An unusual test of military capability:

U.S. to launch missile at broken satellite

Better to blow it up than have it crash on my house, I guess. But what happens to the missile if they miss?

Great question, Lex! I would think they have considered that. Maybe Plan B is to blow up some evil Martians before they attack us!

quote:

Originally posted by Elexina:
Better to blow it up than have it crash on my house, I guess. But what happens to the missile if they miss?

Perhaps they'll ask the Chinese to do it.

Nailed it!

They had about a 10 second window to hit a cold target traveling over five miles per second.

Pretty heady stuff. Congrats to the US Navy.

(As frank referenced, China destroyed one of its weather satellites with a ground-based missile last year).

Are you sure they got the right one? (If the satnav on the car gets me lost in Menton tomorrow, I'll know who to blame )

Well, we’re all still here so we didn’t trigger a nuclear war or anything. Yet.

Now the world knows what we are able to do.
Way to go US Navy.

Scotty, the world has known for several years what we can do. Why do you think there are so many State Department advisories out to US travelers abroad?

Scotty did the US shooting down of the satellite impress you as much as when the Chinese shot one down over a year ago, or was that one more impressive since they did it first?

A few decades ago, the US put men on the moon. Now that was impressive. Awe-inspiring. What's the big deal - in comparison - with blowing up a satellite? That marks a decline, doesn't it?

Do they even know yet if they've actually succeeded in what was supposed to be the purpose of the mission - destroying the 'toxic fuel tank'? Most of the debris is going to burn up, I guess, but won't the explosion inevitably have created yet more barely trackable bits and pieces of space-junk orbiting the earth?

I'm guessing many people around the world are not thinking "Wow!" but "Oh, great, just what we needed - an arms race in space..." I suppose arms manufacturers in both China and the US are cheering, though.

What I don't understand is why the military went public with it before the fact? Suppose they missed? They must have been extremely confident in the outcome of this experiment performed on the world stage. Maybe they've already done this before...?

There's lingering skepticism about whether the hydrazine tank that was specifically targeted was actually affected by the hit. An expert appearing on Jim Lehrer claimed that an intact tank would surely rupture spontaneously at what he estimated to be 1000 Gs of deceleration when it hits the upper atmosphere. In which case the whole shoot-down was unnecessary.

In any case, it sounds fishy to me, like there's a whole classified back-story that we'll never know.

So the US shows how easy it is to shoot down a spy satellite -- just in case the situation should arise again -- and maybe reclaims a little military dignity. But was this a gutsy gamble -- or a routine shoo-in? Why did the US announce this project in advance? How could they be so confident?

The US felt it had to do it after China showed she could know down a satellite in January 2007. Basically, this was a show for China's benefit:"See? We can do it, too!" We also got to show other nations that we are just as good as China.

Scotty's misplaced chauvinism aside, the US wasn't that confident it could do it. They had two back-up missiles ready.

Ah so, China. I vaguely remember China making news for something in space recently. I guess it went beneath my radar. I still remember the cold-war embarrassment of many failed space launches in the pre-Mercury days (ca 1960). Not to mention all the Scuds that got past Patriot missiles in Israel, and the failed bunker-buster to get Saddam at the start -- or was that just failed intelligence?

My point is, if they'd have missed by just an inch yesterday, our military credibility would have been damaged palpably; the stakes were high. Hopefully I'm over-reacting. Is there any blog buzz in this direction?

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Scotty did the US shooting down of the satellite impress you as much as when the Chinese shot one down over a year ago, or was that one more impressive since they did it first?

The U.S. shot down a satellite over 20 years before China did.

From January 1984 to September 1986, an F-15A was used as a launch platform for five ASM-135 anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles. The F-15A went into a Mach 1.22, 3.8 g climb of 65° and released the ASAT missile at an altitude of 38,100 feet (11.6 km). The F-15A computer was updated to control the zoom-climb and missile release. The third test flight involved a retired communications satellite in a 345 statute mile (555 km) orbit, which was successfully destroyed by sheer kinetic energy. The pilot, USAF Major Wilbert D. "Doug" Pearson, became the only pilot to destroy a satellite.

Interesting. I'm still much more impressed by the constructive things the US has done in space - like being the nation mainly responsible for ringing the earth with satellites in the first place, revolutionising communications, research and so on.

Blowing a couple of them up is cool only if you're a twelve-year-old, maybe.

(Of course, you realise this latest explosion is all Bush's fault. Again. It seems he can't help but break things or run them into the ground - companies, countries, armies... It's a kind of karma he carries with him, perhaps. Didn't he once say the US was going to put people on Mars? Of course that plan was never going to get started under Bush - too positive.)

That you, John. I guess China just beat us using a missile fired from land, although the plane seems more impressive.

I guess the world really did know what we could do then, didn't they, Scotty?

'Right now, the US has the most to lose from a space arms race because it has the most satellites. Yet China and Russia feel vulnerable because the US is ahead in potential weaponry.

All sides, then, have an incentive to talk. And at this stage, let's do at least that.'
www.csmonitor.com

'"There's a growing consensus among nations, including space-faring and missile-possessing nations, that there should be some rules of the road, some standard for responsible behaviour in space," said Daryl Kimball, of the Arms Control Association in Washington.

"A key is going to be what the next U.S. administration decides to do."

In a survey of presidential candidates by Washington's Council for a Livable World, Senator Barack Obama backed a space code of conduct. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would constrain space weaponization "as much as possible." Republican candidates did not respond.'
canadianpress.google.com

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
I'm still much more impressed by the constructive things the US has done in space...Blowing a couple of them up is cool only if you're a twelve-year-old, maybe.

Is using a scalpel to cut out a tumor a destructive use of metallurgy technology? With the resultant blood and gore, is such a procedure only cool to adolescent males? Or is that act a constructive one with practical applications to a wider demographic? Because that's a close analogy to the recent U.S. shoot-down of a satellite. In each case, technology exists to save lives by intervening in something that could turn out very bad

There are differences between the recent U.S. shoot down and the previous Chinese shoot down:

The key difference is that the Chinese tested an anti-satellite weapon, which has offensive applications, whereas the U.S. Navy’s planned shoot-down uses the SM-3/Aegis combination meant to defend against threats at a relatively low altitude. The SM-3 does not have the inherent capability to attack another country’s satellites, only the capability to defend against inbound WMDs. ASAT weapons can be used to blind a target country by destroying its infrastructure in outer space, carrying out a space-age “Pearl Harbor” attack. The SM-3 was specifically designed to protect against a rogue missile attack or accidental launch.

The CS Monitor article says,

quote:

The Pentagon was wisely transparent about this action. It announced its intentions and now says it will share data about the resulting debris.

This only makes sense if the Pentagon considered it a slam-dunk. But it so happens that...

quote:

The last time the US shot down a satellite was 22 years ago, when it nailed one with a weapon in a test launch from a fighter jet.

So maybe last week's shoot-down carried less risk of failure than I imagined. When you rattle your sabers, it's not good to stab yourself in the foot.

Here's more stuff I didn't know, from the Canadian Press article

quote:

It's not just anti-missile missiles that defy easy categorization. There are also ground-based or space-based lasers or jammers that could cripple satellites, and even satellites that could be manoeuvred to collide with other orbiters. The Russians once wanted the U.S. space shuttle deemed a military system.

Thanks again to nnn for excellent links.