Yeah, its also a relatively clean strike, no residual radiation.  I'm not worried that we'll need something like that, in fact I hope we don't ever get something like that.  The first nation to get an effective space-to-surface weapon can just go ahead and claim world domination, and there's no nation on Earth that's capable of fairly and justly governing the entire world, not even the United States.  Which is why I hope that if that technology is developed, the various world powers sign a treaty banning them.  The wording may look off because I was responding to StoneyMcFish's post and Swicord's popped up out of nowhere.

And we do need to put humans into space, badly.  Eventually we are going to run out of room on our planet, and having orbital habitats and farms will be a big help.  The asteroid belt also contains a great deal of natural resources.  Plus, if we ever defy causality and relativity and develop working FTL, then we're going to need to work hard to catch up to a galaxy that has a billion year head start on us.  I'm not worried about us surviving contact with aliens though, I'm worried about aliens surviving contact with us .  Perhaps we'll be generous and allow them to live as second-class citizens and our menial laborers.

you don't need no rods, just some rocks

yeah but rocks aren't that aerodynamic. You'd probably miss by 5+ miles

you can shape the rocks.

Okay, why shape a rock that's just going to deform and break up on atmospheric entry?  The biggest advantage of something like a heat-resistant metal rod is that it will stay intact all the way to impact.

why waist a heat resistant metal for a weapon when you can use it to reinforce a ship hull.

Because its the only material you can make a decent orbit-to-surface kinetic weapon out of.  On the other hand, if you are talking about using space rocks as orbital weapons because they are cheap, well rocks aren't free.  Just ignore all the 40k references and you'll be fine.

if i move a 10 k rock into orbit above your head.  a 5 mile miss won't be far enough.  and moveing a rock in space is cheaper than taking a rod into orbit.

You do realize all of the space rocks are a long ways away from us, don't you?  Its far easier and cheaper to get a metal rod into space than it is to find and maneuver a space rock into a suitable position.  And by 10k, do you mean 10 kilometer?  A ten kilometer space rock falling on Earth is a little too destructive and would cause significant biosphere damage.

actually there are a bunch of rocks in both torjan positions in the moons orbit.  both spots take up the volume of the moon but no where the mass.

Okay.  Its still cheaper and easier to get a metal rod into position than one of those rocks.  If we want to get a metal rod into position over the Earth, we just launch it via space ship into orbit.  If we want one of those rocks we have to launch a vessel into orbit, then over to one of those rocks, then move it and the rock back to Earth.

Not necessarily. You only have to get the launcher to the rocks and time the firing based on launch speed, rotation of Earth, and gravitational perturbations of the moon to accurately aim a rock from the L4 and L5 positions of the Earth-Moon system.

Okay.  But something like that takes lengthy calculations, and time for the space rock to travel from the Lagrange point to impact.  Its much easier to just have a metal rod or two sitting in orbit, ready to be dropped, with little time until they impact.

OOOOOOOOOOR You can just use NUKES.

Why the fuck does everyone need super Uber weapons that you dont even gonna use since nukes are enough to deter any large scale armed conflict(ie total war). 

Build a lofstrom loop please.

Nukes are environmentally destructive and leave lots of residual radiation.  A kinetic strike is far cleaner and almost as destructive.  Seriously, Issaac Newton is a deadly son-of-a-bitch thanks to F=M(V).

@Sparda- not to be a total nerd/know-it-all, but the correct equation is ACTUALLY Ke=0.5*M*V^2

Where- Ke=kinetic energy in joules, M=mass in kilograms, and V=velocity in m/s.

Okay, fine.

Just an FYI--Along that line, part of Reagan's Star Wars project was developing an X-ray laser.  It involved placing an aligned array of wavelngth-synced rods about a hydrogen bomb.  When it detonated, the rods vaporized but released an extremely intense focused beam of high intensity X-rays capable of vaporising a hole in a metal plate close to a meter thick up to a distance of hundreds if not thousands of kilometers.  it was intended to down boosted ICBMs in space.

The restrictions on detonating nukes in and weaponizing space, kept it in the lab realm but theoretically there was certainty it would work.  There was also related work using similar techniques to develop a nuclear shaped charge--one where the majority of the blast could be directed as a jet of plasma and burst of radiation but that one was truly theoretical and not well known how it could be practically done.--nuclear explosions have a tendency to want to move in ALL directions.

But as for cutting the funds: Well maybe he should channel this year's AIG managers' bonuses to NASA. I mean: Over a 100 million bucks should be much better invested in space programmes than yachts, houses, whores and the likes for those assswipes...

Yes! Shadows FTW!

@worldstrider- yup I knew about that.

Xray-lasers that are based on that are higly feasible. They DID develop nuclear shaped charges for the Orion project (nuclear pulse propulsion into SPAACE!!).

They also worked on Gamma-Ray lasers that would have operated similarly to the xray lasers.

There are theories about using a free-electron laser to generate xray beams.

A nicely sized Xraser will radiation kill an unhardened target at a distance of 7.5 AUs (1 light hour! 10,800,000,000 kilometers!) and "cook" something that is radiation-hardened at 1 light minute (180,000,000 km!), and completely fry something at 1 light second (only 300,000 km).

a directed beam is different than dropping something and letting gravity do the work,  oh by the way the us navy has a dd with  a railgun on it. 

as for the pc, it was actually born about 10 years before history says it was.

radio shack was building key boards and monitors for main frames, and found out that they worked better with their own memory.  this was in the 60s

Lets discuss the military advantages of having nukes/weapons with a nuke's destructive power in space.

1. you can nuke the space operations of you enemy nations

2. you can bombard an enemy country with kinetic tactical nukes(rods of god program, large microfiber reinfoced beams)

3. you can bombard enemies with nukes virtually undetected, compared to land based launching

4. you can target any country, anywhere, any time, with less cost and less resources

5. you can nuke part of the moon, causing all kinds of bioshphere collapses that only effect your enemy country

6. you can nuke part of the moon, thus sending a large chunk of the moon plummeting to the earth, bringing near apocalypitc destruction(on your enemy country of course)

7. you can have nuke wars

8. you can nuke the colonies of your enemy countries(getting close to colonizing our system)

9. you can nuke any and everything you want much more efficiently from space, than from earth, especially objects that are away from earth.

THAT is my point, sir. It is scary to see human civilization in its current parasitic, primitive state, bringing war and destruction to the rest of the cosmos.

edit: lawlz