"Rods from God" is the informal name for Project Thor, a concept for a space-based kinetic weapon. Instead of using explosives or nukes, you put heavy, ultra-dense tungsten rods into orbit. When you want to hit a target on Earth, you de-orbit a rod and let gravity do the... work. By the time it slams into the ground at Mach 10, the kinetic energy creates an impact as powerful as a tactical nuclear warhead—crushing deep subterranean bunkers with zero radioactive fallout. This isn't a new idea either. The history goes back to the late 1950s during the Cold War, when researchers at the RAND Corporation and Boeing first calculated the physics of orbital kinetic impacts. Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle actually helped formalize "Project Thor" while working at Boeing, pitching it as a way to strike earthbound targets from space without relying on nuclear warheads. The Air Force continued evaluating the concept over the decades, even releasing a formal study on it in 2003, meaning the foundational architecture has been sitting in defense contractor vaults for well over half a century. The X-37B is an uncrewed, reusable military spaceplane that looks like a miniature Space Shuttle. It gets launched on a rocket, stays in orbit on classified missions for years at a time executing secret payload operations, and then lands on a runway autonomously. The theory is that platforms like this could have been used to quietly deliver and park kinetic weapons in orbit under the cover of dark budget programs. Mainstream skeptics write this off immediately. Their argument comes down to numbers: the standard spec for a Rod from God calls for a solid 20-foot tungsten pole weighing 12 tons, while the X-37B's internal payload bay is only 7 feet long and carries roughly 1,000 pounds. Based on those standard specs, critics claim it is physically impossible for the spaceplane to carry those weapons, writing the whole thing off as a theoretical dead end. That rejection relies on a lazy assumption: that the weapon has to be a single, monolithic stick of metal launched all at once. In reality, modular engineering completely flips that argument. Tungsten rods can easily be built as threaded, interlocking segments or stacked modular slugs that fit inside smaller payload bays and get assembled or aligned in space. Spreading modular components across multiple long-duration X-37B missions completely bypasses those size and weight limits, meaning the capability could easily exist regardless of what official narratives claim.show more

Rods of God are the most dangerous WMDs in the world, nuclear ballistics are archaic & banned from human use. They're fiction used as a scare tactic.

Weapons of mass destruction or generalized strike platforms in orbit is heavily restricted under international frameworks like the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

We have weapons outside of view above that are invisible that instantly translocate & have since the 40s.

It wouldn't surprise me, I believe MH370 was teleportation.

You know darn well they've either done it, use it, or have figured out better methods. Either way, it's been done. They leave nothing off the table.

I agree. In the race for supremacy it's everything under the sun.

Wait until Starship is operational. It will have the weight capacity to carry one or more satellites that are "rods from God" capable. Then the question will be: what is the greater taboo: space launched fallout free WMD or terrestrial nuclear weapons?

There will definitely be lots of publicly unaccounted payloads. Can't we just focus on real abundance? And a lot of this fighting over resources may sort itself out.

When @elonmusk builds a lunar mass driver, he will effectively have the most powerful weapon in existence

@elonmusk Don't tell everyone 🤫

Can we get Jake to do the voiceover of the footage?

"Rods of God are on a Mission from God." 😎😎 😂

Read "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress." We need electromagnetic catapults on the moon that can throw big rocks at the earth.

I'm ahead of you on that advice.

Great post. I never thought of interlocking segments, that’s genius. This is a thing. I’m convinced.

If I can think about it, then they probably thought about it in the 1950s! If it's possible, and there's a desire, and money doesn't matter, and it's a fun project, and it's a reason to print more imaginary money, etc, etc, then they could have done it... There coild be dozens of X-37Bs (or better) out there that we don't know about.

Honestly I shudder to think what can be deployed to space if Starship makes it cheap with 200Ton payload. Moab weighs 15 tons btw.

I had to look MOAB up, I was thinking of an off road desert vehicle, but knew that couldn't be correct. 😂 Yes, I've heard of this ordinance. I imagine there are things ready and waiting to be lifted into orbit. I imagine there are many rockets (and other things) with such items on them and ready to go at the push of a button. ---If, say, out current capabilities were taken out via EMP or shotgun-type ordinance... There are probably a great number of things up there pretending to be regular satellites. Including chemical lasers and things that can be simply dropped like the Rod of God. They probably have plans to redirect floating junk or space rocks of good size. I was able to get AI to admit to, "objects [space rocks orbiting earth] large enough to cause city-level damage (roughly 20–50+ meters in size."

