Veritasium recently did a video on this subject, not one of his best, about objects “dropped” from orbit as a weapon with a high destructive potential. The destructive part is easy enough to understand, but I don’t get how the objects would be released and “fall” from an orbiting platform. Wouldn’t the rods just continue to orbit? To make them fall, you’d have to cancel out all or most of the orbital velocity. If you just fired them downwards, they’d still go sideways and you’d have a harder time aiming them. What am I missing?
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All the satellites we have are probably much closer to earth than you are expecting. In fact they are already all falling and it requires thrusters to realign them to keep them from a degrading orbit. To drop a rod you would simply unlatch it in a mathematically prudent angle and let gravity pull it in. With out thrusters gravity would pull in our satellites as well.
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