The poker game continues in the latest satillite shootdown

[SUBMAN1]

I guess it all comes down to what do you want to show your enemy - the possible secrets of your spy satillites? Or the fact that our Aegis SM Block 3 can leave the atmosphere no problem? Or the fact that this SM Block 3 can kill your sat too with only a minor software mod?

Seems the idea of not letting an enemy getting it's hands on our spy sat capability is a more important hand to play than to let the world know what the true capability of the SM Block 3 is.

Let the poker game continue. The US still has all the chips, though its potential rivals just picked up a few.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us...ml?ref=science

-S

[geetrue]

You should rename your thread that they shot down the darn thing ...

I had to go to the link to find this out ...

Video of the unusual operation showed the missile leaving a bright trail as it streaked toward the satellite, and then a flash, a fireball, a plume and a cloud as the interceptor, at a minimum, appeared to have found its target, a satellite that went dead shortly after being launched in 2006.

All of this talk about shooting down a spy satellite and I didn't know it never even worked ... perhaps someone shot a laser weapon at it shortly after it was launched for all we know.

Didn't CIA lose like three of these things at the cost of a billion dollars each on the launch pad in California back in the late 90's ...

yep, I think so.

[Kapitan_Phillips]

Or perhaps they just wanted to blow sumptin up!

[RickC Sniper]

You know they were drooling at the opportunity to test fire the missle at something.

[DeepIron]

Ironic that the Chinese shot one of their own down a last year and are now belly-aching about the US action...

The Russians think we're tryig to escalate a "space weapons" war...

Third rock from the Sun... Life goes on as usual...

[AVGWarhawk]

The US wanted to flex some muscle. It worked.

[DeepIron]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

The US wanted to flex some muscle. It worked.

Perhaps. But to what advantage? "Don't even think about bullying the US"?

We flexed our muscle with the first Atomic Bomb, then ICBMs, then Blackbirds and U-2 overflights, spy satellites, stealth aircraft, etc...

Does anyone feel any safer?

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

The US wanted to flex some muscle. It worked.

Hardly. Try the cats out of the bag. This was the lesser of two evils in their book. The US would rather keep things secret. They never want to flex their muscle.

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by DeepIron

Ironic that the Chinese shot one of their own down a last year and are now belly-aching about the US action...

The Russians think we're tryig to escalate a "space weapons" war...

Third rock from the Sun... Life goes on as usual...

That is funny. The Chinese sat blast includes debris that will be in orbit as a space hazard to sats and shuttles for years to come. When the US did it, all the debris will fall to Earth within a week, which is why they waited so long to take the shot.

-S

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by August

Yeah but isn't the issue over the time it would take for the pieces to fall into the earths atmosphere? Two weeks does sound a lot better than, say 10 years i'd think.

What determines time before descent is mostly orbital stability, not the object's height above ground. By further disrupting orbital stability at high altitude, the drama would have been over a lot sooner.