When the media tells us sheep that the gov't will "shoot down an old spy satellite"...?

Did you ever go to a science lesson?

Here's the deal for those of you stupid enough to think you know more about space than astrophysicists.

What happens to you if you are running on carpet and trip and slide along it? You get burnt by friction. You aren't going particularly fast - but something falling out of orbit IS. As it travels through the atmosphere it will evaporate because of the heat generated by friction. This happens to general debris from space ALL THE TIME. Most detritus that hits the atmosphere is very small, but occaisionally something of a reasonable size hits the atmosphere and gets burnt up - releasing lots of light. These are shooting stars.

The point of the missile is to break it into piece small enough that there is definately NO chance that any piece will make it to Earth - and even on the incredibly tiny probability there will be, to direct it over the sea. It is probably the case that the whole satelite could be brought into the atmosphere and STILL not make it to Earth, but they want to be sure by breaking it up.

If the articles didn't quote the names of some real government officials, I'd think someone misinterpreted a joke about Bush's intelligence as being real.

Obviously, shooting a falling object won't stop it from falling. It will spread the shower of debris over a longer period of time, as many of the objects will orbit for quite a while before re-entering.

The objects most likely to survive re-entry (spherically shaped titanium fuel tanks filled with frozen fuel) are also the most likely objects to survive the explosion of a satellite hit by a missile. Shooting the satellite will lessen the chances of pieces re-entering the atmosphere, but not by very much.

Over a 150 pieces of debris from human space launches re-enter the atmosphere each year and, once in a while, a piece actually reaches the ground intact (fuel tanks are the most likely things to survive). We'll be reducing the risk from very, very low to just a tiny bit even lower.

By the way, the person who thinks debris from the Chinese ASAT test makes up 80% of man-made space debris way underestimates just how much stuff is up there. There's very roughly about 10,000 objects up there. The actual number varies a lot, but is usually at least 9,000 objects with more objects towards the end of solar mins (reduced solar activity) as we are today. The Chinese peppered space with hundreds of pieces of debris, but the debris still makes up only about 3% of the objects orbiting the Earth.

During solar max, even more objects enter the atmosphere because the atmosphere of Earth expands in response to the increased solar activity - kind of like spring cleaning, except every 11 years instead of yearly. And, of course, the cleaning doesn't bring down enough objects to compensate for the number of objects we add each year.

China did it in basic terms to attempt out a sparkling missile. they did no longer ought to break the elements satellite tv for pc. we are doing it because the satellite tv for pc has unsafe cloth that desires to be destroyed earlier it lands the following and hurts someone. In different words, we've a bona fide clarification for what we are doing. The chinese language did not. Why do liberals like to equate issues that are completely diverse, in basic terms to push their hate-Bush political schedule? talk about moral relativism run amuck. .

80% of the crap floating around in space right now in our orbits is from 1 satellite the Chinese blew up. Now most of it will eventually burn up in our atmosphere... but till then... yup.. that, and a new blown up satellite, would be a hazard for other space born object in a similar orbit or passing through the orbit.

Shrapnel moving at high velocity,moving either into atmoshere and burning up or out of orbit and eventually out of the solar system.

I think they would rather that not happen, and will do what they can to prevent that scenario.

but, its probably more important that the information or technology on that satellite isn't salvageable. So, they want to destroy it so whatever 'intelligence' remains with the folks who already have it.

if they take pride in their jobs, they are hoping they can do this with the least amount of risk from the debris.

as opppsed to a 5000 pound chunk of metal striking the earth, possibly in someones neighborhood? I'll take the shrapnel

Lets hope that they fry it at a lower level in the atmosphere..

If not we can add the retired satellite debris belt to the maps.. Just inside the Van Allen radiation belt.

Now this is getting ridiculous. I'm going to go searching for your question (doubtless it's there) regarding the Northern Illinois University shooting. Haven't you tried to make that into a "false flag operation" yet? How so? Do you think they needed to do one thing in Illinois, so they had to scare everybody there to get it done?

Never mind. Note to self...Never talk logic to someone who has no idea what that is.

Wow. Just stay in your basement. You'll be fine.