Shooting stuff down is great practice and lots of fun. If it landed in china they would have a clone in in a week or two. Blast away! I hope they hit it with out firing at it two many times.

There are two problems - if we don't do it then the lens and computer parts (it is a spy sat) could survive intact, compromising our spying ability.

If we do shoot it down, then everyone will be sure to watch very very carefully, compromising the secrecy of our ground-based ASAT capability.

I doubt this is a signal to China or whomever.

It is also unclear how much hydrazine would survive re-entry. It may be just a red herring.

My bet: we "miss" with the SM-3 missile, but -- oddly -- it somehow fragments and burns up anyway.

"If it hits the earth, the hydrazine would cover the size of two football fields", TWO FOOTBALL FIELDS, I dont know about you, but I'm going to Vegas and bet it won't hit me. 2 football fields, the size of a pimple on Ohprh's rear end.

Oh, I hear ya. Doesn't seem like it would do all that much. I'm just repeating what i heard...perhaps they were saying it a little toungue-in-cheek, I don't know.

Probably would have been best if I wouldn't have said anything, eh? :)

Randy

since living where i do and doing what i did..........i have gotten to see quite a few miss-kill launches in my time.

NOTHING I MEAN NOTHING ASIDE FROM NAPALM AND THE SMELL OF RACE FUEL IS COOLER THAN A MISS-KILL LAUNCH!

where i live i get to witness vandenburg ICBM's go down range to atolls in s.pacific. also get to watch white sands miss-kill launches to the east of me from my yard.

when being an aerospaced squid in my past life selling aerospaced machine tools and being the road warrior from hell, one of my accts was white sands miss-kill range.

alot of times coming from hotel in las cruces we would be stopped on top of organ mtns while launch in progress.

too many times to count, and too many cool launches from elevation looking down on horizontal launch. ie. ground to ground.

wayyyyy coooool stuff as long as yer not some allah akbar terrorist! then it gets ugly fast!

i really hope this works. prime reason from my satellite friends is that this spy satellite has some super duper secret decoder rings on board and would be very risky if any of our enemies were to capture any of the secret decoder rings. like all of our present day sat tech is wrapped up into this one super sized super duper decoder ring satellite. ie. this was a GIANT FUCH UP from the moment it ceased to be a viable happy spy satellite.

plus blowing the crap out of this will serve warning to the chinese and russians we got game too! which i never ever doubted.

GO NAVY!

I'm wondering if there is some info on baord that the US is worried about falling into the wrong hands. Just playing up the hazardous fuel angle to help with PR.

Is there any chance of getting good slow motion close up video of an out of atmosphere direct hit?

That would be extremely cool to watch.

cuz its cool to do if you can

cuz its da american way! STAR WARS WASNT ALL A HOAX! during ronnies era I WAS RICH! i mean stinking rich off of all the military spending building thangs that go bang boom splat biff boff gesplattered!

this will be the coolest thing since the rovers beat feet all over meteor crater....ah hem scratch that last one..........all over MARS! LOL!

better than capricorn one i assure you!

now lets explore this concept further fer you newbees that understand nuthing bout miss-kills!

we have satellite secret decoder ring "XYZ" about to re-nter our atmosphere. its going about a gazzillion miles an hour.

we have our planet which is spinning about a half a gazzillion miles an hour.

and we have a u.s. navy ship floating around middle of north pacific going "x" mph.

now with yer puter calc figure (do da math) out equation on what angle of dangle/speed to target/target speed/ship speed/earth speed/ and whatever the hell else that comes into play....................and..................


ITS LIKE HITTING A BULLET WITH A BULLET IN MID SPACE!


now if you dont think my eyes will be watching this juan yer nuts!

this could vaporize the universe! my aluminum foil helmet is already ON!

One big piece will most likely not burn all the way up. A whole bunch of little pieces will burn up in the re-entry and not hit the ground. Nothing but a light show.

BTW, I don't buy that BS about trying to keep the hydrazine from people, and neither does my dad who designed the rocket nozzles that put that thing in orbit in the first place.
There is technology on that bird that the US does not want falling into the wrong hands, that is why they are going to shoot at it.

Wow, lots of common history. My dad and grandfather both worked at white sands, and both lived in Las Cruces. Dad was born in Roswell so we used to make that drive across the organ mountains all the time to visit the other set of grands.

He later went to work at Morton thyocol (sp?), then Hercules in Utah, then retired from Reinhold industries in So Cal. When I was a little kid we'd go out to the firing range and watch launches and test-fires of rockets he helped design and build.

1. The technology on board.

2. Word on the street is that a CONUS impact is highly likely. Don't believe for a second that they don't have a VERY good idea where it's coming down. They have been watching it for some time now after losing control.

Why doesn't the satellite have a self destruct feature?

In reality the need was probably so highly unlikely that it wouldn't warrant the cost/weight in the payload which reduces the lifespan of the bird from a station keeping perspective. Towards the end, the birds life is calculated such that the remaining fuel is used for a trajectory to ensure atmospheric destruction over deep open water.

hydrazine is also a nerve toxin and the metals that make up part of the satellite are toxic as well. i say shoot it down. fun for everyone.

I'm OK with blowing this thing up, but we should give the lads at Top Gear the first shot at it. It would make a great episode.