A kinetic bombardment is the act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile, where the destructive force comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high velocities. The concept is encountered in science fiction and is thought to have originated during the Cold War.

Non-orbital bombardments with kinetic projectiles, such as lobbing stones with siege engines such as catapults or trebuchets are considered siege warfare, not kinetic bombardment.

Project Thor

Project Thor is an idea for a weapons system that launches kinetic projectiles from Earth orbit to damage targets on the ground. Jerry Pournelle originated the concept while working in operations research at Boeing in the 1950s before becoming a science-fiction writer.

The most described system is "an orbiting tungsten telephone pole with small fins and a computer in the back for guidance". The weapon can be down-scaled, an orbiting "crowbar" rather than a pole.[citation needed] The system described in the 2003 United States Air Force (USAF) report was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods, that are satellite controlled, and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10.

The time between deorbiting and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the system would have a world-wide range.[citation needed] There is no requirement to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles. Although the SALT II (1979) prohibited the deployment of orbital weapons of mass destruction, it did not prohibit the deployment of conventional weapons. The system is prohibited by neither the Outer Space Treaty nor the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The idea is that the weapon would inflict damage because it moves at orbital velocities, at least 9 kilometers per second. Smaller weapons can deliver measured amounts of energy as small as a 225 kg conventional bomb.[citation needed] Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb. These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster.

Also, it was considered to be a formidable way to stop an oncoming Soviet tank formation. Say, at some geographic choke point. Fulda Gap in Germany, which was considered to be the starting point of a conventional World War Three to occur for example.

I doubt the accuracy of this weapon. Many innocent lives, animals, vegetation destroyed. Obliterated from the face of this earth. Is that what we have become. Warmongers, heedless to the pain and suffering this type of weapon can cause.

in the wind

devastation would be pretty extreme. Think of a small tactical nuke. The appeal back then was, it would have that kind of impact without the radiation.

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in the wind

The Peace or Hippie movement was a very positive thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grogan_(Canadian_politician)

I believe that John Grogan was there the same time I was.

http://www.downhomeradioshow.com/2010/04/radio-unnamable-with-bob-fass/

At the bottom of this page, you'll see post from other volunteers.

I was into politics more then than now, helping COs stay home.

The money put into developing this crap could be used to help humanity.

in a single week?

there are sightings like that at least once a week across the country.

The incident in Cuba was very isolated and not widely reported, so more info is probably needed.

As for Russia, I have one simple question:

Once the "rods from God" weapon is developed, how would we know whether or not it is a real meteor? Couldn't astrophysicists even be fooled by it?

If the rod hits a bunker, I guess it will significantly damage a fortified structure in a diameter of 100m. (And of course the shockwave will fling cars and people around in much wider radius, but its main goal is bunker-bustin'.)

Could it hit a 100m-wide bunker?
Let's say, the weapon carrier flies 100km high (which is the official edge between earth's atmosphere and space and pretty low for a satellite), that means, the rod has to be fired with an accuracy of 1:1000. That's far less than 1° in angle.
Will wind shove the rod sideways?
What if it hits the atmosphere slightly tilted? This will create a dynamic pressure on one side, pushing it sideways as well.

The boom is a function of speed and mass.

The rod has no thrusters to steer it into a particular direction. You fire it, and that's it.

Think the fins that are on a missile, except that this is just a missile with no rocket or engine motor.

...as a way to get a nuke-sized blast from a conventional weapon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

I think one of the impediments to development, ironically, has been the nuclear weapons industry, who don't want an alternative that could become a reason for shutting them down.

And, of course, if you're getting that size blast it might as well be, so it's time to respond with your own.

Project Thor was mostly based around using them on (or near) armored vehicles, but as time went by modern militaries got vastly more effective methods of doing that anyway.

