US satellite shot down

RudyGarmisch

RudyGarmisch

Active member
Staff member
I'll do a quick brief to catch everyone up so we can have a better discussion:

About a year ago, China blew up one of its satellites with a missile, creating massive debris and micrometeorites in a heavy traveled orbit lane. By many estimates, up to 45% of the junk up there originated from this act . International outrage followed, but not much was done other than verbal reprimand.

Fast forward to last week. The Pentagon releases a report that the launch of one of our spy satellites has failed and that theres a fuel tank filled with nasty crap that's going to fall out of orbit next month and potentially crash and effect human populations.

Last night; A missile from a US ship nails the satellite, destroying it and the threat, according to the Pentagon.

Today; China complains because we apparently told other countries, but not them. They basically throw everything we told them last year back at us.

So, what do you think this all was? A real potentially hazardous situation that the Pentagon quickly solved? Or a sham operation to test our missile defense system? An affront to China's act last year? Maybe to send a message? All of the above?
 
exactly,

im no scientist but i would rather have all those little particles floating around space then the thing leaking all the gas and whatever else was on it, onto earth..
 
How was this SM3 modified to be accurate in a head on collision with a little satellite moving at 22,000 mph? I had heard that it was heat-seeking but it doesn't make much sense that the satellite had any heat signature unless it had already entered the atmosphere, which it wasn't supposed to do till a few weeks later. Or unless the satellite had a radioisotope-thermoelectric-generator (RTG), but that would mean it was carrying radioactive material.
 
first of all, it was 15,000mph and secondly, the missile was initially built to take out icbms, but over the course of two weeks they modified the missile in a rush program to take out satellites as well...
 
You're right, the satllite itself was moving at a somewhat lower speed, but the combined velocity of the missle and the satellite hitting eachother was 22,000 mph.

ICBM have a pretty hefty heat signature compared to a satellite that has lost power, thats why I'm wondering how exactly they managed that shot.
 
yep.

and as i said, there is an article in the new york times that addresses what you're saying and they said that it was modified to cold-track missiles. they said that this modification is only a one time thing, but of course in the grand scheme of things thats bullshit.

it was something like 10million a missile and the whole operation costed 30million.

its not the first time a satellite has been shot down. in like 1986 or something a fight jet at 80,000 feet above earth launched a air to air missile that took out a satellite in orbit.

when i said the chinese can go fuck themsevles is because when they did it, they took out their satellite that was much higher in orbit that fragmentted it into a few thousand little peices some 4 inches wide. now we can't use that orbit for a decade because of that shit floating in it. on top of that they didn't annouce what they did till 2 weeks later.

china is just pissed off because their ambitious aim to have a military as technologically as america has just been put further out of grasp. (to blow up a satellite cleanly not fragment it into thousands of peices. nasa said that what the chinese did was a huge fucking disaster) i guess china should go back to their million man army as their only saving grace. forget about the technology aspect.
 
It was obviously a test of our missle defence system. To prove to ourselves and China that we have the ability to destroy satelites. I also feel that there might have been sensitive technology on the satelite that we dont want falling into chinas back yard.

There was an anti missle to satelite distruction act a while ago but the US declined it. So ya we are trying to stay above the technology curve.
 
its obviously so the US can flex some muscle. they are scared that china can shoot down sattelites, and obviously americans dont like it when theyre not the greatest country in the world so they shoot down one of theres.
 
I'm just kinda pissed we're contributing to the massive amount of high speed debris up there. That shits just not cool for the scientific communities massive million dollar investments up there.
 
fuck china. what pussies.

anyways, my history teacher was telling us about this today...i told him about the theory that it was to test our defenses, or to "flex some muscle" as some of you said. he then tried to sound like a smart ass and try to rip me apart about how stupid i was for thinking about that. i was then giving some, what i think to be good reasons why we would. he then interrupted me and told me if i disrupted class anymore i was getting detention. and he told us to discuss our thoughts. i fucking hate that guy.

 
i think it was just a practical situation to prove that we can do it too. The satellite probably would have come down with no problems, but then they saw an opportunity to just be like "yea, no big deal China, we can do it too" by shooting it down. Simple as that, governments have been doing stuff like that for years. Like say...the space race. Same concept, only on a much larger scale.
 
To begin with, we didn't fail to launch a new satellite. The one we shot down has been orbiting for years and just burnt out and went derelict, but you're right, they were afraid it might hit someone because they weren't able to steer it into orbit at the proper place for a controlled destruction. 

