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Defunct Spy Satellite Falling From Orbit
dnormant, among other readers, sent us word that a US spy satellite has lost power and propulsion and could hit the Earth in late February or March. Government officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret. None of the coverage speculates on how big the satellite is, but Wikipedia claims that US spy satellites in the KH-11 class, launched up to the mid-90s, are about the size of the Hubble — which is 13 meters long and weighs over 11,000 kg. "The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down... A senior government official said that lawmakers and other nations are being kept apprised of the situation."
Those stories about telling what brand of cigarettes a person was smoking from space seem a lot more plausible.
Not just answers, the correct questions.
is this going to contribute to space junk, hit my house, or just burn up on the way in?
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
OK, someone do the math:
How thick of a tinfoil hat would I have to put on top of my house to protect it from a 12-ton satellite?
Don't Tread on Me
No joke. I had no idea they were that massive.
Do they use solar panels for power? Seems to me that they'd want to keep as low a profile as possible, which would eliminate the large profile created by solar panels.
Which leaves radioisotope thermoelectric generation as the power source - which would mean there's plutonium (or another highly radioactive material) in these things.
Yikes...
When Skylab hit the cow, the American government refused to compensate.
Wasn't there some speculation that a recent cause of a strange sickness breaking out in (I think it was Peru) due to this sort of thing? "hazardous matereials"
The probability of this satellite landing on Osama bin Laden is probably higher than the probability of him being caught within the next couple of months. It's good to see the U.S. finally cracking down on that slimeball!
I'm guessing these things don't just shut down on their own. So, readers of /., which is more likely the cause?
1. Focused EMP from the surface?
or
2. It was running Windows.
Anybody want my mod points?
So are we gonna take bets on if this will auto magically land on Iran. Also if it does fall on another country does this constitute a first strike since its military equipment.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
And here I was hoping it was a Vulcan ship!
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
Maybe it's a coincidence but didn't china not to long ago demonstrate they could shoot don satellites...
You think nobody thought of this scenario before shooting a billion dollar satellite into space? Look what happened a number of years ago in Florida when a rocket carrying a communications satellite exploded before it left the atmosphere. http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9808/27/rocket.blast2/index.html
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
That will be USA 193 (06-057A, #29651). This is it's current orbit:
USA 193
1 29651U 06057A 08022.26925691 0.00105000 00000-0 21306-3 0 07
2 29651 58.5247 160.3977 0003288 53.6760 306.3240 15.98950761 06
Lowest point is about 275 km above earth surface currently.
This under the right conditions is an easy to see object: it can reach magnitude
+1 and because of its low orbit is very fast, spectacular to see.
source: Marco Langbroek
picture in orbit:
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/satcom_transits/USA193Sepbw1.jpg
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/satcom_transits/193bw.jpg
Note, no solar panels.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Since the submitter is quoting the AP story verbatim, shouldn't he at least give some indication of where he lifted the text from?
#DeleteChrome
earth 5425 - satellites 0
How much is the warning of it having dangerous materials aboard meant to protect us and how much is it meant to keep people from being too inquisitive about the top secret spy satellite?
Furthermore, what sort of liability applies for a rogue space satellite if it crashes into your house? I'm sure the government will pay for it just to keep the media at bay, but still, an interesting tort question. I'd assume the government would be strictly liable. -TwoHundredOK
Far too early to call Chuck Norris at this point.
Comparative Characteristics of Imagery Satellites
Example: The Lacrosse satellite (KH-12 is the other designation) weighs 14-16 tons.
"Lacrosse and Onyx are the code names for the United States' National Reconnaissance Office terrestrial radar imaging reconnaissance satellite. While not officially confirmed by the NRO or anybody in the U.S. government, there is widespread evidence to confirm its existence."
"Due to overruns, the cost of the Lacrosse-1 radar reconnaissance satellite launched in 1988 from the Space Shuttle exceeded $1 billion. In the opinion of experts, it was designed, above all, to search for mobile launchers for Soviet ICBM's and track strategic weapon systems beyond staging bases. The radar images were transmitted to the processing center via TDRS repeaters located under the management of NASA and deployed in a geostationary orbit. The Lacrosse-2 was launched in 1991 using a Titan-4 booster rocket from the Western Missile Test Range, which made it possible to increase the orbit inclination and, consequently, the zone of coverage from 57 to 68 degrees."
