Posted on 02/14/2008 12:09:48 PM PST by mojito
Ah, but there’s HAARP to clean out the debris field.
Just thinking: A meteor is a comparable I think. Any shootdown likely has more than one purpose.
Does the DoD still use Iridium? I remember they bailed out the consortium when Iridium was going to shut down.
Wouldn't that be great fodder it they did hit the NRO sat, and take out a Iridium satellite in the process?
I'll enable satellite display on my astro sw package, and occasionally make note of what satellites are passing when I plan to be stargazing.
Light Show? I hope they are more specific about the time and place.
Have you read all 446 pages of that thing? ... You must have to do it for work.
yeah, CO2 but what a nice view, flames shooting across the sky,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Naw, they’d just make another religion and start worshiping it.
Why don’t they just use a .50 caliber rifle? According to Henry Waxman they are so dangerous that too many people firing them could slow the earth’s rotation.
/s
That’s alright as long as they drop evil Islam. Hell, we may even come to like them and they may not want to come to the West but prefer to live near the satellite.
Satellite akhbar.
Try the SM5.
You mean like when Alfore talks?
The SM-3 should get even more capable with some of the proposed changes (upper stage etc) that'll let it reach into higher orbits or up for "high loft" shots. The satellite shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Its velocity is a little higher than a sub-orbital ballistic missile. However, it probably has a big radar cross section making it easy to track. Depending on day/night conditions when they shoot they could catch it in sunlight - nice and hot from solar heating against a cold space background. Other than the closing velocity aspect, it should be a turkey-shoot. The SM-3 is one very capable, very "hungry" missile.
Space junk at the extremely low orbital altitudes that this situation will be addressed at decays very rapidly. And, as I stated to another poster, there is a whole lot more space in Space than people tend to realize.
Go ahead and do some calculations for yourself - the results will make you a believer more firmly than my arguing with you will. Say, the probability of an object with 100sq.foot areal projection traversing through the altitude of 70-90nm above Earth impacting one of a thousand small chunks. This danger might last an average of a hundred days or so.
It’s not that hard a computation. I guarantee you’ll need a whole load of zeros after the decimal point ... or a good size negative exponent if you use scientific notation.
Nothing as high as Indium is remotely in danger from this rapidly decaying very-LEO satellite or its even more rapidly decaying fragments. Neither is the Shuttle or the ISS.
The pieces that reach that height won't be in orbit very long, because their orbits will so be highly elliptical that the low point will come very close to the Earth (most likely hitting it outright).
This will be good practice. Probably was the plan all along.
Bingo. I’m glad others on this thread have been spreading information instead of misinformation.
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