On Feb 25, 2008, at 2:10 PM, Curtis Burisch wrote: > Lance A. Brown said: > >> The point of shooting the satellite was to disrupt the fuel >> storage. If >> the satellite came down in one piece, there is a chance the hydrazine >> fuel on board would survive to reach the surface. If it impacts on >> land, you get nasty poisonous gas cloud. > >> If the missile did it's job, the fuel storage was destroyed. The >> satellite (or remaining parts) will still come down, but now the >> hydrazine will burn up during reentry. > > This is indeed what they said, but frankly that's just a ludicrous > statement. Hydrazine isn't fun, but nobody has cared before in the > slightest about spacecraft with much bigger loads of un-burnt > hydrazine > crashing to earth. Given the very remote possibility that this US > spy-bird had crashed in a populated area, the negative effects of > hydrazine landing on your head would be far less problematic than a > piece of hurtling space junk tapping you on the head. > > The general consensus among many (e.g. www.theregister.co.uk) > appears to > be that the US wanted simply to test their sat-interceptor systems, > and > maybe make a bit of PR capital by flexing their muscles on the world > stage.
I think it was also because some significant chunks of very new, very secret technology might have survived reentry and potentially gotten into the wrong hands. BTW, I receive a link to a short video that shows the launch, a stage separation and the moment of impact of the shoot-down: mms://wm.ksdk.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/022108_deadsatellite_ksdk.wmv Dave _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
