Star One Smart Blog's

Southern Beale is all hot and itchy over this one...

"Considering how the Bush Administration could screw up eating a ham sandwich, I’m dubious about this plan:

US: Broken Satellite Will Be Shot Down

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon, under orders from President Bush, is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March, the White House said Thursday.

U.S. officials said that the option preferred by the administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

And, to really make like some crazy...

"Sounds to me like the military doesn’t want any “unfriendly governments” finding this thing. Which strikes me as really insane. We launched our current two-front war thanks to a gang of crazies with boxcutters. Our troops are being taken down by IEDs in Iraq. Why worry about foreign governments finding our old spy satellite technology?"

Jeeze. People there in BDSland are strange in their noodles.

Remember, other countries have trial lawyers, too. We can't be taking chances with possibly injuring some brown people or Joooooooosss....

From GlobalSecurity.org...

Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, assistant to the President and deputy national security advisor, said President Bush decided to bring down the satellite because of the likelihood that the satellite could release hydrazine, a toxic chemical used as a maneuvering fuel.

The fuel tanks, pressurized and all, are built strong enough to survive reentry. They won't survive a direct hit from a Navy ASM, or even a near miss.

“The likelihood of the satellite falling in a populated area is small, and the extent and duration of toxic hydrazine in the atmosphere would be limited,” Jeffrey said. “Nevertheless, if the satellite did fall in a populated area, there was the possibility of death or injury to human beings beyond that associated with the fall of satellites and other space debris.”

We certainly don't want to give any Democratic trial lawyers incentives to sue us.

And, we need try out our nascent missile defense systems.

The Navy has modified three SM-3 missiles aboard Aegis ships to strike the satellite, Cartwright said. The Navy wants to intercept the satellite at a point just above the atmosphere so there would be a high likelihood of bringing it down in an unpopulated area. An intercept also would rupture the hydrazine tank. The vice chairman would not say exactly where the ships would fire from, only saying it will be from the northern hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean.

Intercepting the satellite at about 130 nautical miles altitude will reduce the risk of debris in space. Once the satellite is hit, officials hope 50 percent of the debris will come to Earth in the first two orbits and the rest shortly thereafter, Cartwright said.

Niiice. And, no 'floaters' to 'destroy our space shuttle fleet'. The Chinese killed one of their satellites early last year, but much higher up than our planned interaction. They should've waited until it dropped a bit more, less mess.

Testing our abilities is critical to progressing the defense technology we count on to protect our troops. Remember the Patriot anti-missile batteries that protected Israel against Saddam's rockets in Gulf War I? Those untested batteries probably bought Saddam a few extra years to develop his WMD's in Iraq. Now, they are an important part of our (and our allies) defense networks. We need protection from even bigger payloads, since Russia and Putin are starting to rattle the old chains again.

But from Beale, nothing but BDS. If Hillary or Baracky were in office and proposed the same solution, why, these partisan hacks would shit all over themselves falling in line to agreeing with them.

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Links
Last of the Few: Practice shoot....

The DOD press release.

Crossed from Tennessee Free (that's a first; it's usually the other way around)

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