, established system of launching mined goods from the moon down to specific targeted points of collection on Earth (IIRC, maybe it was Low Earth Orbit and then collected?). The 'we've done this for decades' factor plays heavily in the usage of those as weapons.

@Stoney3K

4 ай бұрын

Also, the asteroids accelerated to hyper-orbital speeds to attack Earth in The Expanse.

the biggest problem i have with this experiment is that they did not bother to do any basic research on what they were going to look at. it also conflates multiple misunderstandings to come up with the wrong idea of what they are going to test, then come up with some experiments that do not even test it, then draw mistaken conclusions as to what their failure means. working back from their mistaken conclusions to the basic premise, we can use history to draw a number of valid conclusions. first they claim kinetic weaponry cannot work, which has been shown to be wrong since the development of guns and artillery, which is basically just throwing lumps of metal fast. 9/11 used the idea from the book "the running man" to prove that you can use planes to take out buildings fairly cheaply. this is the basic premise of asymmetric warfare. what most people miss is that the twin towers proved one of the basic ideas. when the fuel tanks burned through the supports in the central core, the whole building failed due to having a large unsupported mass (which in this case was the top of the building) causing the rest to just unzip itself. this changes the question to how big going how fast do you need to cause the same effect. in "the moon is a harsh mistress", they were throwing very large guided rocks at terminal velocity, and the reason they worked is because the only way to sop them is to vaporise them. one example in the book showed that using small missiles only damages the control system turning it from guided to unguided. the mass still hits the ground. the tunguska event showed that something like that works, flattening forests for 1000 miles around the detonation site. people looking into the even pointed out that if it hit 4 minutes earlier, it would have hit moscow, causing massive damage. they then work out the cost based upon it being a missile defense rapid response system. air defence missiles show that the techniques work, but that they are expensive, as you are trying to shoot a bullet out of the air with another bullet, which is very hard in a number of ways, none of which is relevant except to inflate the cost. however if you look st how project thor is actually designed to be used, it is not used this way. in "footfall", it is used with high mass from altitude, going fast, guided by basic image recognition technology against relatively slow moving targets. these include infrastructure like dams and bridges, tanks and helicopters, etc. the imaging tech is already in cameras, recognising faces to auto focus the camera on the right part of the image. if you can recognise a face, you can recognise a tank or helicopter. the missile footage from the gulf war also demonstrates this at faster speeds. the missile speed has also been pointed out to be to make it harder to intercept, and to increase the effective payload under the square law mentioned in the video, while the mass is to make it so it still gets the job done if the guidance is taken out. also, project thor does not need to be deployed from space. 60,000 feet works just as well as 60 miles if you make it go fast enough. the reason space is used in novels is because you then do not need to put planes in the right places in order to use the weapons, but the vulcan test attacks on the usa showed that the right tech against the right enemy makes it feasable. even the explosive drones shown in the movie "angel has fallen" is using most of the same ideas as project thor. fast moving, self guiding, intelligent delivery systems putting a hard to intercept package in proximity to a selected and recognised target. in that case it is an explosive which is close enough and big enough, but it still demonstrates that the idea works, and you only need the same tech as used for the mars helicopter to do it. the film "captain america - the winter soldier" also used the same sort of targeting system for guns rather than drones, but the same point applies. there are also a number of ways to make the tech cheaper, which i will not mention for obvious reasons. the only other point i will make is about project orion. again the idea is sound, and the prototype was built based on conventional explosive charges, and flown as a proof of concept. atomic bombs (basically suitcase nukes) just make it so you can use bigger vehicles. inertial confinement fusion pellets would work just as well.

Spacex can already reliably hit a target with a massive object with the added difficulty of stopping it before impact. The military drops precision gravity bombs from 30,000 ft on a human size target as a standard order of business and expects every fighter pilot to be able to do it This video was a rush job and poorly researched

One thing Veritasium never mentioned is the shrapnel effect, any thing it hits will be pulverized and sprayed at very high velocity in almost every direction. And in respect to steering at that kind of velocity you could in theory steer it with just some very basic fins, like the way long range missiles steer to target with only very small movements, the control surfaces only needs to be very small in comparison to the package.

"They've got some wind are they going to hit anything?" Oh Tyler, you sure called it right.

