Henry, I only heard Bob talk about the topic in general but I never saw any
plans if any existed. I assume the RV would have an ablative coating or
aeroshell to survive reentry. Bob was an accomplished engineer so I think
this was addressed satisfactorily. He was finding applications for his Sea
Dragon concept which Aerojet invested $1-2 M, in 1960 dollars.
Ken
On Tue, Oct 5, 2021 at 8:54 AM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 3 Oct 2021, roxanna Mason wrote:
This reminds me of Bob Truax's non nuclear ICBM proposal. A giant/heavy
chunk of inert mass like iron or even concrete at orbital velocity has
the kinetic energy of a nuclear weapon plus the penetrating capacity to
bust a hardened silo. His Sea Dragon was a candidate launch vehicle for
such a weapon which would orbit 1000 tons...
Note that 13kt of stone at 19km/s mostly just broke a bunch of windows in
Chelyabinsk. Iron, maybe, but stone just bursts at high altitude,
especially if it comes in at a shallow angle (like an orbital reentry).
Kiloton rocks hit Earth's atmosphere with some frequency.
Henry