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Pentagon to shoot down its own satellite

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erehwon

Skilled Investigator
Broadly speaking, the U.S. Defense Dept will shoot down its own satellite (I say broadly because is it CIA and not DIA?) soon.

I suggest that this is less of a concern for public safety than it is to test spaceborne weapons for use against UFOs, to use a blanket term.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080214/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/dead_satellite&printer=1;_ylt=An8sOoSV.Hv9eWW0ZAnHXViWwvIE
 
erehwon said:
I suggest that this is less of a concern for public safety than it is to test spaceborne weapons for use against UFOs, to use a blanket term.
Click to expand...

On what basis do you make that assertion? If they were testing space weapons, we wouldn't be hearing about it. They'd just do it.
 
Maybe ET will shoot the missile down again like he supposedly did that other time, right after he touched his light finger to Elliot's heart and then sallied forth into the deep wide open.
 
China did shoot down a satellite much to the disgust of the Western world. It wasn't the fact they shot it down, it was the manner they did it. Essentially they shot it down using pretty idiotic means, which has now resulted in the debris from the explosion remaining in the atmosphere than falling to earth.

What this means is that there is more space junk up there for other satellite's etc to now run into. A good analogy would be like you driving in a car at speed behind a truck carrying dirt and pebbles that are falling off.

The Pentagon one is more refined - they intend to shoot it down so that it breaks up into the atmosphere and the parts fall to Earth (and hopefully burn up). This is risky - some parts may not burn up, and further they have no control over where the parts fall. However I am informed that if done properly under the right conditions there is no risk.
 
The reason given by the idiot anchor on CNN this morning is utterly retarded: They are worried the rocket fuel on board may crash and burn onto the surface somewhere. Hello? Since this thing will be exposed to extreme frictional heat upon reentry the fuel has no chance of making it to the surface in a liquid or gaseous state without combustion. I suggest: they are doing it to make damn sure other countries can't have the goodies on board and to create a power display for all to see---"Look at me I'm king of the world!"
 
I like your thinking on this, Seth. Maybe they have technology or weapons aboard that violates a weapons treaty. Clearly they wouldn't want to be caught breaking international law again.
 
Seth said:
The reason given by the idiot anchor on CNN this morning is utterly retarded: They are worried the rocket fuel on board may crash and burn onto the surface somewhere. Hello? Since this thing will be exposed to extreme frictional heat upon reentry the fuel has no chance of making it to the surface in a liquid or gaseous state without combustion. I suggest: they are doing it to make damn sure other countries can't have the goodies on board and to create a power display for all to see---"Look at me I'm king of the world!"
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Its a CIA satelite. To quote "a dying, bus-sized U.S. spy satellite". I think Seth is 100% correct. We do not want other nations to get a hard look at the gear on board. I seriously doubt it is a weapons platform. If it were, they would just detonate one of the weapons on reentry. Case closed. This is about securing high technology from the prying eyes of China, France, and Russia.
 
it makes sense to me to blow it up , smaller fragments have a potential for less damage on re entry. you dont want someone retreiving a large chunk for reasons of security and just to show that you can destroy one in orbit are all good reasons.
i just hope that one of the recent space shuttle crews have removed any radio active components before it gets scattered across the planet.
 
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center conducted a Satellite Situation Report in 1997 to catalogue satellites. It lists nearly 25,000 man-made satellites: 8681 currently in orbit. The remaining balance of nearly 16,000 satellites are in a state of decay.

You would think with 16,000 satellites (in 1997 mind you) in a state of orbital decay the solution to shoot them down for “safety concerns” would have occurred long ago. The reasons proposed by our government concerning this issue are suspect.

Nasa’s Link to this report was broken as of this posting:

http://search.nasa.gov/search/search.jsp?nasaInclude=satellite+situation+report&x=10&y=16

and

http://www.nasa.gov/academy/rocket_sci/satellites/ssr.html
 
Hmmm...maybe there's some data in the Satellite that needs to be destroyed. Wouldn't want that satellite falling into someone's backyard with a valuable payload of secrets.

I just started my own conspiracy.
 
Any data or technology aboard the satellite would most likely be damaged during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. It wouldn't be of any use to anyone. Perhaps they're worried about some dangerous fuel, such as plutonium, spreading in the atmosphere.
 
One of my best friends has been working on the missle system for 12 years now-- the sea based ballistic missle system they are going to use.
 
Carol Costello (CNN) said tonight that the main concern with regard to the satellite was the rocket fuel. “It would likely survive re-entry and disperse potentially deadly fumes over an area the size of two football fields.” WTF!? What about an erant missile crashing to earth? Surely that is more dangerous than fuel that will burn up imediately after reentry!

Are we being conditioned to think a missle fired into space or anywhere high into the atmosphere is a regular and positive thing? This fuel thing is bullshit…




Here’s a link to the online story:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/18/satellite.intercept/index.html
 
With less than two days to go before this shoot-down, shouldn't Lear & Hoagland be shouting from the rooftops that we're really firing upon the soul-stealing machines upon the moon?
 
musictomyears said:
Sounds to me as if they are trying out their star wars capabilities... Could be the first (official) shoot-down of many.
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Our first public display of our "Star Wars" systems was in 1989 where we destroyed a satellite. China, and probably Russia are decades behind us I would bet.
 
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