A lot of videos where they scale down things that have to deal with speed or aerodynamics don’t get done properly. One video I saw was a guy trying to make a scaled down model train and break the scaled down speed of sound, unfortunately aerodynamics do not scale linearly like that and you cannot scale down the speed of sound. In order to properly test a scaled down model train going at the speed of sound the scaled model would have to go well above the speed of sound. Since aerodynamics is dependant mainly on surface area and velocity and in scale models they don’t scale linearly due to square laws in the equations, like if you half the dimensions of a shape you reduce its surface area by 4 and the drag equation requires velocity squared. So it quickly gets complicated when trying to scale down aerodynamic models. Even with the kinetic energy equation it is complicated, if you just have a solid cube if you half it’s dimensions it now has an eighth of its original mass. If you half the velocity you are quartering the velocity squared term so it is even complicated to scale kinetic energy. Most people making KZread videos though don’t seem to understand how you can’t just scale something linearly and test it.

@lottievixen

4 ай бұрын

i saw a scale train test with pulling a partial vaccum, was the cloest decent attempt at scaled down everything

@markevans2294

4 ай бұрын

Things get even more complex when the aim is to minimise aerodynamic braking on a projectile going from orbit to ground level.

@stargazer7644

4 ай бұрын

You certainly can do this in scale, but you'll have to scale the density of the atmosphere as well.

@westherm

4 ай бұрын

The Sokol effect is strong with a lot of science KZreadrs like Veritasium. In my case, I worked as an aerodynamics/CFD consultant for automotive companies and racing teams for a decade; anything aero-related is almost an instant skip for me for the sake of my blood pressure.

@conorstewart2214

4 ай бұрын

@@westherm I wish that KZreadrs would just leave something alone if they don't actually understand it or they should consult someone who does. It's bad when it is coming from channels with large audiences that are mostly correct because most people just assume that what they are watching is correct. However KZread doesn't care if the content of any of their videos is correct or not, just that it generates money.

The "kinetic weapon" in Footfall is a diverted asteroid. Asteroids as weapons of mass destruction are fairly common in science fiction. Heck, in E.E. Smith's Lensman books, he throws around entire planets - although with the aid of an entirely fictional "inertialless drive." In general I have to agree this wasn't Veritasium's best work. Even ignoring the omission of fins, they could have just used a shorter cable to reduce the pendulum effect. Or had it suspended by three separately secured cables to ensure the weight was stable compared to the copter. They put more work into the sandcastle city than into ensuring that their results were remotely useful.

@grokitall

2 ай бұрын

The foot in footfall was indeed a diverted asteroid, but the weapons used against infrastructure and military targets were basically project Thor.

That veritasium vid is bizarre. The helicopter demo was a waste of money

15:04 To answer your question, no additional guidance once the payload separated from the booster - It's pure ballistic. I was a USAF targeteer and retired in 2019. At a targeting conference in 2002, I was in the 1st classified briefing outside of AFRL dedicated the DoD’s "denying sanctuary to adversaries" plans. Along with concept info for the B-X Bomber, Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle, and New Long-Range Platform, we were introduced to Hypervelocity Rod Bundles which was nicknamed The Rods From God. My background at that time was mostly with the CALCM Cs and Ds and everyone else in the room were also current combat operators for their respective weapons systems. There were quite a few of us that very, VERY skeptical when we were told of potential impact velocities based on the initial rod size/design. This video shows a much larger single rod per target compared to what we were told. Our briefing had 1 rod (as shown) separating into 40 to 60 (or so) individual segments on terminal to ensure a hit with a far larger impact area. The energy dropped WAY off to near uselessness with the MUCH lighter and smaller rods (They should be able to punch through the roof of an adobe building and potentially wreck vehicles and personnel in the open if hit).

@tfolsenuclear

4 ай бұрын

Thanks so much for your insight!

@T-90M

4 ай бұрын

​​@@stargazer7644Maybe. But the specific designations he used are quite irregular in public use (CALCM instead of AGM-86). Furthermore the timeline he provided seems to match up with the development dates of most of the projects he mentioned. The bomber he is referring to is probably the now dead Next-Generation Bomber program, and the hypersonic cruise vehicle also matches up with hypersonic technology development attempts from back then. Not saying he is legit for sure of course, but the story he provided is quite consistent apart from a few terms here and there.

