Dropping a tungsten rod that weights around 12,000 kg from orbit has a similar destruction potential as nuclear weapons.
At present lunch prices bringing a tungsten rod that’s weighted 12,000 kg to orbit has a extreme cost for the defense industry that was labeled to be around $230 million a rod.
On the other hand, Starship is designed to be able to carry 100 tons with equals 8 rots to space in a single flight and given that Elon talked about being able to launch starship 3 times per day with a cost that would allow transporting humans from one place of the earth to another the launch cost might be less then a million.
I found tungsten prices to be around 25$/kilo for simple products, which suggest a million dollar might be a valid price for one of the rods.
When the rods are dropped they hit within 15 minutes which means that an attacked country has to react faster then towards nuclear weapons.
Having the weapons installed in a satellite creates the additional problem that there’s no human in the loop who makes the decision to launch. Any person who succeeds in hacking a satellite with tungsten rods can deploy them.
Elon Musks Starship might bring us a new x-risk.
Dropping a tungsten rod that weights around 12,000 kg from orbit has a similar destruction potential as nuclear weapons.
At present lunch prices bringing a tungsten rod that’s weighted 12,000 kg to orbit has a extreme cost for the defense industry that was labeled to be around $230 million a rod.
On the other hand, Starship is designed to be able to carry 100 tons with equals 8 rots to space in a single flight and given that Elon talked about being able to launch starship 3 times per day with a cost that would allow transporting humans from one place of the earth to another the launch cost might be less then a million.
I found tungsten prices to be around 25$/kilo for simple products, which suggest a million dollar might be a valid price for one of the rods.
When the rods are dropped they hit within 15 minutes which means that an attacked country has to react faster then towards nuclear weapons.
Having the weapons installed in a satellite creates the additional problem that there’s no human in the loop who makes the decision to launch. Any person who succeeds in hacking a satellite with tungsten rods can deploy them.
Interesting short thread on this here.