If the intercept and kill are successful and the satellite is destroyed, it appears most of the debris will become orbitting [sic] "space junk" and not reenter Earth's atmopshere.
Every weapons officer on the Pearl Harbor waterfront is drooling, cackling, and rubbing their hands with glee right now ("Free targets!!") and the CO of every AEGIS ship is jumping up & down on their commodore's desk, begging for a chance at this [-]FITREP bullet[/-] crew training opportunity. Of course the commodore's over at PACFLT "just touching base" with the admiral to make sure some slimeball San Diego or Yoko command doesn't get the call, while all the submariners are quietly seething with envy.This is going to be real funny if the missiles miss the target. They must really want this thing destroyed & out of enemy hands.
Hope we don't miss.
Just saw an interview where the plans are to take a shot and if a miss, take a second shot on the next orbit and if a miss, take a third shot...
And then and then - an astronaut does an EVA from the Space Shuttle with a trusty Red Ryder BB saved from his youth and nails that sucker!
heh heh heh - then we hand out "Failure Is Not An Option baseball caps all around.
Just saw an interview where the plans are to take a shot and if a miss, take a second shot on the next orbit and if a miss, take a third shot...
...By the way, I wonder if they've figured on the extra space junk that will be left up there? ...
U.S. satellites dodge Chinese missile debris*-*-*The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
I wonder if it's smarter and cheaper to just let it fall. Less space junk. The chances of it hitting anything important are pretty small.
I wonder how the expected fallout compares with the amount of fallout from the space shuttle.
Blow'd up real good...
I wonder if it's smarter and cheaper to just let it fall. Less space junk. The chances of it hitting anything important are pretty small.
I wonder how the expected fallout compares with the amount of fallout from the space shuttle.
I wonder if it's smarter and cheaper to just let it fall. Less space junk. The chances of it hitting anything important are pretty small.
I'm sure a piece of it will fall on my house. Guess I need to check my homeowner's policy for space junk.
About space junk, I don't really know how you shoot down something on orbit to bring it down. It's not like an airplane -- stuff that's in orbit stays in orbit, something about Keplerian laws, unless you give it enough delta v to change its orbit and bring it down into the atmosphere to increase its drag.
So if you blow it up. some of the chunks will get the right delta v, some will not, and others may go into higher orbit. That's what happened with the Chinese shot.