@jeremyortiz2927

4 ай бұрын

@stargazer7644 you have never dealt with classified material, and It shows, but that's okay. What is and isn't classified can get a little weird sometimes. All information above, as written, is unclassified. Names of the systems and general principles for conceptual systems, especially with kinetic bombardment, as I talked about, are all unclassified primarily because this was part of a new "way forward" initiative from the DoD that started in 2001. The classified parts of the brief we received involved specific capabilities of those few systems that have moved past R&D and into development and how they will shape the battlefield during combat operations against certain threats using specific effects. The Hypervelocity Rod Bundles information I shared was all unclassified for two reasons 1) It was such a radical concept that everything had to be spelled out so Congress would understand and allocate feasibility money to the program, and 2) it was a system that could be built, but it wouldn't work for another 50 years or so. Sounds great on paper and did generate public interest. I've done this kind of work since the late 90s. Sadly, you're not the 1st person that's heard of classified, and though they found a leak worthy of a Warthunder wiki-wtf award. Sit back, relax, and, perhaps, learn something new you didn't know about before. Please do chime in if you have any questions (and there's never a bad question), and I'll be happy to give you some good gouge. ✌️🎯

@jeremyortiz2927

4 ай бұрын

@T-90M I had the pleasure to work with the AGM-86C and AGM-86D CALCM (and the only enlisted guy qualified with the AGM-86B ALCM) for a long time when I was at Offutt AFB. We tended to shy away from AGM... because our EPRs and OPRs (annual personnel performance reports for enlisted and officers) didn't fully approve of using nomenclature primary because personnel not associated with our small unit's mission might not know what our reports were actually talking about; they just see a jumble of letters and numbers. That could put our airmen at a disadvantage during base wide award competitions, so we used it very sparingly. On each report, we had to type up a description of a single action we did along with the impact it had on our mission and the final results that action provided on a single 8" line of paper. Unfortunately, "Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile" took up a ton of space on quite a few lines. Good news was that we were allowed to define it in our job title description as "Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM)" that freed us to use that beautifully short 5 letter acronym throughout the rest of the report. Fun note: the conference where we received the brief was at the semiannual Joint Coordinating Targeting Group / Munitions Effects Operational Users Working Group (JCTG/ME OUWG). Held twice a year and a freaking nightmare to document in EPRs and OPRs. Hope you found this a little interesting. Cheers!

@jeremyortiz2927

4 ай бұрын

@stargazer7644 I know, and it was both inaccurate and irrelevant. I've met 5 ostensibly mentally challenged individuals during my time in the service and on KZread. You're 4 of them.

11:22 this is actually super true. Most of the damage from explosives in general is from the pressure wave generated. I found it crazy that you only need something like 8 psi overpressure to destroy buildings and as little as 3 to hurt people.

@filanfyretracker

4 ай бұрын

I wonder if 8PSI can damage some of those buildings on the gulf coast rated to outlast a cat 5 hurricane.

@stargazer7644

4 ай бұрын

"as little as". That's where you made your mistake. A small blast radius of (say) 50 feet is a sphere with a surface area of over a million square inches. Your 8 pounds per square inch becomes 8 million pounds of force. Your 3 psi applied to the 1500 square inches of your chest is the 4500 pound equivalent of a Ford Explorer running over your chest with all 4 wheels at the same time.

@queefyg490

4 ай бұрын

@@stargazer7644 yeah but even blowing up a pop bottle gives you 9 bar at the source so that would be enough to rip your hand off.

@queefyg490

4 ай бұрын

@@stargazer7644 my point is that a hypersonic blast wave is for sure over 8 psi depending on how far away you are

There was another video where someone was trying to hit a small target in a similar way. If I remember correctly, it had to be cut short before the final "fully guided" system could be built... as in "our consultants are telling us that we literally cannot build this, because if we did we'd probably go to prison." Aha: found it. Mark Rober (should have known! 😂) at about 11 minutes in on this video: kzread.info/dash/bejne/dI2KvMpum9THdso.html

@tisisajay

5 ай бұрын

lmao i remember that

@filanfyretracker

4 ай бұрын

Does go to show how the world is changing though, When an engineer on youtube very much could build ITAR restricted levels of ballistic guidance likely with parts from Digikey.

