OT - Mission Completed

I don't buy that the fuel was a hazard. This was a "Hold my beer and watch THIS!" just to show off for Russia and China.

Or, rather, that there was any danger that the fuel might actually reach the surface of the planet. Hydrazine is unquestionably hazardous.

I agree; it seems rather unlikely that the fuel tank would have survived reentry. The probable result of allowing reentry would have been a sizable explosion in the upper atmosphere the instant the tank was breached.

That probably doesn't even begin to compare to the explosion of lower bowel contents from the Chinese and Russians when they realized their multi-billion anti-satellite weapons programs were just shown to be completely irrelevant.

A fuel tank in the Columbia shuttle reached the ground intact (in east TX, so this isn't OT :-), but it "not full" at the time:

"[Deputy National Security Adviser] Jeffrey said that the fuel tank is the only piece of the craft that is not expected to burn up on reentry and it is hoped the missile could destroy it in space. If it hits the Earth, it could leak gas and cause potentially fatal injury over an area of the size of about two football fields, he said, adding that "this is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings."

Unless it landed in the middle of a densely populated area, that doesn't seem to be a large area: 300 feet by 320 feet? I suppose the worst case would be the tank breaching and exploding near the ground, but that seems even more unlikely.

However, the amount was substantial: 1,000 pounds. And the above article says that it was "frozen", presumably because they had lost control of the satellite and it had no power.

Well, for anyone who thinks there was a real danger of the satellite hitting the earth with the fuel intact, I would point out that the shuttle could not do it. And the shuttle was bigger and had heat shielding for re-entry.

So, I am left with the conclusion that the stated reason, while a small possibility, was not the real main reason for the shoot down. I have only come up with two significant possibilities. Possibility one is what has been mentioned - a test of the system to impress the Chinese and Russians (and it certainly worked for that). The second choice is that there was something else on board the satellite that the DOD wanted to ensure did not survive intact. Given that this was a spy satellite to begin with, this seems like a decent possibility, even if just for the technology of something on board that might be common otherwise.

Either way, the shoot down worked for all three of these reasons.

Steve Rothstein

Tom...

You left out the place closest to the launch site and most likely to need a lesson in sabre rattling and REAL power. North Korea. I can't believe that it wouldn't have been better to launch MUCH further south, but Australia/New Zealand aren't working on developing itty bitty nukes....at the moment anyway!!

Take care.

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

Not really. In the history of the world, only one person has been known to die from hydrazine (if you don't count those killed by V2s during WW2).

Think guys - the chemical is the issue, not a volume of 'fuel'. The chemical would leach into the ground and who knows what it would do. It might pollute lakes or a river - watershed. The ability to shoot it down has long been able - just most of it was scrapped in Salt talks so many years ago. We built the defense system for the N. Koreans and Chinese neither of which were trustworthy then nor now so it seems. e.g. fast on the button for the hell of it. Whereas the Russians were more thoughtful and knew what would happened and cared. And didn't. Just like to push and prod.

Martin

Mart> Doug Miller wrote:

The stuff is damn toxic and nasty. I worked for a company that made retro rocket engine covers for the space shuttle and we supplied tubes filled with a desiccant treated with a chemical that would detect the slightest leak so the ground crew would know if it was safe to remove the covers.

We had been given a couple of test samples of our product that had been exposed to both liquid and vapor. After seeing what it did to the plastic, I can imagine what it would do to the human body.

I too however suspect the potential environmental hazard of the fuel was a bit of pretextual rational for shooting the sucker down. It is good to know that we can blast a satellite out of space at will in the event of a war.

Have you ever been around hydrazine, Tom? That stuff is WORSE than clorine gas. A cloud of that shit could injure or kill a lot of people that may not even know it's coming.

Jim

STOP THE PRESSES

the cold war is over..

And the defense preparations against losing a hot war continues.

The Columbia break up was at perfect re-entry angle, the fuel tanks well shielded and the speed at first exposure less than Mach 20.

JJ

Does that include the ME-163?

Gunner

And the pilots whose bodies dissolved because of fuel leaks? Ewwwwww

-Carl

Made me smile to see we developed an ASAT w/o the NY Times leaking and sabotaging the effort. Our ABM program has been a cover.

Wes

What is the ignition point? I suspect a lit cigarette would create a fuel-air explosion with even minimal concentration. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

wws

No ignition required - it reacts spontaneously.

-- Ed

Although if I read the wiki on hydrazine correctly it is hypergolic in the presence of the catalyst in the engine, I don't think it indicated a tendency to go up spontaneously in the atmosphere or some of the common applications it finds would seem rather more dangerous.