From Yahoo!
Pike, director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org, estimated that the spacecraft weighs about 20,000 pounds and is the size of a small bus. He said the satellite would create 10 times less debris than the Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003.
Now, um, how did the darn thing "loose power?..." Bet that's a secret...
In 2002, officials believe debris from a 7,000-pound science satellite smacked into the Earth's atmosphere and rained down over the Persian Gulf, a few thousand miles from where they first predicted it would plummet.
Anyone wanna take bets on this one hitting Iran?
Can we get Bruce Wallas and Ben Aflac to drill a hole in it and blow it up?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
...of the telescope's "zoom" factor.
Having read the article, it would seem that the government is far more concerned about "loosing state secrets" than loosing lives due to the uncontrolled fall of this 12-tonne satellite. If it falls into a heavily populated area like, say, New York or London, those killed by it could care less about some silly and inane "secrets" that are over 10 years out of date, anyway.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
John added the solar panels in the first image.
see the following note from him:
http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Jan-2008/0204.html
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I've heard from a couple of different sources that the Hubble is pretty much a modified KH-11. While the resolution is pretty good, they can tell the difference between say a 90 inch diameter missile and 100 inch diameter missile, I doubt that they can tell the brand of cigarette.
KH-11 series spacecraft were called the Key Hole satellites - they were the first large reconnaissance spacecraft to send images directly to earth; previous spy satellites used film return (clumsy, slow, and unreliable). KH-11's used CCDs - quite advanced for a system developed in the late 1970's.
The seven KH-11 spacecraft had primary mirrors of 2.3 to 2.4 meters. The system provided an ultimate ground resolution between 15 to 50 cm at closest approach (perigee); actual resolution was quite a bit worse.
There's no nuclear battery on board -- power came from 11 unfolded solar panels (which, on the first Key Hole satellites didn't provide quite enough power during downlinks!). I assume the main danger to earthlings is due to the reentry of the main mirror. Since the KH-11s are in polar orbits, the debris could come down anywhere on earth, with a one-in-four chance of hitting land.
The KH-11 spy satellites were developed in parallel with the Hubble Space Telescope, and the same contractors worked on both. In fact, the KH-11 uses much the same hardware (carbon-graphite support system, front door hatch system, data-relay dish through communications satellites). Because of the secrecy surrounding the KH-11 development, the Space Telescope project often saw similar secrecy. Indeed, astronomers were discouraged (or barred) from much of the engineering of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Very interesting first-hand account of the radiological cleanup of the crash of a Soviet spy satellite in Canada: http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gamma/ml_e.php
The Canadians had a Nova minicomputer which was subjected to conditions that it was never designed for. They programmed it by editing memory locations by hand... Not with the front-panel switches, even though Nova had those.
If the satellite was Russian and had nukes then we would have a Space Cowboy Situation
It's the contents of the onboard hard drive that are the hazardous materials. If certain folks find you in possession of that data, well, lets say Gitmo would be a holiday.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I wonder what the odds are that it will actually hit a person on the ground? Obviously, the math gets more complicated as you figure in the path of the satellite. I'm guessing it would be a polar orbit, then? This means that the odds are proportionally higher that it will fall on a particular spot the farther north or south you go. And, how big large an area would we consider a kill-zone for a satellite of this size?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Since, generally speaking, spy satellites are considered the most closely guarded secrets of both the US and any other nation producing them, rest assured that this will never be allowed to hit the ground before being blown into a million pieces. If an ocean-ditch isn't in the cards, since it appears they've lost all control of the satellite and are at the mercy of probability during the deorbit, the US will not let it re-enter and land somewhere (even in pieces) where another country could examine the wreckage. (and yes, I'm including allied countries.) Our "anti-ballistic missile defense system" may get its first real-world test! Alternatively, if it does land, a B-2 will certainly turn the landing zone into a smoking many-thousand degree crater seconds or minutes later. It doesn't matter if it's ten year old tech - no one else is going to be getting their hands on it if the US has anything to say about it. (and yes, I'm including if it lands in a populated area.) If it can't be recovered covertly, it will be destroyed overtly.
Another chance at a free taco! Whoo hoo!