That said, what happened at Chelyabinsk absolutely was not manmade anyway, as nothing that can stay in Earth orbit moves anywhere near that fast, and nothing that we could accellerate to that speed could possibly be hidden anyway since it'd have to blast around other celestial bodies for awhile first.

was said to be travelling at 33,000 mph. The ISS orbits at about 17,500 mph (not that such a weapon could have been fired from the ISS). Would it not be possible to fire something in a descending orbit that could accelerate to that speed until it hit the atmosphere?

Accelerating downward isn't really doable the way orbital mechanics work - speeding up boosts things into a higher orbit, and changing vectors in space is quite difficult in general, since an object still "wants" to go the way it's headed unless a significant amount of force acts on it - an incredibly significant amount, at those velocities. Spacecraft come out of orbit by slowing down, which lowers their orbit until they're hitting enough air resistance that they begin slowing down that way instead. Speeding something up significantly would shoot it out of orbit or skip it off the atmosphere unless you put an amazing amount of acceleration onto it.

Leaving that aside, the amount of power needed to add 15,500 mph to anything's velocity in space is staggeringly enormous. Interplanetary velocities like the Chelyabinsk meteor involve either a lot of rocket or a number of "slingshots" around the Earth, the moon or other planets to provide speed boosts. Those require, again, a lot of rocket in the first place just to get enough speed to leave Earth orbit.

That kind of maneuver would be utterly, utterly impossible to conceal. If that sort of thing happened any country with a decent set of radar equipment would have been tracking the thing for awhile to begin with, since the whole setup would be far larger than the meteor itself was. Heck, backyard astronomers with eBay-purchased equipment would be able to track it and, with a few thousand dollars of equipment, even get decent photographs of the assembly in orbit.

It very, very, very isn't like the science fiction depictions of orbital maneuvering, where it can be done quickly, easily and without hundreds of tons of propellant. This was absolutely a piece of rock or iron, that had been flitting through the solar system probably for billions of years, which intersected with Earth's orbit at vastly beyond orbital velocity and boosted the glazier section of the Russian economy as a result. There's really nothing whatsoever nefarious about it, nor could there be.

and that the media has failed to mention, is that Chelyabinsk happens to be the location of secret nuclear warhead development programs and nuclear stockpiles. Searching the web, you'll find that there was a huge relief to discover that nuclear sites had been missed by the meteorites that fell when the object broke up in the atmosphere.

According to this 2005 Asia Times article, Rods from God is one of the primary space weapons contemplated by the Pentagon since the 1980's SDI program, estimated to be operational by 2015:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GH18Aa01.html

The meteor broke up a good sixty kilometers from the town, none of this "right on top of it" stuff that the tinfoil hat brigade keeps insisting on. A half dozen of those come into the atmosphere every year, with thousands that are much smaller - if one comes down someplace that will actually cause damage people are still going to insist that there's some deeper significance to it.

That said, it is genuinely physically Not Possible to park something in orbit that could change its velocity by that much without it being noticed, and it is also genuinely physically Not Possible for such an object, were it up there, to change its velocity that much without a few hundred backyard skywatchers recording the event, either by sheer chance or because they were tracking the thing in the first place.

Also, a good chunk of the mainstream press I've seen has mentioned the region's history as a nuclear weapons development site. That hasn't been a secret for a few decades. Nobody's covering up anything.

in fact, the media should be all over the nature of the nuclear storage in this area, but of course they choose not to be. As NASA has indicated, the blast area includes a wide area around the city of Chelyabinsk, easily covering the nuclear sites. As I pointed out elsewhere, the following story on an obscure energy news website demonstrates how closely they dodged a bullet:

http://enenews.com/tv-russian-nuclear-facility-meteor-fragments-landed-really-fortunate-be-talking-about-nuclear-disaster-about-radiation-levels-video

Impact area cited by NASA:

a meteor strikes close to nuclear development and storage facilities in Russia. The media chooses to ignore the nuclear aspect of the story, instead falsely linking the story with the asteroid flyby which, everyone agrees, is not even related at all to the event.

....might be a little overkill, though.