In reply to Stephen A. Lawrence's message of Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:48:17 -0500: Hi, [snip] >I haven't been following the list lately (bad Steve) so maybe someone >(Jones?) has already covered this, but the question of *WHY* the U.S. >chose to shoot down that satellite is an interesting one. > > From an "impressive PR" point of view it seems dumb -- the U.S. has had >demonstrated ASAT capabilities for, what, a couple decades, so how will >this impress anyone? (Remember that satellite they knocked down with a >missile fired from an F-15, back around 1986 or so? As I recall it
I don't recall that, and I doubt many others do either. OTOH the Chinese shooting down a satellite is still fairly fresh in everyone's mind, so from a PR standpoint it does make sense IMO. Furthermore, their inability to hit the side of barn has been pretty well publicized, so they may have seen it as necessary to prove that they could actually do it. However, what I wonder is, what proof is there that they actually succeeded, apart from their word that they did? [snip] >One theory I've run across is that it wasn't a spy satellite at all, and >it actually contained something a lot more dangerous than hydrazine. 10 >kilograms of plutonium, say, for example. If *THAT* reentered in a >single chunk it might cause major trouble -- but if it could be blasted >to bits at the edge of the atmosphere, it would be dispersed over a >large enough area that nobody would notice (and nobody would get hurt). [snip] > >So then, the question is, why would the military have launched an atomic >bomb into space? We've got lots of them on the ground already, complete >with very effective delivery systems. One possibility is that they >wanted to "stage" an attack on their own forces, as part of the move to >keep the ongoing "war on terror" going on. When a missile is launched from the ground, orbiting satellites pick it up, and provide about 20 min. warning. However if the weapon is already orbiting in space, then there is nothing to alert the spy satellites, and it can be dropped just about anywhere without providing any warning. That's why they would want to have one in space. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
