First I'd ever heard about it was when reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall. Pournelle, at least, was one of the Boeing team that came up with the idea.
Given the inflammatory nickname though, and the way the other projects seem to parallel things out of movies, I'd say they were chosen more for how the story would play to the audience than any real effort to provide information to the reader.
Slashdot Mirror
That 'Rods from God' thing -- that's the old Project Thor idea that's been around since, what? The early Sixties?
r -navy.html
a voyagetoarcturus_archive.html
http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/07/rail-guns-fo
http://avoyagetoarcturus.blogspot.com/2003_04_01_
First I'd ever heard about it was when reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall. Pournelle, at least, was one of the Boeing team that came up with the idea. Given the inflammatory nickname though, and the way the other projects seem to parallel things out of movies, I'd say they were chosen more for how the story would play to the audience than any real effort to provide information to the reader.