BREAKING NEWS: Officials say U.S. plans to shoot down broken spy satellite expected to hit Earth

[helderheid]

BREAKING NEWS: Officials say U.S. plans to shoot down broken spy satellite expected to hit Earth in March

Breaking msnbc.com

[Exultant Democracy]

1. I hope they don't miss. Open letter to the pentagon, don't let Bush have anything to do with it,

who knows what he would end up shooting instead.

[krispos42]

10. Or Cheney.

Especially Cheney!

:scared:

[LiberalFighter]

16. Buckshot anyone?

[Uncle Joe]

22. Nasa would never allow that to happen, they've spent too much money on the Space Station

to put it at risk from Cheney's aim.

[blondeatlast]

12. Or Dick Cheney--if he's in charge, we'll all be walking around full of buckshot! nt

[fed-up]

43. what evidence are they trying to destroy??? nt

[sinkingfeeling]

2. They'll need to prove it. I no longer accept anything coming from the US gov't.

[Bright Eyes]

3. With what?

A sling shot?

[TalkAgain]

4. I hope I can watch!

[liberal N proud]

5. Shoot it down?

Are they going to use it as target practice for their star wars joke?

[radfringe]

48. maybe I'm a bit befuddled and confused on this

there's this satellite, it's falling out of the sky, and it's going to fall down somewhere on the planet..

that's how gravity works, right? things fall DOWN

now, please explain how shooting it down is going to keep it from falling down?

[winter999]

58. One big chunk that will make it to the ground or lots of small pieces that will burn up.

[NNN0LHI]

6. Gonna nuke it?

[LakeSamish706]

7. I think that they should sub it out to the Chinese to shoot it down. n/t

[harun]

47. It would be funny if the Chinese shot it down first just to flex their muscles (n/t)

[winter999]

59. Shooting down other country's satellites is an act of war.

[Tesha]

63. Yeah, but the Chinese will do the contract for 37% of what the Navy will charge. (NT)

[harun]

65. Not if it is broken and potentially falling on their country (n/t)

[ieoeja]

68. So is shooting down other country's military aircraft in international waters.

But that didn't stop them from doing so in 2001, did it? Ditto stealing nuclear missile technology under the first Bush.

It seems China does whatever the fuck they want every time a Bush gets in the White House. You know, were Prescott Bush the Chairman of the US-China Chamber of Commerce, one might almost get suspicious....



http://www.usccc.org/Current/mem-b.htm


To be fair, Prescott Bush was *not* the Chairman in 2001. Back then he was too occupied as President of the US-China Chamber of Commerce.

I am an Occam's Razor sort which makes me shy away from conspiracy theories. However, Occam's Razor doesn't mean you don't believe in conspiracy theories, it means you believe in the simplest explanation. And the simplest explanation for all of this is that American oligarchs have begun selling out the American people just as many European oligarchs sold out their own when it was cheaper to send their jobs overseas to the undeveloped United States.

[HuffleClaw]

8. yeah right

I'll accept that they will CLAIM to have zapped it.

[displacedtexan]

9. I've seen that movie Is anything else on?

Damned reruns.

</sarcasm>

[helderheid]

11. LOL!

[kirby]

13. Ooops, the missle missed and hit Iran!!!! n/t

[Ediacara]

14. Shoot it down with what?

Missiles? I have no idea why they'd want to do this... It's probably far too small and far too fragile to survive reentry and impact, so there's very little chance it could be captured and used by an enemy. Is it the Uranium? Blowing something up won't make that go away.

Unless maybe there's a bomb strapped to it?

[Johonny]

20. nope

Parts of it will certainly survive reentry. There is almost certainly no nonradioactive materials on board. The real question is will they intercepted satellite create a space debris field that causes more problems than the satellite no poses.

[Ediacara]

35. When this story first came out I thought they claimed there was a nuclear plant onboard

Maybe I'm remembering wrong....

[Johonny]

38. almost no

satellite is launch these days with a nuclear power plant except long term interplanetary missions. The biggest concern of blowing this up in space is the debris cloud that could enter into space station, shuttle and other satellites orbits.

