What is Project Thor?
Project Thor was an idea for a weapons system that launches telephone pole-sized kinetic projectiles made from tungsten from Earth’s orbit to damage targets on the ground. Jerry Pournelle created the concept while working in operations research at Boeing in the 1950s before becoming a science-fiction writer.
What is rods from God?
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.
Will there be ‘rods from God’ in Space Force?
Though there probably won’t be “rods from God” hurtling through the heavens towards, say, underground Iranian nuclear bunkers, that doesn’t mean that the United States’ newest branch— Space Force —is all on its own when it comes to weapons.
Pournelle, whose years of experience in aerospace would fuel a career as a journalist and military science fiction writer, named his superweapon “Project Thor.” Others just called it “ Rods From God .”
What are the rods from God?
“Rods from God”: The Strange Super Space Weapon that Wasn’t Pointed rods, around twenty or thirty feet long and several feet in diameter, would have been sent into space via rocket and housed on satellites, where they would then be dropped onto hardened targets like underground bunkers.
Could “rods from God” travel at hypersonic speed?
Traveling at hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 or greater, these so-called “Rods from God” would be so completely devastating, they could totally forgo any explosive payload—be it conventional, or nuclear. Among the reasons the science fiction-esque idea literally never made it off the ground was thanks to cost.