Chapter 1043
One stubborn thread blocked at both ends belongs to...
"Finally, when the projectile velocity is less than Mach 1.5, rigid body penetration and dynamic deformation of the rock medium will occur, which allows for simulation using a linear elastic internal friction compression model..."
"This stage is also in line with the public's understanding of space-based weapons. Considering that the impact speed of this so-called 'Rod of God' is above Mach 10, the projectile will gradually decelerate as it penetrates the rock. The penetration mode will change from fluid penetration to semi-fluid penetration, and finally to rigid body penetration..."
The high-ranking leader felt a headache coming on and waved his hand to stop Su Dingping's explanation.
"Your theory is too profound, I don't understand it. Can you speak in plain language?"
Su Dingping smiled helplessly and shook his head, then picked up his pen and continued to work quickly on the blackboard, while also drawing some diagrams for the senior leader to see.
Finally, through calculations, Su Dingping calculated the effect of a 140kg tungsten rod hitting the ground from satellite orbit at a speed of Mach 10.
Looking at Su Dingping's calculations, the top leader slowly opened his mouth.
He asked somewhat uncertainly, "You mean that if this thing hits the ground at a speed of Mach 10 or higher, it can only create a parabolic crater that is at most 4 meters deep and 6 meters wide in radius?"
"Yes."
Su Dingping nodded mischievously.
"So don't worry, this thing is at best a larger missile. In terms of power, it's not even as good as a missile."
"Not to mention it's comparable to a nuclear weapon."
"As for the effect shown in the movie, which could destroy an entire city..."
Su Dingping stroked his chin and pondered for a moment.
"Theoretically, it's not impossible, but the required mass of tungsten rods could be unimaginably high."
"Even if we really had the capability to send something that heavy into space, why would we do something so thankless and exhausting?"
Su Dingping spread his hands.
The top leader, also a former military man, immediately understood Su Dingping's meaning.
Sending items into space is actually quite expensive.
If such a weapon costs hundreds of billions of dollars, or even more, then there is no point in building it at all.
Because, given the same amount of funding, the damage and threat posed by building a nuclear warhead would be far greater than that of this weapon.
To put it bluntly, this is purely a pretty but useless thing that only exists in science fiction.
Su Dingping's calculations were flawless, even considering the power under ideal conditions.
In actual use, the Staff of God has to take into account the problem of air resistance.
Imagine if a single raindrop falling from the sky could kill someone?
Most people have had experience with neighbors, and no one ever thinks that raindrops can kill someone.
This is because as the speed of an object increases, the magnitude of the air resistance it experiences increases rapidly in a parabolic manner.
In layman's terms, if an object falls from a great height, its speed has an upper limit, which is also known as its tail speed.
For example, the closing speed of a raindrop is 8 to 9 meters per second.
Therefore, if air resistance is not taken into account, the kinetic energy projectile of the Rod of God could potentially double or even more in speed upon impact with the ground.
In terms of power, it may reach more than four times the original.
But alas, there is air on the Earth's surface.
Therefore, increasing the power of tungsten rods by adjusting height and speed is not feasible.
To increase the power of a tungsten rod, the only way is to increase its weight.
The problem is that as the weight of the tungsten rod increases, the cost of deploying such a weapon into space orbit also increases exponentially.
There is even an upper limit to this number; it is impossible for it to grow indefinitely.
As for the claims of precision strikes and precision guidance made by some people, that's utter nonsense.
Even setting aside how you control a tungsten rod for precise guidance, as long as the technology is up to standard, the high temperature during the tungsten rod's descent will inevitably damage delicate electronic components.
Even if all the above technical problems are solved, the cost of actually deploying this weapon would be extremely high.
"To put it bluntly, this is just a large toy, and it's not even worth mentioning compared to our hypersonic missiles."
"If we're going to launch at Mach 10, why don't we just use a hypersonic missile?"
Why bother spending so much time and effort to send something like this into space?
"He can't even do precision guidance."
Su Dingping spread his hands, unable to hide the smile on his face.
"So that's how it is..."
The senior leader nodded thoughtfully.
“The data doesn’t lie. According to my calculations, the damage caused by 1 kilogram of black rod is roughly equivalent to that caused by 1 kilogram of TNT.”
"What does this mean? The Little Boy atomic bomb dropped by the Eagle Tribe on the Eastern Wilderness Tribe was equivalent to 15000 tons of TNT."
"To translate this into a so-called space-based weapon, it would require 15000 tons of tungsten rods to be deployed into space."
"Uh... the combined mass of all the satellites launched by humanity worldwide doesn't even reach 15000 tons..."
Su Dingping said with a smile.
"So you can put your mind at ease."
"Even if we're really worried, we can always conduct an experiment."
Su Dingping pulled out a piece of intelligence from the folder he carried with him.
"This is our next phase of the launch plan, which has a weight redundancy of about 400 kg."
"We were originally planning to put two more satellites in, but since we're in the right place at the right time, let's just do an experiment."
A strange light flickered in Su Dingping's eyes.
The top leader frowned.
"These are just some of our concerns, and there is absolutely no need for them to interfere with your normal launch plans."
"No, no, no, it suddenly occurred to me that this might be a perfect opportunity."
Su Dingping's smile gradually faded, and his expression became increasingly serious.
The Eagle Tribe has controlled public opinion in this world for far too long; the Dragon Summer Tribe needs to launch a counterattack.
In the previous life, the world's people did not demystify the Eagle Tribe until after the 2020s.
But now, Su Dingping can certainly speed up this process.
At a time when the Eagle Tribe is vigorously promoting its so-called space-based weapons, producing concrete evidence to slap them in the face would surely be a good way to dampen the Eagle Tribe's prestige in the public sphere.