@doshin

4 ай бұрын

I mean I don't disagree about the expansion of knowledge on things like youtube, but it's also worth noting Mark Rober wrorked for NASA at JPL on Curiosity and also worked at apple, he is a NASA engineer with a youtube channel rather than youtube engineer, if that makes sense (And I mean no disrespect to youtube engineers, who I love, even if half of them are crazy, like very crazy) @@filanfyretracker

@doshin

4 ай бұрын

also Veritasium and the team he has there, including Adam Savage, who knows his shit, and the issues they have, point to the abnormality of Mark Rober almost accidentally designing a kinetic missile system. like, everyone in this video is smart as hell but largely struggled with a kinetic energy device

@retromodernart4426

4 ай бұрын

@@doshin "everyone in this video is smart as hell" - LOL, because they think they are? 🤣

3:17 exactly sums up the rest of Veritasium's video

this is one of the few veritasium videos i dont like, it just felt like they did way too little research compared to the scale of the project

@lizard_girl

5 ай бұрын

too little research and not enough effort put into the scale replication

@mariemccann5895

5 ай бұрын

True. I think veritasium is pretty much washed-up these days. About time he went back to the day job.

@lizard_girl

5 ай бұрын

@@mariemccann5895 I wouldn't go as far as that but he needs to take a step back and reevaluate how he's making content

@Josh-mq8cn

5 ай бұрын

@@lizard_girl I agree honestly.. this feels like a Mark Rober video to me.

@lizard_girl

5 ай бұрын

@@Josh-mq8cn yeah. To be fair I still like mark rober videos. he does go into a bit more explanation of his projects usually too. His videos are all geared around getting people interested in s.t.e.a.m subjects whereas Veritasium was usually more about explaining all the fine details of a certain interesting subject. Now it just feels like he's making videos for the spectactle rather than the people who are genuinely curious about all the inner workings

19:45 Actually, when you get above a certain amount of energy, even explosions on Earth won't produce a fireball either. That's because the rapid acceleration of everything in the vicinity also _blows away all the oxygen_ (or really compresses it into a super-dense shockwave), which means that nothing can burn anyway. With very-high-energy impacts, the rapidly expanding explosion itself basically ends up creating a vacuum that's left behind at the center, so it's arguably not really that much different from the surface of the moon at that point. (Of course, further away from the actual explosion itself, the superheated air, shrapnel, and radiation can cause many surrounding things to then spontaneously catch on fire, but that's all technically outside of and a separate process from the actual explosion itself.)

@lbochtler

4 ай бұрын

you still get what looks like a fireball from the compression heating of the shockwave as well as the plasma of the detonation device.

When I first watched the video, I was shocked that he overlooked the fins on the rods. Or maybe because the video was expensive, he didn't add the fins and just played it stupid.

@markevans2294

4 ай бұрын

Even fixed fins would have helped. Though an actual weapon would have had movable fins and a guidance system. Possibly the reason for these being "telegraph pole size" is to house 1960's era accelerometers and gyroscopes.

@sphaera2520

4 ай бұрын

Adding fixed fins may keep things dumb enough for nobody to care. As soon as guidance gets introduced, the gov will come a knockin.

When I heard 500 meters drop I was like... So we're simulating the falling of a new York city flower pot from upstairs??

"Where's your GPS?" "Up yer bum."

Veritasium has had some questionable videos in the past (see: self driving vehicles) but this one was still incredibly disappointing. Enough budget for a helicopter but clearly didn’t think anything through. The scale model doesn’t work at all, they had zero systems in place to reduce sway or account for wind, any real targeting, just overall a half baked idea. And what did Adam savage contribute?? Thank you for making it entertaining at least!

@lisawinter4597

4 ай бұрын

He and his videos have been debunked by actual scientists several times in the past, I think it was 3 times in 2023 alone, 2 times in 2022, etc.

@wertnog6379

4 ай бұрын

Savage showed up just long enough to see how bad the experiment was, and he decided he didn’t want people to think he had anything to do with it.

Imagine he did a test firing a bullet without a barrel and went: "huh bullets are useless". or even firing a tank sabot without fins and without a barrel.

Just because he can't do it on a youtube budget he thinks the military can't do it on their budget lol

@Ryanisthere

4 ай бұрын

its not that the military cant do it on their budget, they just dont want to have to explain where 300B went to congress

@bubba9384

4 ай бұрын

The vast majority of the expense would be getting the rods into orbit... the targetting system and the satellite to launch the rods would only be a small fraction of the cost.

@Merennulli

4 ай бұрын

His demo had nothing to do with the conclusion. What he presented for why the US government didn't do it is the actual reason why the US government cancelled the program.

@trentforent3390

4 ай бұрын

@@Ryanistherewhy would they have to? The pentagon hasn’t cleared an audit succesfully for decades, and nothing has happened to them. That is TENS OF TRILLIONS of dollars.