It seems to me that in just about every SciFi space movie I have every seen you just have to turn on the blinking red self-destruct light and it will blow itself up -- with a very nice "Have A Nice Day" announcement just before the BIG Ka-Boom! Oh, and cut the yellow wire if you need to stop it after the fail-safe point has past.
The Spice Must Flow!
I'd be more than happy to see those that labeled me say something meaningful about this. Worse still, we might have to deal with toxic substances.
I'm not sure how this B-2 scenario is going to work if the satellite falls deep within the territory of China or Russia. Gary Powers does not work for the US Government any more.
No need to worry. Bricks burn up pretty quickly when they drop out of orbit.
I'm sorry, but it just is. One example is the no-comment for security reasons on whether or not we might "shoot it down." Uhhhhhh..... maybe it would be a security issue to create a bigger debris field to deal with where such platforms are flying, and that's satellite-speak for "What a dumb question?"
/. and avoid the article - nothing to see there...
Or, how the leap was made from spy satellite to keyholes are falling......
Or, the spokesman had to speak from anonymity due to security?
The posts here are about a bazillion times more insightful and informative than the articles. Read
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
How is it's classification level related to the chance of hitting someone? Oh, that's right - there's no relationship. And if it's really just dead (like both prime and redundant of some critical system both failed) they could publish the entire stack of schematics on the front page of the NYT and it wouldn't change a damn thing. Other than pointlessly revealing important secure information.
And, from having been involved in a satellite launch that failed and had the potential from burning in, everybody involved takes it very seriously indeed. In our case, our spacecraft was stuck in a low orbit that passed over 70% of the worlds population. The primary concern of all involved, including the government customer, was eliminating the possibility of coming down uncontrolled in a populated area. Even though the chances of parts of significant size and weight making it all the way to the ground were not very high at all, any hope of salvaging it for test purposes, etc, was not on the table as it raised the chances that it would come down uncontrolled in a few hundred years.
Regardless of the bizarre paranoia over 'The Government', everyone who works there is a person with just as much sense and concern for others as anyone else. If you would be concerned, so would they. Keeping secrets would not outweigh any significant risk to someone on the ground - it's that in this case you knowing more about it almost certainly wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. Whether you want to believe it or not, there are very legitimate reasons for most security decisions.
Brett
Just how big a Beryllium Sphere does this object have anyways?
Now that I know the lawmakers are going to be briefed...
Just another infinitesimally small chance that my worthless life will be ended swiftly, painlessly, and unexpectedly. w00t.
I believe russia has bounced satellites back into proper orbit with empty missiles. If there's nuclear power in that satellite it may be the only thing that saves us.
"U.S. NRO spy satellite may be total loss
... that historically is known to be good," said the
Wed Mar 7, 2007 10:17 AM IST
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials are likely to declare a Lockheed
Martin Corp. spy satellite a total loss after efforts to restore its
ability to communicate failed repeatedly over the past three months,
two defense officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
The experimental L-21 classified satellite, built for the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) at a cost of hundreds of millions of
dollars, was launched successfully on Dec. 14 but has been out of
touch since reaching its low-earth orbit.
Limited data received from the satellite indicated that its on-board
computer tried rebooting several times, but those efforts failed, said
one official, who is knowledgeable about the program and spoke on
condition of anonymity.
The satellite carried sophisticated cameras to take high-resolution
pictures and test equipment intended for use on the broader Future
Imagery Architecture (FIA) program, in which both Boeing Co. and
Lockheed are involved.
Its failure raises questions about the schedule for the already-much-
delayed FIA program, which was due to launch a first satellite in two
to three years, analysts said.
One of the defense officials acknowledged the satellite's failure was
"not helpful."
"It's part of an overarching architecture. When you're trying to move
forward on several dimensions, it can't help accomplish those goals,"
the official said.
The other official said he expected schedule adjustments, but no major
delays, as a result of the NRO satellite failure.
"It might impact the schedule for introduction of new technologies,"
he added.
Another government official said he was unaware of any changes to the
FIA program as a result of the satellite issue.
Lockheed, prime contractor for the experimental NRO satellite,
declined to comment. The NRO, which designs, builds and operates
reconnaissance satellites for the U.S. military and intelligence
communities, also had no comment.
One of the defense officials said the issue with the satellite
involved the computer that runs it, not the new sensors that it was
meant to test.