In addition, this is also the most powerful and best counterattack against the space-based weapons touted by the Eagle Tribe.
While you were still touting so-called new conceptual weapons, we not only developed the new weapons, but also proved through experiments that these weapons were completely unreliable.
Is there anything more embarrassing than this?
Just thinking about it made Su Dingping restless. After hearing Su Dingping's explanation, the senior leader's brows gradually relaxed.
"Wonderful!"
The top leader clapped his hands.
"This plan is brilliant! It's killing two birds with one stone!"
The most crucial point is that executing this plan requires absolutely no additional cost.
It was just something I did on a whim.
"Okay! Let's do it this way!"
Su Dingping smiled and nodded, then got up and left.
A 140kg tungsten rod is incredibly cheap, and considering it's just an experiment, no precise guidance is needed.
Therefore, costs can be compressed as much as possible.
As for the location of the experiment, it can be done in the vast, uninhabited Gobi Desert.
Anyway, that place was a no-man's land, with nothing but sand and rocks.
Once a general area is defined, the experiment can begin without worrying about harming anyone else.
The new launch plan was quickly and successfully carried out.
The results of this so-called space-based weapon experiment were released three days later.
While the concept of space-based weapons was gaining popularity, a paper titled "Theoretical and Experimental Study on the Penetration of Rocks and Ground Impact Effect of Ultra-High-Speed Long Rod Projectiles" gradually spread, thanks to the efforts of some individuals.
Of course, a single paper won't have a very high reach, since there's a barrier to entry for reading academic papers.
Although some military bloggers have already analyzed this paper, dry explanations always fail to gain widespread attention.
What brought this experimental result to the forefront was an official news report.
Public opinion campaigns are a war without gunfire.
Since it is war, it is natural to make sufficient preparations.
This news report is the ammunition that the Longxia tribe has prepared for its counterattack.
Within four hours of the report being published, countless bloggers and marketing accounts began frantically reposting the news report.
Military bloggers reacted as if in a frenzy, with some even releasing four videos in just a few hours to explain the news.
One humorous commentator even went viral, gaining a million followers with just one video!
In the video, the blogger is dressed casually and has a smile on his face.
"Recently, the concept of space-based weapons has become very popular, with various forces and groups touting this so-called 'Rod of God'."
"In particular, the chief of the Eagle Tribe has made a bold statement that he will deploy more than eight Rods of God into space within a year, so as to achieve a global strike within three minutes."
"A while ago, the movie 'Special Forces' was also very popular. The power of the Rod of God in the movie was even described as earth-shattering."
"So, is the Rod of God really as terrifying as the legends say? Well, Mom has already given us the answer."
"Many of you have probably already seen this news report. Don't think it's nonsense, because it's supported by academic papers."
“It’s okay if you can’t understand the paper, Mom also provided the experimental results.”
"What would be the final result of launching a 140kg tungsten rod from space?"
"Yes, that's right. Look at the picture. It's a parabolic crater that's 3 meters deep and 4.6 meters in diameter."
"To say that this thing is less powerful than a firecracker would be an exaggeration, but to say that it is much more powerful is not entirely true."
"Anyway, it's nothing special, at most it'll destroy a house."
"As it turns out, this level of destructive power is far from enough to destroy a city. According to the paper, the only way to further increase its power is to increase the weight of the tungsten rod."
"Uh... don't worry about the reason. Just know that when the tungsten rod falls, there is a limit to its speed. If you want to increase its power, you can only increase its mass."
"So here's the question: how heavy would a tungsten rod be to achieve the level of destruction of a city, as seen in the movies?"
The blogger shrugged and said, "Then I can only say that opinions vary."
"Of course, these are things that everyone has already talked about many times, so I won't go into further discussion."
"What I want to talk about is the interview with our researchers in this news report."
At this point, the video showed a clip from the original interview.
In the clip, a refined-looking researcher is speaking eloquently to the camera.
"Because we have a satellite launch plan recently, and we have left about 400kg of weight redundancy."
"We plan to put these weights out to tender to see which companies have commercial needs. With the concept of space-based weapons recently becoming very popular, we thought we might as well test it out."
"So these redundancies were not left to external commercial companies, but were left for us to conduct experiments."
"To ensure the experimental results, we actually launched three tungsten rods of different masses. However, the results of the first two tungsten rods were not very satisfactory, so we only used the results of the last experiment."
This clip ends here.
The blogger couldn't hide the smile on his face.
"Has anyone noticed the problem?"
"The Eagle Tribe over there is still clamoring to deploy more than eight Rods of God within a year."
"We heard this concept was really popular here, and guess what? Well, we just did an experiment."
"Isn't this a bit... I can only say the difference is obvious, the difference is obvious, okay."
The blogger's smile faded, and his expression gradually became serious.
"Now that we've come this far, have you noticed something? Theoretically, a simple calculation would show that this weapon is actually unreliable."
"We only conducted a field test out of experimental needs."
"After all, without experimental results, words alone are not enough to convince people."
"But now that the experimental results are out in the open, I guess no one can refute them."
"So here's the question: with so many top scientists in the Eagle Tribe, can't they calculate exactly what the power of the Staff of God is?"
"Whatever the answer to this question, it's probably not good news for the Eagle Tribe."
"If the Eagle Tribe truly cannot calculate the power of the Staff of God, then where should their future technology develop? The level of their top scientists..."
"If the scientists of the Eagle Tribe can accurately calculate the power of the Staff of God... then the question is, why is such a project allowed to proceed, and even promoted as the Great Chief's most important political resource?"
"How...how do you explain this?" (End of Chapter)