@dojelnotmyrealname4018

2 ай бұрын

@@bubba9384 I don't know if that's true. LEO speeds are 7000 meters per second. The simple principle of RFG is to de-orbit the rod. Which A: Would take forever and B: would result in a total propellant cost of about 16500 (9.4 k up, 7k down) meters per second. If the satellite "launches" the projectile then it just shoved a large amount of momentum out of itself and would need to burn fuel to compensate. Even if the rod is in a missile, that just changes where the fuel burn happens, and probably with a worse engine. It's even worse if you want to actually accelerate the rod at the target. Because now you're not just de-orbiting, you're adding even more speed. Which is even more fuel burn. Also, if you've ever played KSP: Atmospheric conditions are hell. Try to actually land somewhere specific. Yes, it's easier because you can just crash instead of having to try and aerobrake your way out of crashing,

add: "Jerry Pournelle" was also one of the great SF writers of the 60's and 70's ... creative dude

5:05 - fun fact: Thorium is named after Thor. Another fun fact: Thursday is also named after Thor, literally "day of Thor"

Robert A Heinlein wrote "The moon is a harsh mistress" where the moon colony wanted Independence from Earth. They coated rocks with iron, used a liner accelerator to shoot these rocks at earth. Read the story for full details.

Their aim is exactly like that of a Starwars Stormtrooper paired up against people with Plot Armor

It's funny he says it's so hard to aim a kinetic projectile when firearms are doing this horizontally at much higher precision values at higher speeds

Im so glad Im not the only one that had these thoughts about how the experiment was conducted, this veritasium video definitely felt a bit off the cuff compared to his other videos but it was still enjoyable to watch. If he had done a bit more research before hand he also should've known that an object while falling is going to be most stable in the orientation with the most resistance, in other words the rod without fins to stabilize it will fall on its side since that is the orientation with the most drag (like Adam briefly mentions). Thanks for your reaction to the video!

A much better simulation would be using a high velocity bullet. You could get something around mach 4 with a mass thats probably closer to a scaled down rod. Not quite hypersonic, but much closer.

@Dr.Spatula

4 ай бұрын

Kentucky ballistics just did a 600 overkill which is 2oz brass slug going around 2,400fps. Would be a really good scale test actually. Way more practical than elevating a howitzer lol

I mean no projectile weapons are feasible if you are dropping them from a helicopter without any semblance of control or precision. Every single aiming problem he brings up can be adjusted for.

This was the super weapon in GI Joe 2( 8:39 ). Which was really smart in the movie because they wanted to mess up cities that didn’t pay them, but at least the rods wouldn’t cause Radioactive Fallout for lingering effects over decades.

i love these so much ahahah keep up the good work

They probably went for sand castle because you won't have to clean that up in the desert.

There were small steel kinetic bombs used in Vietnam. Solid steel projectiles with fins that gave it better accuracy. A lot of small fast projectiles. Cheap too. What these guys couldn't do is that the idea of spinning the rods so it was like a bullet through the rifling of the barrel.

@stpstudios

4 ай бұрын

The Lazy Dog (sometimes called a Red Dot Bomb or Yellow Dog Bomb) is a type of small, unguided kinetic projectile used by the U.S. Air Force. It measured about 1.75 inches (44 mm) in length, 0.5 inches (13 mm) in diameter, and weighed about 0.7 ounces (20 g). The weapons were designed to be dropped from an aircraft. They contained no explosive charge but as they fell they would develop significant kinetic energy making them lethal and able to easily penetrate soft cover such as jungle canopy, several inches of sand, or light armor. Lazy Dog munitions were simple and relatively cheap; they could be dropped in huge numbers in a single pass. Though their effects were often no less deadly than other projectiles, they did not leave unexploded ordnance (UXO) that could be active years after a conflict ended.

@williamfricke4464

4 ай бұрын

@@stpstudios Thank you! I heard about but didn't look. Sometimes the low-tech approach is still the best.

@Dr.Spatula

4 ай бұрын

​@@williamfricke4464they were literally just large flachettes encased in a bomb. Basically lawn darts

Terminal velocity will ALWAYS win. This is an exceptionally expensive way to deliver millions of dollars of refined ore to an enemy.

Excellent video. You seem to have managed to polish a turd! Keep up the good work.

the sprint Missiles are also quite good at aiming, even though they are at mach 10

IMPOSSIBLE is what they said about the SR-71 prior it's declassification.... (The Engine make-up and control)

The guy on the side of the helicopter, just leaning over in the void!!!