"The failure has nothing to do with anything new. It happened with a
set of components
official.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard- Smithsonian Center
For Astrophysics, said the satellite's software problems raised
questions about the adequacy of testing and oversight by the
contractors and the Air Force.
"The question is why was this software failure not caught in ground
test before launch," McDowell said, noting that oversight was
particularly challenging in classified programs.
He said the satellite's software woes were reminiscent of those
experienced by the Mars rover named Spirit, which was out of
communication for more than two weeks after it landed on Mars in
January 2004 because its flash disk kept filling up, prompting the
computer system to crash repeatedly.
Engineers finally solved the problem by sending a command to the
computer to clear the disk, enabling a successful rebooting of the
system, he said."
http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.space.policy/2007-03/msg00261.html
We know who you are. Do not attempt to leave your house, turn off your computer, or unplug your microwave. We will be there shortly to bring you into custody.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Wow, I didn't know how many things you could get wrong in two sentences..
If the satellite is powered by radioactive isotopes, it is almost certainly a radiothermal battery. Tritium has a half-life of 12 years, which means you would see the power yield drop too quickly for a satellite to be useful. This thing probably contains plutonium, which has a long enough half-life to be a relatively stable power source, but short enough that you don't need so much of it get a decent amount of heat. (You may now proceed to wig out about a few kg of plutonium dispersed in the atmosphere if the canister fails...)
Even if there were tritium on the satellite, it would "burn up" in the atmosphere since tritium IS hydrogen. The heat of reentry would probably cause the tritium to bond with oxygen forming water vapor in the upper atmosphere. This would be well away from people, not to mention the radioactivity would be dispersed over such a wide area, it would be hard for it to kill anyone.
And finally, tritium is "water-soluable" only because it you usually find it replacing one of the hydrogens in the water molecule if it is hanging around on the ground (otherwise it's dispersed into the atmosphere). That is to say, tritium if you find it in the soil IS water (radioactive, of course), essentially. Comparing it to DDT is silly. The tritium will go disperse through dilution with untainted water, as well as simultaneously decay away due to the 12 year half-life. So no matter what happens, you get an extra factor of two drop in intensity every decade. (If we could only be so lucky with the nasty stuff in spent uranium fuel rods. Some of those isotopes take centuries or millennia to decay in half.)
To be fair, the short half-life of tritium means that it doesn't take very much of it in one place to exceed suggested health limits. So the best thing for an unlikely falling canister of tritium would be to either stay totally contained all the way down, or to fragment early on, where it can disperse into the atmosphere, which can easily absorb a man-made amount of tritium (hard to make very much) into its vast amount of water vapor.
You should be more concerned about the satellite hitting you in the head.
Hah! Were they using the same fuel sensors as the Shuttle? FAIL!
"I got it all together but I forgot where I put it."
Are likely to survive reentry. Skylab had a film safe that survived, too.... but this kind of device is (obviously) unmanned, has no "film safe" and has depleted its energy supply (thermal based upon radio-nucleotide decay) - so, one mass might actually reach the planet's surface.
I realize it would increase cost (a whole lot), but since it's inevitable that these situations will occur, shouldn't we start putting emergency rockets in satellites that are too large to burn up in orbit? Something that will shoot them out into space, if something like this happens?
It's just a matter of time before one of these things come crashing down into a populated area.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
Who do you call? its not like it will officially exist, so i guess you are just out of luck getting your car/house/foot replaced.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I see someone has already posted the TLE's for this, so at least there is a chance that we can track it.
Does anyone know if Gpredict can calculate impact points ?
Don't worry, it's obvious that the satellite will fall where it was last pointed, onto the head of Obama... of is it Osama? O*ama.
I hope it isn't China's anti-satellite defense system, because that would just result in bad, bad things. Especially since Bush & Cheney have so "little" time left and his legacy stands no chance of being favourable.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss dumping a bunch of Tritium in the stratosphere. It'll probably turn into HTO pretty quick, and I don't think you can be sure it'll get well mixed before precipitating. There are lots of ways that it might end up concentrated enough to give some unlucky people a dangerous dose. Might even end up killing more people than the 0.0000001 that falling metal will get.
So, I'd be more concerned about a big tank of tritium re-entering than I would be of a big chunck of metal, but not by all that much.
