Replies

How do you “shoot down” something that is in orbit. The best you can do is smash it into a bazillion pieces. Newton made these things quite clear.

14 posted on 02/14/2008 12:21:18 PM PST by -YYZ- (Strong like bull, smart like ox.)

Hahahahha! Exactly. Shootdown? Please. How about smash? Pulverize. Deconstruct. Gravity is already on the job of bringing it down.

53 posted on 02/14/2008 1:09:03 PM PST by SaxxonWoods (If you don't vote, you don't matter.)

How do you “shoot down” something that is in orbit. The best you can do is smash it into a bazillion pieces. Newton made these things quite clear.

It works because all the pieces now have different orbits. Thos different orbits may be sufficiently elliptical and intersect with the earth, or unstable, and degrade into intersection with the earth. Getting something into a stable low-earth orbit is the challenge. Having it fall back is easy. Entropy tends to pull everything back “into the well,” eventually (the mechanism being the drag of the limits of the atmosphere.)

60 posted on 02/14/2008 1:28:22 PM PST by Atlas Sneezed ("We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them, I won't chip away at them" -Mitt Romney)

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