The thing I've always been most dubious about with this concept is not the destructive power, but the claims of precision. WWII introduced some extremely sophisticated equipment designed to target bombs dropped from a level flying bomber passing overhead. They were lucky to hit within half a kilometre of the target. These space rods are flying a good deal faster and are a good deal further up in the air. Yes, we've got significantly more advanced systems. Yes, we have GPS guided artillery that can hit targets with pinpoint accuracy. But these rods have reentry to deal with. You think any sensors or delicate smart-guidance fins are going to survive long enough to have any impact on where this thing hits? Which in turn just makes the idea more terrifying, because what stops people from putting dozens or hundreds of these rods up there and solving the accuracy problem the same way WWII bombers did: by dropping so many of them that the area all around the target is also pulverized. Which means you're opening up to a heck of a lot more collateral damage....

@chrisc1140

4 ай бұрын

Even "dumb bombs" these days can be really precise. They get less notice since the focus is on guided weapons, but they'll usually hit within 30m or so of a target. They're a bit hard to find anything about though (on a casual search) since all results are just filled with the conversion kits to add GPS guidance to them.

TLDR if we couldnt hit anything with our unsecured payload swinging wildly under a helicopter with no fins or aerodynamic tested shapes, there is no way the US military could it. There for, worst idea ever.

I have a feeling, that most would guess, that a rod is relatively stable and won't spin, because things normally will chose the path of least resistance and thus a rod will try to keep upright to minimize drag. But when you build your first paper airplane, you will notice, that it needs to have a havier nose, the nose needs to be relatively sharp and fins to stabilize.

@SubZero-cv5hk

4 ай бұрын

It's not so much about the nose having to be heavier, but the center of mass being forward of the center of 'aerodynamic pressure' (drag). which could still mean the center of mass is in the rear half. basically, up down or sideways, if it looks similar to an arrow, its likely gonna behave like one (arrows w/ a heavy metal head and feathers would be more stable in flight than just a pointy stick with feathers tho, since the center of mass is further forward of the center of drag in the first example.)

The problem I had with Veritasium video was how do you aim it, the helicopter is wobbling around, with the weight wobbling around separately. So, "close enough drop it, woops we missed." Therefore it wont work. The "real system" would know, down down to millimeters, the position and velocity of the weapon and the computer power to calculate where the launch will be for the correct targeting point. And then you brought up the "hypersonic" shockwave which this experiment did not show as it doesn't scale. Even watching the "hit the pool" shot you can see that the mass is moving horizontally, if the were 2 meters higher, the weight would have moved 1/2 meter further, it would have hit center. A meter lower or 5 meters higher, they would have missed again.

And this is why they use Tungsten in GTAW (TIG) welding electrodes, though many cases they are slightly alloyed with zirconium, lanthanum, cerium, thorium. The thorium ones are hevily limited and basically phased out due to the radioactivity, but was supposed to help with ionzing the air to make arcs and you could not grind them without a special sealed machine or would make radiactive dust.

@shalala4571

4 ай бұрын

The thorium ones are still quite common in Sweden, or at least were in 2017 when i was in welding school. I was promptly told by my teacher to not keep them in my mouth (i don’t know why i did it, they felt cold haha)

"what even is aerodynamic stability?" The documentary

A mule strap would guide those things pretty well i think, with ceramic rings or even a fishing rod will do.

A problem with this is that in the lower atmosphere, these falling rods will slow down.

@sdrrshock5594

4 ай бұрын

They will be in the atmosphere for seconds, they will slow but still be travelling at multiple km/s

I wonder if the heat energy the rod takes on in reentry would effect the amount of energy released on impact?

This was the Sand Castle Bravo test.

21:36 It's like the depleted uranium in a tank's ammunition

Imagine combining the rod idea with an emp airburst nuke. Surrounding the nuke with a collection of rods on the outer casing with a smaller charges to fire them off a couple seconds prior to ride the shock wave.

10:30; if you have never heard the following emanate from your radio, you have never been in a shitstorm firefight: “have your guys close their eyes, plug their ears and open their mouths, we are out of ordnance but we’re coming in hot. God Bless.”

So, with arrows you don't necessarily need finns if everything is tuned correctly but they still helps. From my understanding is because the arrow tip is much heavier than the shaft and there for the shaft works as a long fin

Another missed variable, in the experiment... the massive amount of energetic loading, due to the thermal increase of atmospheric reentry. That additional amount of energy, being released upon impact, would be much greater than just a kinetic impactor.