Most insurance cover specifically includes statements that any space debris (including falling satellites) will not be covered.
So it's every geek for themselves!
I believe the clause was written in years ago when Sputnik fell to Earth. That goes for meteors, blue ice, rocket stages and acts of God (whatever that means).
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
...so that they can send it a cease-and-desist letter?
Launched Dec 26 2006, had orbital control problems or else was launched into a very unusual orbit for an intelligence platform. (Open info in the internet).
Given that its NRO and that size, I'd guess its a multi-sensor platfrom.
Pretty sad - those things run about $2 Billion. And you can bet that its absence will leave holes in intelligence coverage and really contrain intelligence gathering due to restriction of resources.
Give that plutonium power sources are pretty robust - few moving parts, but low earth orbit stuff doesnt need that - solar and batteries are usually sufficient. So its likely solar powered.
Seems the NRO has not learned to diversify, still putting its eggs in one big basket. That and that the Aerospace companies that sell them to the Govt only know how to make One Big Rocket instead of managing constellations of more numerous but smaller and chaeper satellites. (Pet Peeve of mine).
I bet they had solar arrays, but from amateur images there werent any deployed at any time. That would be the reason why the satellite died - something broke in the solar arrays or deployment process. Since its that new of a satellite (2006), I bet they had equipment failures from the start if its power that is the issue.
Tinfoil hat time: Take all of my above speculation (I used to work in Aerospace and the military) with a grain of salt - they could be using "power" as a cover some classified event that trashed the satellite, like a collision with junk from the Chinese anti-missle mess. That would be very politically inconvenient for the Bush administration right now, and this would be a nice excuse to make that problem go away.
Whatever the case is, the US intelligence community is out 2 billion, and a lot of capacity that was supposed to come online is not there. Could make for problems.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
I was thinking, what if it incidentally hit Mecca? On the other hand, do we know what's inside the Kaaba? Maybe some prehistoric 'satellite' hit ground zero there, inspired a cult, and now history finishes some circle, and this thing goes down in the same spot.
Whatever, bad timing, the Hadj is already over, the circus left town, so to speak.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
I see a couple of comments above naming the satellite as "USA 193" - is there some good source confirming this? I need a reliable source if I'm to write the Wikipedia article, damnit! Posts on Slashdot apparently aren't acceptable any more... and I don't want a whole bunch of {{dubious}} {{disputed}} {{citation needed}} tags appearing...
Grr! Arg!
From TFA:
"He said the satellite would create 10 times less debris than the Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003."
So, so if the Shuttle created say 5 (arbitrary sized) units of debris this satellite would create a 50 units, and 5 minus 50 = negative 45 units of debris that must somehow spring from earth and re-assemble?
Where do journalists learn to speak English these days?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm not sure who to blame more when I see things like this, the journalist or the squealer. I think both should be fired for improperly releasing information. Improperly in this case just means they were not responsible for talking to the press but they did so anyway against organizational rules. Luckily in this case it probably isn't a matter of national security since the information is only secret instead of classified.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
They are,, KH-11 and hubble are the same frame with different optics.... different power but ... LOL we know how the optics parts went ......idiots
. with the frame (platform) and screwy download protocols design
added to the good the team Ive worked with its a wonder it works at all
Good ideas ... hidden under a cloud of shit....
thank god i'm retired
Maybe we forgot to shutter the laser again...
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I wonder if taco bell will set up another target
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=4152
don't a bunch of zombie movies start this way? is it wrong that I eagerly anticipate the impending zombie holocaust?
http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal114/SpaceRace/sec500img/561l6p6.jpg
Well, actually I haven't seen the movie itself yet, but I read the first part of the synopsis.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Air Force http://www.cufon.org/cufon/malmstrom/malm1.htm
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Was anyone else reminded of 'The Andromeda Strain' by Michael Crichton when reading TFA?
Wait for the first time a huge satellite (military or not) hit a major city anywhere in the world in a roughly intact size. Then it won't matter anymore whether the probability of it happening again will be low, you will have to face scares roughly as bad as the "terror" scare when it started, every time one will come down (and they do)
- One is a book, which I unfortunately don't have a handy copy of;
- a second looks like a military conspiracy fansite (though perhaps because it's from 2000) and only mentions "Hubble" once in a nonsubstantive manner; and
- the third is from GlobalSecurity.org, and seems to at least be humble about its accuracy with a nice, up-front disclaimer.