👇

Rest assured that the Iranian response will be at least as devastating as any attack with such an orbital kinetic weapon. Mach 10? Iranian missiles fly up to Mach 15. With an explosive payload of up to 80 warheads.

I'm actually against war, that's why I voted for Trump three times. Not super happy with this performance...

Then vote him away 🪄✨ elect the next warmonger. Seriously: your democratic political system has failed. It doesn't matter whom you elect. Your country has been colonized by Israel, and there's no political solution for this, but the 2A.

Did you SEE the other people and all they did though?

That's what I meant. There is no political solution because your political system is compromised and they'll always present you the worst possible alternatives. Your elections are rigged anyways.

How much taxpayer money was spent just to haul all of that "ultra dense" tungsten into space? 🤔 That said, silver lining for the country that gets hit, it now owns a giant chunk of a pretty rare material.

Interesting. Makes you wonder what we have in our secret stockpiles. If I were running things in the black budget community, I would have secret underground mining and forging operations.

Yeah, agreed. And since no one knows what those budgets are or for how long, they could have been stockpiling for a while.

I miss watching Connections, with James Burke.

the space plane can even go pick up asteroids and throw them

Doubtful 😆, but something can likely move space rocks orbiting the Earth.

orbiting space rocks is asteroids.

There are lots of names for that kind of stuff, including minimoons. I looked it up earlier for another comment in this thread.

its clear there is plenty of stuff up there for the spaceplane to pick up and throw, or use to manufacture things to throw

The only other country rumored to have this system is Russia ???

For sure Russia has had heavy rockets for years.

This is why we built the space shuttle. Not many space vehicles can transport telephone pole sized hunks of tungsten into orbit. The space shuttle could, under the cover of exploration and discovery

Strong possibility there.

I guess DEW’s don’t give you the same amount of depth performance. 🤷🏼‍♀️

That's for zapping surface people. 😂

Maui and the Palisades enter the chat 🔥

The way I think, if space weapons are admitted today, we had them already 40+ years ago.

And it’s great when your government wants to do false flag high damage bullshit against its citizens.

😬 Yeah, and no traceable nuclear materal afterwards.

I still miss Jerry Pournelle, and his blog Chaos Manor.

@GrandpaRoy2

I read about this concept in Popular Mechanics magazine 20-30 years ago!!

June 2004 issue of Popular Science 🚀💥🌎

Soon we'll be able to use starship to build the systems in space.

Greenhouses to send food back to Earth? 🌏🫶

SpaceX starship says hello

It kinda looks like a starship 😂

Granite mountain - ISN'T REINFORCED.

I don't know that a mountain made out of granite needs to be reinforced--- for most stuff. Look at Cheyenne Mountain, for example. Just dig deeper and have tunnels leaving the area, I suppos .

You wouldn’t even need to thread them, diffusion bonding/forge welding is extremely easy in the cold of space

Grok took a pass on answering my question.

No such thing.... (too bad)

It's nicer than nuclear ICBMs

Cool concept. This was used in the movie, GI Joe Retaliation.

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Heinlein’s 1966 book.

Read it twice and listened to the audiobook twice! Great book. Heinlein has awesome books.

Come to think of it, an AI character was key. I’ve read it a couple of times, but was decades ago, so, time to read it again.

If they exist Trump would of used them…

Not Trump, he shows great restraint!

This idea failed many times….

So did the light bulb

Did they do this in a Call of Duty game?

Looks like Rods Of God was (is?) in Call Of Duty, called ODIN (Orbital Defense Initiative).

To make a single 12 ton rod out of 1000lbm modules would require 24 flights per rod. @grok how many times has the x-37b flown?

If the X-37b was a secret assembly crew you would think they would fly it more than every 400 days or so...

What if there are a lot more X-37Bs in existence, or beter versions?

And how do you slow it down enough to get it out of orbit?

The speed desired and used to multiply the effect of the mass. Kinetic energy quadruples every time you double speed of a mass.

Ok... basics of orbital mechanics. The faster you go, the higher orbit you are in. If the magazine of rods is sitting in a stable orbit, and it lets go, the rod doesn't fall, it just stays going the same speed. It would have to throw it downward.

I didn't design the video, but if that is a constraint, then why won't they just put it in a non-synchronous orbit? Furthermore when deployed from this moving orbit (relative the the earth's surface) it would be better positioned in a high orbit that goes against the earth's spin, retrograde. Going against the earth's orbit would allow a kinetic weapon to have more energy on impact. And allow a smaller window of interception.

Watching too much gi joe