As for China bitching about the US not telling them what we were planning to do, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'm pretty sure every government on the planet checks CNN on a daily basis, and they've been talking about shooting this stupid thing down for 3 weeks. If I fucking knew about it, I would expect the government of a country containing a billion people could have been abreast of the situation as well...
 
I THINK THAT ALOT OF PEOPLE ARE THICK IN THE SKULL.

think about this...

this shit is in the atmosphere. at the amount of friction that would work against the falling satelite would burn it up long before if fell to earth, in any case, at LEAST destroying the "harmful" gas on bored.

do u honestly think for one second that the US gives a SHIT about some fuel landing and hurting the planet? compared to the BILLIONS of litres of gas that is improperly disposed of annually? NO THEY FUCKING DONT.

they are blowing the sun of a bitch out of the sky becasue:

1. they can.

and 2. To show that they can now launch intercontinental bollistic missiles...which i do beleive has never been done before.

so...in newschoolers terms...they are flexing their arms and saying WHAT NOW BITCHES.

in doing so they are attempting to show their supperiority and might possibly start an arms race a la the cold war.

thoughts?
 
definetly gonna have to go with the power trip option... we have big missiles that can fly into any target we want them to.
 
i think soon it will be intergallactic missiles. a target can be selected from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world and will shoot into space and back into earth to stop radar/evacuation from being possible.(obv. more technology needs to be created to help with the atmosphere problem...)
 
holy fucking wierd....

right as i read the part where u said, the fuel tank is filled with crap, my dad is watching the news next to me and the news said that the fuel tank was filled with debres right as i read that part. wierd.
 
From what brief info I have heard on the subject, the satilite failed shortly after launch due to a failed computer on board and the US lost control of it.

Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask why they couldn't just repair the s.o.b? Its been busted and floating in space since 2006...they've had plently of time to jimmy up a side mission on the space voyages to fix it, so why didn't they?

IMO (read: uneducated for the most part on the issue and critical of anything that comes out of the US governments mouths), its was a test of their missle tech and the chance to get up on the world stage and say to everyone "watch yo back foo's"
 
Apparently this thing was a big boy. Chunks of it could have landed on earth, and the hydrazine fuel was encased in a pretty layer of spacecraft. Shit that large can hit ground even after the atmosphere has had its way with it, Skylab and the Colombia disaster have proven that. If the fuel tank survived the drop, or if even part of it did, that stuff landing near people would have been... bad. Inhaling that stuff basically freaks your nervous system out and causes organ failure.

And yeah, we've had the capabilities and have tested using missiles to nail stuff in space long before this. If anything, this was just a badly timed incident with the whole China thing or at most us trying to one up a rising superpower.
 
i agree with you. it was just a coverup to test out the missile, which by the way is an extreme accomplishment for the U.S. think about it. we launched a missile, from a ship FLOATING in the ocean, into outer space and it an object the size of a mini-van with a missile that was the size of a microwave. the knowledge and technology that went in to this was amazing.

oh, and you also have remember that we are in a time of war. china is not found of us, as well as a lot of other nations, its Bushes last term in office. he wanted to prove that U.S. is still number one, you don't think that he would go out without a bang, do you? (no pun intended). haha
 
not not really, because the satellite was in such low orbit that it was all going to come down eventually anyways. they said that the time for the remaining debris to come back through the atmosphere is 30-40 days. if you were talking about chinas attempt then that is true.
 
i just realized that we blew a fucking sattelite out of outerspacer- thats pretty sick but anyway i think if it was a test they wouldnt have told the public- oh yeah there is only 18 members on right now
 
Thats pretty wicked how they say they are not sure if they managed to get rid of all of the toxic shit and yeah there is a 25% chance it will now land on Canada, thanks dicks. I am glad that you got to flex your muscles like that congrats, i'll be sure to send you the bill for my toxic fuel induced cancer etc.
 
ha the one china took down was probly made out of duct tape and going 50 mph, china sucks and the only thing ilike about china is its food and some ski equipment
 
The satellite was already in a decaying orbit, so whatevers still up there won't really stay up there for long. As for the shootdown, the U.S. had spy equipment in that they didnt want anyone finding after reentry, plus the hazard with the fuel, Hydrazine thats pretty much a poison and extremely flammable.
 
civilians will NEVER know the full capability of it's government and it's government's technology. that shit is kept tight. i'm sure they can do things now that we think is purely futuristic and impossible.
 
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