Re: Missile vs. Satellite: Go Navy!

On Feb 20, 11:41 pm, Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jim Yanik <jya...@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Eugene Griessel) wrote in
news:47bc6645.1334073@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

j...@xxxxxxxxx (John Dallman) wrote:

They get further shots, but not on the same pass. That satellite is
coming over /fast/, much faster than the missile's top speed. The
situation is like trying to hit an artillery shell with a Sea Wolf, not

I would posit that your analogy is a tad flawed. Unless you can show
me an artillery shell capable of doing 7750 m/sec!

Basically the missile has to be there when the satellite arrives. No
real room for error.

The spokepricks and Beebe are declaring success. What they really
means who knows?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7254540.stm

--
BOFH excuse #100:

IRQ dropout

This is from the Los Angeles Times, the right words are said,

"The missile, shot from the cruiser Lake Erie as it sat in the Pacific
Ocean west of Hawaii, came just as the window for the operation opened
at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time. While the Pentagon said in a statement that
it would take 24 hours to be certain the fuel tank was punctured,
initial indications were that it had been hit.

The Navy waited until the space shuttle Atlantis landed Wednesday
morning before moving into position to fire the missile. Planners
determined that the best time to attempt the shot was late afternoon
local time, when the satellite would have had maximum exposure to the
sun, warming it up enough for the heat-seeking "kill vehicle" atop the
missile to find the cold, tumbling satellite.

The interceptor was not armed with explosives, relying on the high-
speed impact to do its work.

Even if the fuel tank of the spy satellite was not destroyed,
officials said, any hit would reduce the risk of danger to humans. The
5,000-pound satellite is so big that only half of it was expected to
burn up on reentry. But the missile strike probably broke it up into
smaller pieces that will be destroyed before entering the Earth's
atmosphere.

A senior defense official reported that observers monitoring the
satellite saw what appeared to be an explosion, indicating the fuel
tank was hit."

Time will tell if the words were merely hopeful or actual reflection
of the events. Enough people are looking at this to make it closer to
an eye-witness type of event.



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-satellite21feb21,0,4510814.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Navy missile hits failing spy satellite
The first shot strikes its target. But officials say they don't know
whether the fuel tank was destroyed.
By Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 21, 2008

HONOLULU -- The Navy hit a failed intelligence satellite speeding 133
miles above the Earth with a three-stage missile on the first try
Wednesday, a shot the Pentagon hopes destroyed the spacecraft's fuel
tank filled with 1,000 pounds of potentially toxic gas.

The missile, shot from the cruiser Lake Erie as it sat in the Pacific
Ocean west of Hawaii, came just as the window for the operation opened
at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time. While the Pentagon said in a statement that
it would take 24 hours to be certain the fuel tank was punctured,
initial indications were that it had been hit.

The Navy waited until the space shuttle Atlantis landed Wednesday
morning before moving into position to fire the missile. Planners
determined that the best time to attempt the shot was late afternoon
local time, when the satellite would have had maximum exposure to the
sun, warming it up enough for the heat-seeking "kill vehicle" atop the
missile to find the cold, tumbling satellite.

The interceptor was not armed with explosives, relying on the high-
speed impact to do its work.

Even if the fuel tank of the spy satellite was not destroyed,
officials said, any hit would reduce the risk of danger to humans. The
5,000-pound satellite is so big that only half of it was expected to
burn up on reentry. But the missile strike probably broke it up into
smaller pieces that will be destroyed before entering the Earth's
atmosphere.

A senior defense official reported that observers monitoring the
satellite saw what appeared to be an explosion, indicating the fuel
tank was hit.

In a sign of how important the military viewed the shoot-down, Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates gave the final approval to fire the Standard
Missile-3. According to Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, Gates
gave the go-ahead during a conference call with military commanders
while flying from Washington to Hawaii.

Although weather reports earlier in the day had warned of choppy seas,
the waters had calmed by the afternoon and "the secretary was told
conditions were ripe for an attempt," Morrell said. "That is when the
secretary gave the go-ahead to take the shot."

Gates landed in Hawaii for an overnight stop ahead of a weeklong trip
to Asia less than two hours before the missile was fired and was
informed of the successful hit just minutes after it occurred.

Morrell said Gates congratulated the commanders -- Air Force Gen.
Kevin P. Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, and Marine Gen.
James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff --
during a conference call in Honolulu and was "obviously very pleased."

Some experts with knowledge of military satellite programs have
expressed skepticism about the danger posed by the spacecraft and its
hydrazine jet fuel, arguing that the Pentagon was instead seeking to
prove its ability to strike down a satellite just a year after China
shot down one of its own aging weather satellites.

Military officials have denied any ulterior motive, and Navy Adm.
Timothy J. Keating, commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, told
reporters here that in multiple conversations with nations in the
region, he had been told of no objections to the shoot-down.

The U.S. has repeatedly protested the Chinese test, particularly
Beijing's failure to notify the international community that it was
attempting the strike. But Keating said he did not believe the two
operations were comparable.

"There are similarities, and there are significant differences between
what we're doing and what the Chinese did," Keating said. "Even after
the fact, they denied it in certain quarters, and when confronted at
senior military levels initially said it was a scientific experiment,
[that] there was no military connection."

According to the Pentagon statement, the missile fired from the Lake
Erie hit the satellite as it was traveling more than 17,000 mph.
Nearly all of the debris was expected to burn up within 48 hours, with
the rest reentering the atmosphere within 40 days. Keating said that
hazardous-materials teams had been organized in case any dangerous
debris eventually hit the Earth.

The satellite mission is a significant boost to the Navy's missile
defense system. All of the ships, Aegis radars and missiles used in
the shoot-down are normally assigned the task of targeting short- and
medium-range enemy missiles. The software on the missiles was modified
so they could find the satellite as it passed overhead.

Unlike the high-profile ground-based missile defense system, the Navy
has had a strong track record of testing its system over the last
eight years, hitting 12 of 14 dummy missiles.

Officials said the major difference between the satellite shoot-down
and a missile defense operation was the speed and coldness of the
falling satellite. The satellite was traveling nearly twice the speed
of an incoming missile and, having been dormant since just days after
its launch in December 2006, was frozen from months in space.

The satellite was operated by the National Reconnaissance Office, the
intelligence agency responsible for the nation's spy satellites.
Officials would not comment on the satellite's mission.

The Navy had been prepared to take a shot at the satellite every day
during the same two-hour afternoon window for much of the next week,
and it had prepared three separate missiles -- each costing $10
million -- for the operation in case the first shot missed or
malfunctioned.

The remaining two missiles will now have their software reconfigured
so they can be used in their normal missile defense mission.

The destroyers Decatur and Russell were also on scene in case the Lake
Erie's missiles missed or misfired.
.

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