[FPSPACE] "Down in Flames" -- how the mass media got the satellite shootdown story wrong

[Keith Gottschalk]

hi,
    a few very quick responses.

>"Not a single member state questioned our motivation at that meeting,"
Johnson told me. "In fact, our ?transparency' was 
>praised not only by our close allies but also by those with whom
relations are sometimes less cordial."  

    The South African delegate to that meeting confirms this.

>. Or it was all a budget-boosting gimmick for the missile-defense
program.

    This motive is not mutually exclusive from the safety first
motivation. Two reasons are stronger than one. Also, it must be
reassuring for the military to know that their missile really works, &
gave a crew some practice!


>For many of these experts, the first and foremost proof that the
satellite was no danger was provided by thousands of 
>previous cases in which man-made objects had tumbled from orbit
without causing terrestrial damage. For example, 
>Michael Krepon, cofounder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, said, "In
the history of the space age, there has not been a 
>single human being who has been harmed by man-made objects falling
from space..[.....]

[BUT]

>A close call from earlier in this decade shows just how wrong those
experts are. On October 15, 2004, an off-course 
>Chinese spy satellite's film canister smashed through the roof of a
four-story apartment building in Penglai in southwest 
>Sichuan. Photographs through the smashed roof of the
refrigerator-sized capsule sitting among splintered bricks and wood 

   Also, didn't that Russian satellite that crashed near Rosieres in
Argentina also involve a washing-machine size chunk crashing into
someone's garage or other building?

  Also a near miss. The following incident happened about two hours
driving away from where I'm typing this. When, about a decade ago, that
Delta IUS propellant tank, Ti pressurization sphere, & solid engine
nozzle crashed down onto South Africa, one of those pieces fell within a
dozen metres of a team of farm workers harvesting potatoes. A miss might
be as good as a mile - but that does show what the shoot-down could have
prevented.

warm regards, Keith