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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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A lot of the energy comes from orbital speeds.
The Hypervelocity Rod Bundles project proposed 6,1x0,3 m tungsten rods, weighing about 8200 kg, impacting at about 3000 m/s, meaning about 42 GJ of energy per projectile [wikipedia].
The weakest recorded nuke, the Davy Crocket Tactical Nuclear Weapon, is estimated at about twice that (84 GJ), and the largest, Tsar Bomba, at about 3 000 000x the yield (210 PJ).
That’s their point, how do you get such a heavy thing to orbital speed without spending all that energy? You can’t unless you build it from materials harvested in space.
Oh, I apologise, I suffered some curse of knowledge there, the answer is time.
A blast is a release of energy over a short time, the whole point of building weapons is to store and handle energy in safe amounts over time.
Global electric energy consumption is about 200 PJ a day, approximately the same as the Tsar Bomba, but there's no risk for a huge explosion neither when you incinerate trash or turn off the AC.
Because time.
Although we could explode a nuke and propel things ballistically, it turns out it's a lot easier to use rockets. A rocket, although carrying frightening amounts of fuel and exploding spectacularly when it fires wrong, has several safeguards to not expend all that fuel at once. And also gives the opportunity to correct course along the way.
Now imagine that the same amount of energy has been expended many many many times over the course of the space era, and almost any mass in orbit has serious potential for damage.
For example, the MIR was 130 tons, orbiting at about 7,8 km/s, for a kinetic energy of 4 TJ, and another 235 GJ of potential energy. Totalling about a tenth of Little Boy that levelled Hiroshima.
Edit: Specifying and correcting the global energy consumption.
One of the things that's stuck with me during my time on Lemmy is someone remarking that the only difference between a battery and a bomb is how controlled the release of energy is. Having seen what happens when you puncture a LiPo battery, I believe it 😰
There is another factor here which is the base energy level of a battery. LiPo batteries still have a relatively high base level, so even when discharged can still burn/explode. There are other battery chemistries that have a lower base and are therefore safer when fully discharged.