The Science of Conspiracy Theories

Project Thor

Project Thor

There is a possibility that this has been implemented, but it's a secret so it's hard to know.

The Thor project comes under the concept of Kinetic Bombardment. The idea here is to find a method to destroy a city or a large military complex without the use of conventional bombardment or a nuclear weapon. The reason for this is simple. Conventional bombardment requires flying planes over the target, making them targets for the enemy. Use of a nuclear weapon would cause a serious nuclear war, plus it's been outlawed by treaty.

The idea of kinetic bombardment is to use the destructive force of kinetic energy to destroy a target. In other words, you don't use an active weapon. It's simply a metal rod that's accelerated to very high velocity and uses Newton's idea that F = ma, or Force equals mass times acceleration. The more mass one uses and the higher the acceleration, the more force that's generated. Basically, one could use this idea to cause massive destruction without using a nuclear weapon.

Now, the Outer Space Treaty is an international treaty that prohibits the use of nuclear weapons as well as biological or chemical weapons in space. No such weapons are permitted to be stationed in orbit. This treaty does not outlaw kinetic bombardment.
So, supposedly the U.S. has toyed with the idea of launching a weapon that could accelerate tungsten rods from orbit to any target on Earth. These rods would reach 8 kilometers per second or even higher if accelerated.

Let's say one used a tungsten rod 6.1 meters by 0.3 meters cylinder at Mach 10, the kinetic energy would be equivalent to 11.5 tons of TNT. That's doesn't sound like much, but if it were concentrated on a small area it would cause serious damage.

A weapon like this would be difficult to detect or counter. There's no way to use radar or visible sighting to see it and then it would be virtually impossible to destroy it before it hit.

There are some problems connected with the deployment of such weapons. One is that on reentry the weapon would be subjected to heat from air friction. A plasma shield would form around the front of it, blinding any kind of guidance system.

The 'Rods from God' version of this idea has supposedly already been deployed. The strike weapon is essentially a tungsten telephone pole with carbon heat shielding and fins for guidance. It would detach from it's satellite base in space and use a rocket engine to accelerate down through the atmosphere to its intended target at 35, 000 feet per second.
I'm not sure I believe that this is a deployed weapon system. I'm sure that it would be difficult to keep secret from Russia and China. And, since both countries have their own space capability, they would deploy similar weapons. That would mean there would be no advantage in such a weapon system.

Thanks for reading.