Yeah he hired sandcastle professionals, but missed the most crucial part of the targeting - the fins. It should have been in the research phase.

I feel like footfall book was how starship troopers came to be, I remember them using asteroids as weapons

They needed to spin the bomb and put drilled holes near the rear so as it falls it continues to accelerate the rotation.

I agree, a more realistic "rods from god" test would be to make a tiny projectile travel at mach-10 you can scale the energy in 2 ways when dealing with kinetic impactor weaponry, that is why a slower larger bullet does more damage than a slightly faster smaller one the speed is pretty important once you reach mach-1, mass not so much anymore so to properly test "rods from god" skip the helicopter, build a railgun firing a tiny tungsten ball at 3km/s, much easier to aim, much more accurate in scaling of shockwave dynamics and this was sorta done by basically every youtuber, hacksmith made a suped-up potato gun that fires a plastic slug fast enough to punch through a brick wall, and that isn't even mach-1 or anything stronger than plastic get an aerospace grade ball bearing(often made of tungsten) and make a railgun to fire it at 3-6km/s at a target backed by a mountain(to reduce risk of overshoot) and you have simulated "rods from god" at smaller scale it is scary what any object of any non-zero mass can do when traveling at relativistic speeds, bullets can attest to the power of tiny masses flying at insane speeds vs arrows at only a few M/s but weighing many times as much hydrostatic shock and hypersonics can be a deadly mindbender, I mean if you dropped a MOAB or nuke people could tell why it was so powerful, but drop a rod from god? they would be scrambling to figure out what the f**k happened as they had no warning, just a small object that they could barely even detect with radar and then a sudden crater if I had antigrav tech before the rest of the world I would make rods from god real, it would be tough because of the number of large tungsten bricks I would have to buy, and the targeting and dropping systems required to shoot them, but a few small retrorockets and hypersonic servo fins and you could aim within a few dozen meters, then have enough of them suddenly seen in orbit and you broadcast to the hostile leaders of the world "I have an orbital weapon that can drop an unstoppable explosion in 15 minutes to anywhere on the planet, you are going to get along and settle differences without weaponry or you will have your military bases destroyed with a simple warning that gives you those 15 minutes to get the people out of there, choose peace because it is time for war to be destroyed as an option"

One would question if a sand castle is really reflective of a steel and concrete building too.

I wonder what effect one of those would have on tectonic activity if it hit a fault line or active volcano.

Actually, Starwars worked: it induced the Soviets to spend themselves into the ground trying to counter it... thus leading to a change in the internal balance of power away from the military hard-liners. The specific Starwars technologies didn't need to actually work in the 80's, it only needed to be plausible for it to work. As it happens, though - a number of things that were looked at back then are now starting to work thanks to advances made in the past few decades.

The concept is flawed from the outset because one cannot simply "drop" something from orbit. Releasing something from an orbital craft will simply leave it in the same orbit. Adding velocity to it in a "downward" direction will just make its orbit non-circular.

from what height？atmosphere will burn up most things and how do you get them up there

Ah, the old fashioned kinetic missile -- Drop something heavy from really high up, get destruction on the scale of a small nuclear explosion without all the fallout.

other part missing is the heat: that kinetic impactor would generate massive amounts of heat, adding to the various other secondary damages, a weight from a hundred meter, not much.

1:59 Veritasium couldn't even manage to get the great circle path right? He's such a hack.

regarding targeting systems (around minute 15), I'm not sure on which channel I saw it, might be mark robers channel, where the guy wanted a delivery system, and they tinkered around with actuator moved wings. they contacted one guy who was familiar with these systems, and that guy told them to stop immediately. because that is precision bombing, a technology that the US is sanctioning. so if you are a US citizen and doing it in the US, it's a bad idea.

There also others major problems with such weapon. Satellites is highly vulnerable and can be destroyed for fraction of cost. So first strike is main usage of it. Those launch of such weapon will escalate cold war to brand new level. Probably to really hot level.

Almost every good idea begins as a stupid one.

20:15 You will see a huge 'fireball' when an asteroid hits the moon. In fact, we have recordings of them. Amateur astronomers regularly film meteor impacts on the moon as small light flashes. And the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact on Jupiter created massive fireballs despite having no oxygen anywhere near it.