[krispos42]

51. I thought they didn't put solar panels on spy satellites...

because they were too vulnerable to damage from, say, a laser burning them off?

I figured they were using those radioactive-decay thermocouple batteries that have plutonium in them?

[halobeam]

39. hydrazine on board....

would that burn up before getting here?

[Tesha]

23. It contains technology we'd like to keep secret.

It contains technology we'd like to keep secret so we
don't want to risk any of it surviving re-entry and
falling into the hands of our "enemies".

After all, if you had hardware-based proof that we were,
say, listening in on every satellite and terrestrial
microwave telecommunications channel...

o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_%28satellite%29

o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyolite/Aquacade

o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_%28satellite%29

o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentor_%28satellite%29


President Thomas Whitmore: I don't understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?
Julius Levinson: You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/quotes


Tesha

[Ediacara]

34. I'm unconvinced that any part of a satelite not designed for reentry

could survive reentry.

[Ichingcarpenter]

36. Any news on where this thing is gonna land?

These spy satellites are huge and will break up on reentry

[bdamomma]

54. won't it end up in the ocean.

we are covered by mostly oceans, I want to hear the evidence first.

[winter999]

60. You hit on the right word, MOSTLY ocean.

That leaves a very real chance that it will hit land. Look at Skylab hitting Australia and the Soviet satellite that hit Canada a few years back.

[Tesha]

37. It's conceivable that the microwave subsystems could survive.

It's conceivable that the microwave subsystems could survive;
they're commonly constructed within machined solid blocks of
metal. It wouldn't take much of them surviving to infer useful
data (such as "What frequency bands did this satellite monitor
and/or communicate upon?")

It's also conceivable that a REALLY sufficiently-motivated
enemy could snatch the satellite out of its re-entry traj-
ectory; I'll bet we could do it and so I'll bet the Russians
and Chinese could as well.

Tesha

[Ediacara]

46. I didn't realize that

nevermind then.

[Johonny]

40. ?

What where all the parts of the space shuttle raining on Texas a few years back. Or thin way back to the days of Skylab. You can pop by NASA or other space agencies and look at the reentry material from past missions. Yes parts of the satellite will survive reentry.

[Tesha]

42. Realistically, you only need small bits to infer big deals.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/14/spy.satellite.ap/index.html

> It carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor but
> the satellite's central computer failed shortly after launch.

For example, if it actually is an optical imaging satellite,
even a small hunk of the primary mirror would tell you a great
deal about its ultimate imaging resolution. A small hunk of the
imaging sensor will tell you its ultimate sensitivity. And the
coatings on the mirror and the chemistry of the sensor would
tell you what wavelengths we were imaging.

Tesha

[winter999]

61. Looks like the right answer would be to blow it to smithereens.

[Tesha]

62. Except that orbitting smithereens can be very dangerous to other orbiting spacecraft. (NT)

[Johonny]

67. unless

the they hit in a part of it's orbit that send debris into other satellites and or the space station.

[Ichingcarpenter]

44. That's the point the radar target will be all over the place. n/t

[atreides1]

41. What Part Would That Be?

I would venture to guess that the classified materials are probably well protected, so there could be a good chance that those parts could survive reentry.

We've had satellites come down before, and no attempt was made to shoot them down, so why now and why this particular satellite?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

55. Really?

When the Columbia burned up upon reentry they found a severed leg of one of the astronauts, otherwise fairly intact.

[BadgerLaw2010]

32. They don't want to risk it landing largely intact in, say, Russia.

[Sydnie]

71. That was my first and only thought about shooting it down too

After all, we all waited patiently to see which major city might be taken out when Skylab was coming down. They said then that they didn't know where it would land, but they didn't talk about shooting it down either.

[jpak]

15. ChimpCo got its panties in a bunch when China did this a few months back

But there ain't no Anti-Satellite Treaty to prevent them from doing what they want.

ChimpCo clearly wants to militarize space (along with everything else)...

