Posted on 02/14/2008 3:50:01 PM PST by Dawnsblood
In a joint news conference, NASA administrator Michael Griffith and Gen. James Cartwright, the No. 2 officer at the Defense Department, announced that an SM-3 missile, designed to hit inbound ballistic missiles, will be fired from a Navy cruiser or destroyer during the next month to obliterate the inbound spacecraft. The idea is to break apart the satellite to rid it of toxic fuel onboard by smashing its tank, which is the largest intact piece left. If successful, it would be the first direct U.S. test against a satellite since 1985, when an F-15 climbed to 80,000 ft. to fire a three-stage missile at a defunct solar-monitoring platform in low-Earth orbit.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
I'm not sure it would work (probably not), but man, wouldn't it look cool on film if it did? I'm just sayin', ya know?
Tough shot, crossing orbits and all, still, chuck norris could do it with bottle rockets and old scuba gear.
If Chuck Norris isn't available, I bet Bruce Willis could pull it off (oh...wait...that was a different movie...)
Sure it would. RPG is pretty much recoiless, and thus firing it would not knock the astronaut ass over elbows like firing a high powered rifle would.
However that satellite may be fairly large. If so it would probably take more than one RPG round to do the job. Problem would be that after the first, the satellite itself would be going ass over elbows, both in rotation and translation. It wouldn't be such an easy target after that.
Still, we should be getting some cool video from this. We'll also be getting screams and moans from the Russians and the Chinese, even though the Chinese did pretty much the same thing last year. Then of course there is our own "Peace at Any Price" crowd.
Just the threat of Chuck Norris going into space would cause the satellite to respond to commands.
Sounds more like something MacGiver would do. Chuck would just fly up and whack the thing. Maybe shoot it with his .45 as it began it's reentry. :)
News on the Hour clarified that the shot would be timed to strike the satellite just as the satellite is entering the atmosphere, which would break it apart and especially let the toxic stuff escape before it can do any damage down on the deck. Degree of difficulty at least 5X anything China has done in this event.
We live in an expanding universe and do you know why?
Because it’s trying to get away from Chuck Norris.
Hahaha, hope this just fries the peacenik no space war folks. No vacuum for Oil!
And Jack Bauer could do it using his jock strap as a sling shot.
Well, I had figured that the RPG probably wouldn’t cause a recoil problem, but I hadn’t thought about the satellite getting knocked all wobbly if it didn’t break up. Hmmmm......we’re going to need a really good charge on the end of that projectile (unless, maybe the satellite isn’t all that big??).
When launching crap into orbit, a self destruct charge initiated by ground control at the appropriate time would be a lot more practical. For all we know they are going to do that anyhoo, they may just want the world to think our high speed computers can shoot a rocket bomb thru an innertube, both travelling at mach 7 in conflicting trajectories.
This satellite is evidently a piece of dead space junk. If so, the built-in scuttling charges wouldn’t work.
Yeah, but how will the East German judge score it? ;-)
Good, at least that will reduce the debris cloud that stays in orbit. And I think we're doing this for other reasons than destroying the fuel.
Commie Bloc Judge:
DoD 3.0
Style 5.1
Tech 2.9
Silver at best
Very, very funny!
Hopefully, all of the shrapnel from this shot will still come down. We don’t need any more junk in space.
Hehehehee ... would look kinda cool:) But it wouldn't work for one simple fact:
Newton's Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Recoil, man .. the recoil would send the Astronaut spinning off in the opposite direction ........
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