I'm afraid that this video is a prime example of why Veritasium should not be taken as a good source. His video's primarily tell a narrative. They do not accurately educate people and actively leave out information that goes against the narrative. This is even more the case when it concerns a sponsored video. If I remember correctly, Veritasium is a channel that accepted at least one sponsorship deal for an electric car. The result was a video that compared if electric cars are better than normal cars while completely ignoring the option of reducing the number of cars. In other words, the video pretended as if electric cars are the only option to reduce pollution from traffic.

The the best of my knowledge, the reason why the U.S. government abandoned this technology, twice, was because they simply couldn't get it to work any better than what Vertasium tried. The rods didn't "fall" straight tumbling through the atmosphere and losing so much velocity that all it did was bury itself in the desert in the American South West. No explosions at all. The atmosphere, you see, isn't a uniform density, and it is always moving, so there is no way to counter the tumble without turning the "sold rods of tungsten" into hollow rods with gyroscopes and guidance computers.

It's also worth thinkin about: a Kinetic bombardment from orbit as we are at present runs into the basic problem that we need t omove all that mass into orbit first: This is expeensive, s owe want a cheap, bare-bones munition. If we at any point are starting in orbit? Building it there? That's a whole different ballgame. Not just the guidance package and fins, but things like aerodynamics...

We have essentially come full circle to shooting arrows at each other with this weapon system. We’re just really good at it now…..

Would have been funny if the first drop targeting the pool ended up missing in such a way it hit the sand castle city :P

For some reason I suffer from the same intuition of veritasium where I think cylinders just 'should' fall straight down. I think my brain reasons that the back of the cylinder should act as a fin and correct it straight, though logically the other side is also creating drag lol.

Off topic , But i thought you might be the right guy to ask ? maybe , are direct fissions ( hot gas emissions ) powered engines for external OUT side of earth atmospheres , space ?? would that be possible , Or is a near controlled meltdown , BE to much thermal engery from reaction chamber .. ?

7:35 any alien spacecraft that reaches earth is either using a wormhole or more likely, some type of warp technology which would mean theyre in a separate pocket of spacetime and thereby wouldn't be affected (effected? I can never get that one straight) by matter in "our" spacetime...fortunately for them, since they also dont have to deal with the issues with of time dialation that come with relativistic velocities

the most practical design for the real thing would have been to have a rocket stage to get it deorbited, then some very robust fins that can be used to adjust the trajectory during re-entry, however I can't see them being able to make a full scale rod from god more accurate than somewhere across an actual city

23:45 the bottom is flat so LOTS or drag but the sides are smooth and circular so LESS drag

Uranium is of course pyrophoric so it would generate quite a bit of fallout if you were to use it instead of tungsten.

23:20 I have heard that the definition of WMD is "anything that can destroy 5 buildings at once"

wonder if you just point a point on the rod if it wouldnt stabilize better - also it would be better if the chopper could carry multiple payloads instead of the up and down every time...

In theory would a rod from space carry enough energy to initiate deuterium fusion within it's core in the absence of a fission reaction to create the pressure and temperature required. What would the minimum impact velocity be to create a H bomb without any fissile material?

My main concern was the orbital issues. He is right. You would need a constellation of them like StarLink and you would need the means to accurately de-orbit them.

I mean knowing those ballistic tricks they should have done all of those basic practices and had shut the rod or slipped it out of a holster instead of drop from a rope. Kinect ballistics are not only possible just with the addition of nowadays a very tiny jet that can be easily made extremely cheap and provide a very tiny amount of guidance thrust. The project also suggested multiple rods. I watch people drop a heavyweight from a tower accurately and destroy a fridge they would know how to do this better.

@cliptracer8980

4 ай бұрын

How ridiculous has done way better tests

He's dropping a weight onto a small target from a helicopter? How ridiculous!

Reinventing the wheel aren't they?😂😂😂😂

Tungsten rods from space. I have heard of this before.

I agree, this whole experiment is so flawed that its just some guys dropping stuff from an heli, you cant extract any real valuable info from it.

Derek from Veritasium must have realized himself that this video was a poorly planned failure. But he had spent so much money on making this video, that he still wanted to publish it anyway. But instead of admitting that his video failed, Derek claimed that the entire concept of orbital kinetic bombardment is a failure. Very unscientific approach by Derek.

3:00 I wondered were Call of Duty got the idea If I remember correctly, that version was named 'Odin'

I mean getting a bunch of several ton heavy tungsten rods into orbit is going to cost you more than to bribe your enemy to kill themselves.