Contract SpaceX to bring the rods into orbit, then bill per strike. KBaaS, disrupting warfare since 2017.

Back of the envelope calculation: rods with length of 6m and radius of 5cm weight little over 900kg. Falcon 9 can bring 22.8 tons to LEO. So we can get up about 24 of these in one go. If we want to use the USAF dimensions of 6.1m and radius of 0.15m, then it's only 2 of them, maybe 3 with some adjustments to the rocket.

I always wondered how to de-orbit those rods. It's not like you can just 'drop' them as they are already in free-fall. You'd need to cancel quite a bit of orbital velocity to get the things to de-orbit. Aiming'd be even more of a bitch.

> ...a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite).

Well, that's a bit underwhelming. Sounds a bit like Russian polonium tea, that is, less like a matter of efficiency, and more like showing off the sheer extravaganza of killing somebody in the most colorful, expensive way.

Kinetic bombardment is silly and inefficient science fiction. Conventionally armed ballistic missiles can strike any point on Earth almost as quickly at a far lower cost and with greater survivability.

Well today sending a rocket up, putting these things in orbit and then dropping them would probably be a bit obvious and inefficient. But in the near future when we're mining asteroids? As long as they can be captured closed enough to Earth I would imagine kinetic bombardment would be pretty effective. They would be rather difficult to shoot out of the sky as ballistic missiles can be blown up prior to reaching target but kinetic would require an much, much larger amount of energy to destroy enough so as to not hit and damage the target.

Asteroid mining on any sort of commercial scale is far future, not near future. Even with fully reusable rockets, asteroid mining wouldn't be profitable; anything we need can be obtained cheaper on Earth.

Small asteroids are too irregularly shaped to be useful as precision-guided projectiles. As soon as they hit the atmosphere they're going to veer off course.

Kinetic bombardment satellites — whether fully artificial or asteroids guidance and propulsion strapped on — would be in known orbits with limited maneuvering capability and thus highly vulnerable to antisatellite weapons. It takes very little energy to kill a satellite; you don't have to vaporize it, just break any critical part in the communication, propulsion, or guidance systems. Satellites are generally easier targets to hit than ballistic missiles.

> Asteroid mining on any sort of commercial scale is far future, not near future. Even with fully reusable rockets, asteroid mining wouldn't be profitable; anything we need can be obtained cheaper on Earth.

It's certainly in the future, it just all depends on what is far to you. Many companies who want to get in on this are hoping to attempt within the next 10-15 years (obviously commercial mining would come some years later after a successful attempt). If it can be successfully navigated it would have the potential to be crazy profitable!

It's too expensive to bring materials up but if you can mine materials in space and deliver them to the various space companies / government departments is where you'd make your money. Mining water, in theory, should be crazy cheaper as long as you can capture the asteroid efficiently enough. NASA has already said they would love to see more work in this space so they can purchase materials cheaper while in space and they're even hoping to capture an asteroid in the mid 2020s as a type of test for this scenario.

> Satellites are generally easier targets to hit than ballistic missiles.

This misses my entire point: in order to destroy the kinetic projectile you would have to launch a preemptive strike against the satellite. There is no way around it. You won't be able to defend yourself against a large projective being precision dropped onto your location without a lot of energy (so depending on what country you are maybe you can knock several into a few direction or vaporize with a high enough yield but you only get one chance at destroying it). Meanwhile a ballistic missile, while faster, can be destroyed with a hot enough laser.

I understand they're not practical and if you want to use an asteroid itself that's even more awkward. But when we start mining asteroids, in my opinion, it's going to become crazy practical and cheap.

That's not how it would work. Incoming kinetic projectiles are just as vulnerable to defensive systems as ballistic missiles. Hit it hard enough and you can knock out the guidance system. They would need very precise and sensitive guidance systems to hit anything from orbit.

Space enthusiasts constantly underestimate costs and schedules. Just because something is theoretically possible doesn't mean that the engineering problems can be solved in an economical way. If there is large-scale asteroid mining in my lifetime then I'll eat my hat.

> Incoming kinetic projectiles are just as vulnerable to defensive systems as ballistic missiles. Hit it hard enough and you can knock out the guidance system

Not true at all. Kinetic projectiles would have no guidance system. It's just a big, dumb piece of tungsten. That's it. You would have to hit it hard enough to make sure that, when it hits, it won't cause damage. This means near complete vaporization. That's very energy intensive.

Ballistic missiles, however, simply need to have their payload exploded at almost any distance away from the target to reduce its power to near nothingness.

> If there is large-scale asteroid mining in my lifetime then I'll eat my hat.

Not sure how old you are but if you're under 40 and not planning on dying sooner than average then, in my opinion, you should start looking up hat recipes :D. At least I hope but it depends because the primary customer for asteroid mining is going to be space companies and government agencies like NASA. A disruptive political system that prevents said purchases could hamper progress significantly.

You seem to be hilariously ignorant about the realities of aerodynamics, rocketry, and orbital mechanics. Due to atmospheric turbulence and normal thrust variations in the rocket motors that would have to be used for de-orbit burns, any unguided projectiles would have such as huge CEP as to make them militarily useless. Unguided projectiles launched from aircraft today can't reliably hit anything at distances over a few miles; satellites are much farther. A (sensitive and fragile) terminal guidance system would be an absolute necessity. Contrary to what arrogant programmers might think, DARPA isn't run by idiots and they gave up on such nonsense schemes for good reason long ago.

As for asteroid mining, hope doesn't count for anything. There is no shortage of essential raw materials here on Earth. No one is going to commit the hundreds of billion $ necessary to do it on more than a trial basis. There's simply no economic incentive nor is there political will to spend that money. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Well I assume is the USG let alone SpaceX decided to put some 20 foot tungsten rods in orbit a lot of people would start raising objections pretty quickly.

If anyone is interested in kinetic bombardment, read Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Much like how the Fosterites in his "Stranger in a Strange Land" were a blueprint for Scientology, TMiaHM is a guide on how to plan and conduct a revolution, although in this case it was the Moon against Earth.