Re: Don't ya hate when...


"Alan Moore" <alan.s.moore@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

Some of which have at least a fair chance of
surviving re-entry, which is the problem.

Not very likely, actually.

Oh dear.

LOTS of large -and small- chunks of the shuttle survived reentry quite well,
thank you.

This includes things as small and delicate as an astronaut's shoulder-patch
from the shuttle mission in question, middle-sized things such as portions
of the astronauts themselves, and things as large as one of the main
landing-gear assemblies -that just missed a boat-load of fishermen as it
impacted in a lake.

In short, there was *plenty* of stuff scattered around that could have
proven useful had the shuttle contained a bunch of classified military
material.

Now the odds of some hyper-secret portion of a state-of-the-art DoD spy
satellite falling into enemy hands may be very low when you take reentry
damage and the odds of it landing in the wrong spot together, but we don't
pay the DoD to take any chances at all when they don't have to.

The classified bits are at least as vulnerable as any other bits.

When a high-tech satellite reenters the atmosphere there is no way of
knowing what might survive the chaotic reentry process in decent condition.
See, for example, the poignant discovery of that little cloth shoulder-patch
that was discovered lying an a Texas meadow and showing no visible signs of
damage.


.

Relevant Pages

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