[dysfunctional press]

50. the whole world got it's panties in a collective bunch...

when the chinese used an an anti-satellite weapon to destroy a satellite, it resulted in THOUSANDS of pieces of debris flying off in all directions, adding to the growing amount of man-made space debris in orbit, that ends up endangering other satellites.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2007/01/china_blows_up_.html

"...She's also concerned about the amount of debris the Chinese test created--300-800 pieces of junk that are at least baseball-sized (i.e., large enough for radar to track), and perhaps hundreds of thousands that are smaller.

"We can't see it, we can't track it--and something as small as a marble can shatter a satellite." Space scientists say this is a big deal; there have already been three known cases in the last 15 years when satellites were disabled by collisions with debris, and there's no way to prevent more..."

[VP505]

17. I just heard that on

the news and my first thought was GREAT. Simple solution, what could go wrong, we all know how well everything this Admin does goes? Anyone want to bet this won't turn into a real clusterF***?

[DainBramaged]

18. There is probably a reactor on it, otherwise why wouldn't they just let it burn up?

They want it to be in itty bitty pieces so it burns completely up. Imagine what the debris is worth if it falls into the wrong hands? And what info could be stored on it?

[Tesha]

24. See my reply #23, above. (NT)

[Thothmes]

72. Reports are that it is powered by a Hydrazine fuel cell

[monktonman]

19. They just want to show the world they can do it

Didnt russia just get it's own GPS system running?

[Tesha]

25. Europe. (NT)

[Ichingcarpenter]

21. Think about it

They know the decaying orbit and its destination, and of course are tracking it.
If it was gonna hit in the pacific ocean or some other non-harmful area they wouldn't need to do
anything about it.

This means the orbit is projected to land over a populous area, the satellite also most likely has
some things that could either harm humans, like the satellite that fell in South America, and military secrets


I am dubious on the success of this shoot down.

[Tesha]

26. See my reply #23, above. (NT)

[notadmblnd]

27. Knowing them.. they'll say it was a success and then when

the real one crashes.. they'll blame it on the terrorists.

[sinkingfeeling]

28. The Navy's going to use a missile. Here's the print story...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/14/spy.satellite.ap/index.html

The Associated Press has learned that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be publicly discussed until a Pentagon briefing later Thursday.

[Ichingcarpenter]

33. Missile's top speed? Satellite's top speed?

That will be interesting with different radar images when the thing breaks up.

[kirby]

45. What about space junk?

There was huge outrage at China for shooting a satellite in orbit. Are we shooting this down in orbit or not? The article claims it would be shot down 'before it entered the earths atmosphere'.

[underpants]

52. NBC's Miklaszewski "Officals admit it it can't hit this it won't be able to hit anything"

not an exact quote

Just now on MSNBC

:rofl:

[MissB]

66. *snort*

:rofl:

[bananas]

64. "about half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft is expected to survive its blazing descent"

"It is not known where the satellite will hit. But officials familiar with the situation say about half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft is expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and will scatter debris -- some of it potentially hazardous -- over several hundred miles."

[greengestalt]

29. Have China do it

China recently demonstrated it's ability to shoot down satellites along with ICBMs and having their subs sneak through US warplanes as child's play.

Nice when Dubya was kicking a helpless Arab a real potential enemy was encircling the globe...

[Tesha]

30. Ahh guess that pesky old CRM-114 f**ked-up again! (NT)

[Javaman]

31. For god sakes!!! Someone attach a balloon to it!!!

seems to be the only way the "anti-missile" shield can hit anything.

perhaps this is all one big charade? hmmm? the fucked up star wars system, which costs billions upon billions has proved to be a colossal failure.

The only way this thing could hit the broad side of a barn is if the "missle" has a balloon, some sparklers going off, a few french ticklers and a clown shooting fire out his ass to help identify it.

I'm envisioning a life imitates a Simpson's episode on display.

or as maxwell smart once said, "missed it by that much".

[bigbrother05]

49. Rumsfeld failed Missile system

[malaise]

53. Everyone in Iran and Syria

DUCK

[bdamomma]

56. with this government they will probably destroy the MOON!!!

[halobeam]

57. aww jees...

don't jinx us....


*to the moon, Alyce!*

[bdamomma]

70. sorry just got carried away, but you never know with this sick

bunch of thugs.

[bdamomma]

69. you know who ordered this plan of shooting down this satellite

*.