Would it have been so hard to simply link to this third site instead of claiming Wikipedia as an authority? That aside, I'm quite confident that Wikipedia, as an organization (WikiMedia notwithstanding), doesn't "claim" anything about the KH-11. At least say, "the Wikipedia article on KH-11 says that..."
Methinks someone's highschool English teacher was a bit too lenient.
(I know, I must be new here...)
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I will have to keep an eye out for it. I don't want it fal[no carrier]
I occasionally work (through a temp agency) somewhere (non-classified) that, due to the nature of the work involved (things that might annoy keyholes), gets to play "red light, green light" with USAF Space Command in Colorado.
I worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week, and I don't recall exactly which of those days it was, but on one of them, pretty early in the evening if I recall, the phone rang and the guy in charge who answered it (I've emailed him to ask if he remembers which day) said that we had to stop doing what we do for a while because Space Command had "lost track of" a satellite.
I'm guessing that would be this one, and that it took a few days for them to decide that it was well and truly lost, and for the news to filter out to the public.
Just as an FYI, "nuclear powered" tends to mean "Plutonium." That was true for Soviet satellites. There wasn't much info floating around for the keyhole class satellites (which this one presumably is, since it's prefixed 'KH'). But it's a good bet that it had one.
I'd like to think that the designers, when they designed the satellite, realized that re-entering a chunk of Plutonium was a bad idea and designed a mechanism to eject it in an escape orbit. Hopefully it's now-uncontrolled orbit is due to the ejection of said nuclear material.
BTW, I like the way the article mentioned "beryllium" as the hazardous material. Beryllium and copper used to be used to make golf clubs, and you can still find BeCu clubs on eBay today. I highly doubt that anyone would issue a press release warning about 10 tons of old Ping BeCu clubheads hurtling towards us from space. But it's fun to read nonetheless.
Better YouTube link: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YD14UGCtRRc
Which dribbling retard tagged this with 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong'? Even the summary makes it perfectly bloody obvious what could go wrong.
"Algebraical symbols are used when you don't know what you are talking about" - BCS
she was walking all alone down the street in the alley her name was sally she never saw it when she was hit by space junk in new york miami beach heavy metal fell in cuba angola saudi arabia on xmas eve said norad a soviet sputnik hit africa india venezuela (in texas kansas) it's falling fast peru too it keeps coming and now i'm mad about space junk i'm all burned out about space junk oooh walk & talk about space junk it smashed my baby's head and now my sally's dead
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Usually an "act of god" is a natural, non-man influenced disasters. So your house might not be covered against a forest fire, but that depends on whether it was created by lightning strike (act of god) or a poorly extinguished campfire/cigarette or broken glass in the sun (act of man).
It also gets kinda dicey when it comes to things that were caused by a "natural disaster" but exabberated by human factors. For example, I wonder what the situation would be considered in a case like New Orleans, where flooding is natural, but poor dike maintenance might be a human-influenced factor.
Of all the people they have to inform, the one group they specially point out is 'lawmakers'. How are those supposed to help with it? Quickly pass a law that it is illegal to stand under a falling satellite, so they can sue any victims, and avoid paying any compensation?
Dibbs!
In fact, the conspiracy theory about the whole shuttle project was that it was designed all along to launch, service and retrieve KH11s. Hence the shuttle's expensive wings, landing gear, etc. You don't need all that hardware to launch stuff, and you only need a little reentry pod to bring people back. We could have put a simple disposable aluminium tube onto the Shuttle's tank and boosters, along with an engine pod and a personnel pod, and it'd have done pretty much the same job (designs exist). The only way that the shuttle's design makes sense is if it's designed to bring large objects safely back to Earth, and the only things that we can think of that the shuttle can reach that are expensive enough to be worth bringing back are KH11s. Hence the large bay doors, and hence the retrieval arm
Why would you want to retrieve a KH11?
Well, they are damned expensive (estimates vary between 600m and a billion dollars each, depending on inflation), and KH11s have a different mission profile to most satellites, in that they're expected to be able to get real close to specific locations at specific times, so they can't just sit passively in a general-purpose orbit. If you get a tip-off about something funny happening in some Russian shipyard right now, and you want hi-res satellite pics before "whatever it is" moves on, then you need a satellite to be able to manoeuvre into position to be able to sweep down and take those pics, at that location, ASAP. So the last third of a KH11 is supposed to be a hydrazine-based propulsion system.
