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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Either they are in a low orbit, in which case you really don’t need to cancel that much of their velocity, or they are in a high orbit and they pick up a ton of speed from falling.
The ISS orbits close to Earth at 420km. It moves at 7660 m/s. To drop its ~~apogee~~ perigee to ground, it would have to slow to 7530 m/s. By the time it reaches ground, barring any air in its way, it will be moving at 8030 m/s.
It will have *more* energy, despite slowing down.
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