The term you are looking for is "rate". As in the rate of acceleration is decreasing. You used the term "rate" in your OP but not in the right context. When applying the brakes in a moving vehicle the rate of deceleration (AKA negative acceleration) depends upon the amount of pressure applied. The greater the pressure the greater the rate of deceleration. The inverse applies to the throttle where the greater the pressure applied to the pedal the greater the rate of acceleration within the physical limitations of the vehicle.
'diminishing acceleration' is what I'm looking for. I just thought maybe there was a more 'physicsy' term for it.
And here I was thinking 'jerk' was the standard unit of measurement in social situations for comparing personal behavior to units of alcohol consumed.
It's negative jerk. Jerk is the change of acceleration. I remember it from physics with calculus in undergrad. Integrals and derivatives move you up or down this sequence: Position, velocity (change of position), acceleration (change of velocity), jerk (change of acceleration)... and I just learned apparently they go all rice crispies after that with snap (change of jerk), crackle (change of snap), and pop (change of crackle)... not even kidding. Jerk (physics) - Wikipedia... though I guess aptly named since that's exactly what would happen to you if you had a lot of pop.
I don't know where you would ever use snap, crackle, or pop. In fact I'd never heard of them and I'm a physicist. LOL! But I love the naming convention. That must have emerged from a 4:20 homework session somewhere... and added to wiki. PS "Negative jerk" isn't one word. And negative jerk can occur during negative acceleration. It isn't a single point on the curve.
For roasting coffee, they use a term called the rate of rise. More specifically, the rate that the temperature rises--which can be fast, steady or slowly. The rate of rise can increase or decrease without the temperature decreasing. The key thing is the rate, or how much, and the rise, similar to acceleration. So, why not rate of acceleration? Reduced rate, steady rate, or yee-haw rate. Or you could come up with a Newspeak word for it?
Why not just say, "experience less deceleration from drag, than further acceleration, from gravity?" P.S.-- though I am not a physicist, I have my doubts that this would be the case. Your model seems to be based on a directly perpendicular trajectory, in relation to the terrestrial surface. As the Earth rotates, it seems unlikely that this would not transfer some of its spin to the surrounding atmosphere. While I am aware of the phenomenon of "stationary orbit," in which something in space perfectly matches the Earth's rotational speed, this ability is based upon being "in orbit," and would therefore not seem to apply, naturally, to an object falling to Earth.
There is one overwhelming problem with this idea. How do you get something super heavy up there in the first place? I've been told (maybe erroneously but I don't think significantly) that it takes a thousand pounds of fuel to put one pound into orbit, so how big a rocket would it take to put a telephone pole made of depleted Uranium (which is just a little heavier than lead) on the edge of Space? And that's just ONE divine rod. Additionally WHY would you do that? You have thousands of much lighter and more easily launched nukes already available No, I don't think this dog's gonna hunt.
Whether the air is moving or not, its going to impose some sort of resistance to an object moving through it. It might be negligible for, say, several tons of solid tungsten moving at 7000mph... but it would be something.
I think there would be even bigger problems. For one, since this could not be quickly-placed, it would just have to be hanging in low orbit, presumably directly above its intended target. This presents the same problem as did the Reagan-advocated Star Wars defense system, namely, that it is always going to be easier for a defender to screw with your weapon, than it's going to be to defend against sabotage. Granted, this weapon would not be so easily damaged. Still, it would take less fuel to tow it to another location, than it would (as you noted) to get it up there, in the first place.
Abate It may not describe what you're talking about but then again I don't think there's a word that does so maybe you should coin it. I think abate comes closest to what you want a word for.
Well, there's a reason why there's not. It would not be a very useful word. If you understand calculus, you can view this in terms of derivatives. An change in speed is the first derivative, and a change in the rate of that change is the second derivative. An example in economics and politics would be increasing/decreasing the budget deficit.
Ahhh, so in other words fantasy and conspiracy theory. No, such weapons do not exist. It is outright silly. And just to give an idea, a chunk of tungsten that large would weigh in at around 42 tons. That is almost 4 Hubble Space Telescopes. A Delta V Heavy could not even lift one of them. Neither could the Saturn 1B. The Space Shuttle could lift exactly one of those "rods", and pretty much nothing else. So tell me, how many other nations have ever had that kind of capability? And have unexplained launches of rockets in the range of the Saturn C-3 or larger? And of course, the obvious as to how it would remain undetected. Let alone even reach its target.
They don't have to be 'unexplained'... how many 'weather satelites' did you personally verify weren't actually large rods of tungsten? With $2.3Trillion 'missing' from the defense budget, who knows wtf is floating around up there? Not me ...and not you.
Well, considering most are only around 5-10 feet long and are lifted into space with rockets with a payload capacity of around 10 tons, I can promise none of them have "Rods of God" inside of them. As I already said, the weight of those would be insane. Now if you can show me the last time a Saturn V or some other super-heave lifting vehicle went into space with an unexplained payload, then I might at least start to take this as anything other than a joke. But a Weather Satellite? Those would be more like "Pencils of Humor" sized rods.
No one said it must be precisely the size of a telephone pole to be effective. That is an (obvious) example of a literary device. A 10 ton rod of tungsten dropped from geosynchronous orbit would still be an effective weapon in many circumstances.
Not so much. I have heard from official sources that they at least did exist at one time. It may have only been experimental. I don't know. But it was clearly stated that we had them up there. The shuttle could carry a 65,000 pound payload.
Which gives you about half of a cubic meter. And it would take one of the largest standard lifting vehicles to lift a single one, and not much left for things like controls. You really do not get how much mass is involved in Tungsten, do you? A 10 ton rod (what survives of it after passing through the atmosphere) would be no more than any other bowling ball sized meteor. In other words, barely anything at all. As I said, conspiracy theory nonsense.
Why couldn't they have put one up using the shuttle? 10 tons is only a third of the lifting capacity. It was a serious idea. This isn't conspiracy theory land.
It was a concept only, Science Fiction writer Jerry Pournelle first wrote about it way back in the 1950's. When nothing even existed that could ever lift such a device. And it has been theorized many times, but always dismissed for a great many reasons. The size and weight needed to lift it, the impossibility of any sort of targeting other than the most crude (with most estimated of a CEP in the dozens of miles), and the fact that if it was of any size to be at all effective, they would violate the Outer Space Treaty. Plus the realization, that any kind of workable size was simply not worth it. The last time a proposal was submitted to the air force, it involved rods with a total volume of around 10 cubic foot. That weighed in at 5 tons each, and the impact was in the range of 11 tons. Not megatons, not even kilotons, but 10 tons of TNT. We already have conventional weapons that can do that much damage, so why even bother putting one in space in the first place?
I heard it from an official source. He worked on it. Yours is a faith statement. Okay, I thought you were better than that. Too bad. You can't even imagine that maybe it was done in secret... as it most certainly would have been done.
Uh-huh. "You heard". And I return right back to what I had said previously. When was the last super-heavy launch vehicle used that was not explained? Heck, when was the last one even used? I can even answer that, the Soviet Energia, back in 1987. It was to test a new manned space launch system, but failed and it and the payload crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Before that, 1973 when Skylab was launched. So please, tell me how this super secret super heavy rocket was used with nobody detecting it, and then the platform remaining undetected and operating for decades. And you claim my is a "faith statement". I take nothing on faith, it is up to you to tell me when and how this thing was launched with nobody knowing about it.