Snag is, when that propulsion system runs out of gas your KH11 loses its reason for living, so we wanted some way of refuelling or servicing the things in orbit, or perhaps even bringing them back for servicing and relaunch (hell-llo Mr Space Shuttle).
As for any superficial external similarities between Hubble and a KH11, well, the common factor is going to be the dimensions of the Shuttle cargo bay, so yes, it'd be surprising if they didn't have the same basic body dimensions. You want to make best use of the space available.
Eric Baird
Flaming great. Like I don't have enough problems to worry about now I have to think about a potential satellite dropping on my head. I promise the US government , if this flaming satellite lands on me Im going to sue you to the tune of billions. Why put something up there if you can't control it. I used to expect stuff like this from the Russians with their outdated , low funded 90's forces but now the US is doing it. Imagine what happens when the chinese, indians , get in on the space launching idea. then I have twice as much chance of dying as before from a satellite squashing me. Doubt id even get a paying since we in the UK have a bloody puppet government of the US anyway. The us says jump and the british government says how high. in events like this i should live in china or iran atleast they stand up tot he US government. ------------- www.xenbet.com
We all know it's a giant "star" filled with alien monsters, to which a hot transforming android chick in a bikini will fly to destroy it and save our collective ass.
They don't need to use the silly "spy satellite" defense.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Thanks for the URL
This story is very interesting from the perspective of a scientist who was there and contributed directly to the find.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Actually, you aren't too far off the mark. Hubble is actually based a lot on the KH-11 package. The basic idea is, as you said, if we can read x,y,z on earth from space, we ought to be able to use a similar thing to see a,b,c in the galaxy. It's sort of a sinister spy sat for the technical good.
This is my sig.
Exactly why I have landscaped the outer perimeter of my yard with giant piles of rock.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Cheap bet.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Perhaps lost power means hit by space junk? Maybe the third one was not able to dodge the bullets.... http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=1&mode=thread&commentsort=0&sid=431502&op=Reply
You forgot about the moon, which has been winning for billions of years.
Wait. Check that. If I'm asleep and horizontal, I probably take up more like 12 square feet. That increases the chance of having 20,000 tons of heavy metal land on me to 1 in 457,531,937,280,000. In other words, if you lie down, you are increasing the chances of being hit by a giant spy satellite by an order of magnitude. I don't know about you guys, but I'll be sleeping standing up from now on.
Small consolation, I suppose, if it lands 10 feet West of you and the shock wave turns you into a fine mist.
Advice: on VPS providers
of course if anything bigger than confetti makes it to ground im sure that a lot of "bidding" will be from NSASA####### and they won't be using Paypal to fund the purchase (don't bother shipping it we will pick Y^hit up in person)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
You win again, gravity!
The say the don't know where the satilite will land or if the trajectory will make it burn up in the atmosphere.
One possiblity, which I hope is not going to happen is that some Republican will aim it to flatten some successful Democrat so that some other Republican posing as a Democrat so that the New world order prevails and blame it on "having no control" over where it lands. (It's a SPY satellite. Of course they WON'T tell the truth. It's classified.) "Oops? Now what a tragic event. We didn't know about it." (Not on my watch, suckers!)
Another possiblility, it lands out in the Sea, and everyone get free tacos! (Yay! Tacos!)
The third possiblility is that the satellite crashes into Quasi, Austraila.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
This story prompted my brother to start off a bizarre game among friends. He emailed out saying that everyone should pick a spot on Google Earth where they think it will crash and whoever is closest will get an Easter egg off all the others. Trouble is he didn't think it though carefully enough and have a central impartial person to collect the predictions. Now, as he has gone first, everyone else is just placing their predictions in a neat little half mile radius around his. If by a million-to-1 shot he actually wins, he'll have to share his Easter eggs with the others in orange boiler suits around him.
If ever there was a time for MacGyver this is it. Surely the genius of MacGyver can find a way to repair or diver this satellite, all he needs is what a few components out of every /. user's pocket.
This awesome! I hope it hits North Philly.Specifically, my business partner's house.