How about that "Spy" satellite. Maybe I just don't trust anyone

[yy4me]

any more but this strikes me as a good way to test some new military shoot-em-out missile. I wonder if this thing is really falling or if it was programmed to do just what it is doing.

Good grief, how far we have fallen. I suspect our government has devious intent in everything they do. I guess because they want to spy on everything I do, they feel the same way.

[mediaman007]

1. They do spend billions every year on "disinformation," so being

a skeptic is being responsible.

[KharmaTrain]

2. Anyone Remember Skylab??

IRC, that puppy had a nuclear reactor on it...and there was all sorts of concerns of this thing falling on a big city and then detonating.

Satallites do fall...they're designed to. They're supposed to burn-up over time...sounds like one didn't quite work right. This shooting down shit sounds like something out of Star Wars...and a bunch of macho ass-kissing to cover up another screw up.

I doubt this is an attempt for this regime to play whiz-bang games...they'd make a far bigger stink about it...pretending that this is some major fear and how they're coming to the rescue. BTW...they don't WANT to spy on you...they are! Welcome to the brave new world.

[lapfog_1]

6. Oh good grief

"falling on a big city and DETONATING"... nuclear reactor...

no. there was a slight concern that Skylab would fall on a populated area. There was never any concern about it "detonating". And, btw, Skylab did not have a reactor on-board, as far as I could research. Your thinking of the Russian Cosmos 954 which did have a reactor, it burned up and scattered over Canada. One piece was found that emitted 200 roentgens of radiation per hour -- the level which is enough kill a human after a two-hour exposure. That took months to clean up. NASA was charged $400 by a town in Australia for "littering" with some pieces of Skylab, however the majority of the space station either burned up or fell into the Indian Ocean.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/dangerous_reentries_000602.html

Satellites are not "designed to fall"... it all depends on the orbit they are placed it. Low earth orbit means the satellite experiences drag from the upper atmosphere, drag that must be compensated for periodically. Other satellites that are in geosynchronous orbits may stay there indefinitely. And they don't typically "burn up over time"... if the orbit decays, the satellite will re-enter the lower atmosphere and burn up through the heat of re-entry in a matter of minutes, not hours or days or whatever.

This isn't star wars. This is blowing up a satellite. Satellites are always in known locations and traveling in known directions. You can predict within a few millimeters where a satellite will be at any given time. Launching a missile to blow it up is not at all like trying to intercept an ICBM in flight (as it arcs from launch site to target). And I doubt this is a "screw up" of any kind. Satellites do fail. They exist in extremely harsh conditions and there isn't any regularly scheduled maintenance (at least, for the vast majority).

Satellites are very very poor at spying on the population in general. They are very good at looking at specific known locations (like, say, army bases, navy shipyards, submarine pens, and, occasionally, terrorist training camps). But looking at you in your backyard... not unless someone looking thinks its worthwhile. And there is a long list of other places to look at. Be more worried about the traffic cams and store security cams as far as big brother stuff. Much more worried.

[KharmaTrain]

10. The Sky Was Falling...

You are correct about Skylab...my reference was to all the rumors at the time about the "impending doom" that some felt about what was going to happen. I still have my "Skylab Crash Krewe" sticker a friend made up and passed around at the time...making fun of all the fearmongering that was going on. The motto of the Krewe was "Chicken Little Was Right".

Also, this was right after 3 Mile Island...thus anything nuclear at that point was literally "radioactive". In many cases, this was another step into a brave new world of the time. Up to that point we had been told how "safe" nuclear energy was as well as a sense that NASA and the Space program was some kind of miracle workers...that nothing they did could go wrong.

The perception trumps the reality and that's what I was addressing...don't we have enough tinfoil in this world? I agree, the cams that are virtually everywhere now are a far bigger threat...those are the ones that find their way into that special room on Folsom Street in San Francisco.

[irish.lambchop]

3. Let's hope the missile doesn't go

astray and land somewhere they've been itching to strike.

[Canuckistanian]

4. OOps, we missed the satellite and the missile is headed for Tehran

Boy, is our face red.

[malaise]

5. Don't rule that out n/t

[lapfog_1]

8. From what I've read, the ships that will take part in this

are scheduled to do it somewhere in the North Pacific. The missiles that will be used do not have that kind of range. At best they travel some hundreds of miles. Not thousands or tens of thousands. For what you are suggesting, the Navy would have to use Aegis Cruisers stationed either in the Persian gulf on very nearby in the Indian Ocean. Not very likely.

[annabanana]

7. It WAS a "spy satellite". . . There's probably

bits & pieces of it they don't want being found. I doubt that they'd spend that much money shooting down something that might have about two football fields worth of toxic fallout..

[lapfog_1]

9. 1 percent chance of hitting a populated spot.

and no control. Yeah, I think they should try to blow it up.

Because two football fields of death is too big to mess around with... and 1 percent is still 1 percent.

added bonus, no bits and pieces to worry about being found. Though I seriously doubt that anything that falls from orbit, breaks up in the atmosphere and impacts the ground, would leave enough stuff intact to tell you that much. But hey, kill two birds with one stone... or one "bird" with one missile.