Speculation On the Doomed Satellite

scim writes "Intelligent speculation has led one knowledgeable observer to believe the satellite recently announced to have failed is a radar satellite named USA 193. According to an earlier story on the satellite: 'The experimental L-21 classified satellite, built for the National Reconnaissance Office at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, was launched successfully on Dec. 14 [2006] but has been out of touch since reaching its low-earth orbit.'" The ArmsControlWonk story leads off with what purports to be a photo from the ground of USA 193.

Comments

My Backyard

[acidradio]

If it lands in my backyard, I get to keep it. Just like the neighbor kid's frisbees and baseballs! That's only fair, right?

Re:My Backyard

[Brian Gordon]

If it lands in your back yard, you get to spend 10 or 15 years in guantanamo bay to make sure you don't talk.

Re:My Backyard

[evanbd]

Yeah, have fun with the hydrazine.

Personally, I wouldn't want to keep anything that's flammable, explosive, toxic, corrosive, carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic. At least it's not radioactive...

Re:My Backyard

[Moonpie Madness]

If this thing lands in unfriendly lands, whatever's left will fetch a lot of money... or be subject to US airstrike.

Maybe it will 'accidentally' land on Iran's nuke facility! I wish our peeps were that smart.

Re:My Backyard

[rucs_hack]

If it lands in your back yard, you get to spend 10 or 15 years in guantanamo bay to make sure you don't talk.

Nah, not unless they have a cell that's one milimeter high and fifty meters in radius, otherwise he wouldn't fit.

Re:My Backyard

[calculadoru]

If your state is not a legitimate democracy, it has no right to exist

Odd reasoning there. I can think of quite a few countries that are most definitely not legitimate democracies - China (who basically bankrolls the US thus ensuring it is free to oppress its population), North Korea (who pokes its nose at the US every other week, to no reaction whatsoever, while murdering its own citizens), Burma (saw all those dead monks? did the US government do anything about it?), Russia (and each day under Putin makes it worse, but the US president has 'seen into his soul', so that makes it alright), most of the former USSR republics in Central Asia, along with pretty much most of Africa, plus whatever I forget now (it's snowing and I'm having a warm cup of sake). Yes, Iran is a theocracy, and an evil one too - your point is? How do you decide who to fuck with, and in what order?
Please don't say oil.

Re:My Backyard

[steelfood]

I think GP's point, and the answer to his rhetorical question is, maybe we shouldn't fuck with anyone at all. I don't see anything that's worth the blood of thousands of civilians and tens of thousands of soldiers, beacuse 9/11 is what happens when you fuck with other cultures, the current Iranian regime is what happens when you fuck with other democratic governments, Iraq is what happens when you fuck with other soverign countries.

The US is in a location not easily attacked by anyone else. Our nearest neighbors are Canada and Mexico, and Siberian Russia. No sane government would dare attack us on our soil, and no insane government would have the means to do so. And quite frankly, if we weren't poking our noses around the world trying to enforce our rebranded form of colonialism, nobody would have attacked us at all.

Yes, certain things may require our assistance. I know I'm invoking Godwin, but the rise to power of the Nazis was one of them. But our assistance was requested. We were actively engaged in the war through the shipping of war supplies even before Pearl Harbor, and the Europeans practically begged for us to send troops over by the time the US began its counteroffensive.

But such are very special cases where by gaining control of the Atlantic ocean, US security would be threatened by Nazi Germany, and of the Pacific ocean, US security would be threatened by Imperial Japan (albeit not terribly much without ICBM's). Other than that, there has been no instance since where the US's security was threatened, only US "interests," which is a better word for "people who have lots of money and give lots of it to our corrupt politicians."

The answer you gave is why the rest of the world won't shed a single tear if another 9/11 happened. Because they've already seen through the moral, humanitarian, security facade, and they know us for the greedy, self-serving bastards that we actually are--which isn't the problem in and of itself if we only didn't pretend to be the righteous saviors of the rest of the world and try to stick our "morality" into everyone else's asses whenever we do intervene. If everyone here thought the same as you, I wouldn't be surprised if the US implodes upon itself trying to stop the mass wave of terrorists at our front door. In fact, that might already be happening.

Re:My Backyard

[evanbd]

I suppose I wasn't clear on the details.

Hydrazine is more flammable than gasoline, by a wide margin. Flammability limits in air are approximately 2% to 100% -- It's a monopropellant, so it doesn't actually need oxygen to burn (it's a fuel, though, so it will burn faster and hotter with oxygen). That makes it more flammable than even hydrogen. Fortunately it has a lower vapor pressure, so the flash point is somewhat elevated. As a fire hazard, I'd call gasoline worse, but hydrazine is plenty bad enough.

Hydrazine is explosive by itself, without any additions of components. However, it's relatively insensitive, so this is really only a concern to industrial handlers, not to someone who finds a satellite crashed in their yard.

Hydrazine is toxic well beyond the level of bleach. LD50 for skin contact is somewhere around a teaspoon -- a fairly minor spill. At levels well below that, it will cause *permanent* damage to your liver, kidneys, and probably others. There's nothing in your house where a small splash on your skin warrants a trip to the ER (and if there is, you must have some neat hobbies!).

Hydrazine isn't as caustic as some household cleaners; this is mostly relevant when engineering with it, not for hazards of encountering it. It does mean it will eat away many sorts of gloves you might wear -- which makes the previous point and the next three relevant.

It's not just that hydrazine is carcinogenic. Lots of things are carcinogenic in large quantities; a few are in any quantity. Hydrazine is one of the latter (obviously risk level depends on exposure). Some chemicals your body can safely metabolize small amounts of without any increased risk; hydrazine is not one of these. What makes hydrazine so nasty is that, combined with the degree of potency. Monomethyl hydrazine (I don't have data handy for straight hydrazine, which is less nasty; the satellite could well be using straight hydrazine as a monopropellant or MMH or UDMH as a fuel in a bipropellant; all three are commonly used) is one of the most potent carcinogens known. One study showed that a carefully sized single drop of MMH on the skin of lab rats caused cancer in 90%. They had to be careful to keep the drop size down so that it didn't kill the rats by being toxic, though.

Mutagenic and teratogenic are nasty at similar levels; the effects are just slightly different than being carcinogenic. Planning on having kids you want to be healthy? Don't handle hydrazine derivatives.

Now, all that said, with sufficient budget and in the right setting it can be handled mostly safely. "Some thing landed in my backyard; I think I'll get a souvenir" is not that setting. And, depending on the design of the satellite, it's entirely possible a mostly undamaged propellant tank could survive reentry -- similar components have done so previously on other satellite reentries, and on Columbia.

You're surrounded by low level background risks, and things that you shouldn't drink. Hydrazine goes well beyond that -- you'd do better to think of it as a chemical weapon that happens to be to slow to be useful as such. It's only mildly less potent than some of them.

The Chinese Can Handle It

[frankenheinz]

Can't the Chinese just shoot it down for us? http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/01/18/china.missile/index.html

Re: (Not in) My Backyard

[Zymergy]

I would hope that it does not contain an RTG or other nuclear components... but RTG's are said to be able to survive reentry... ,Ahem! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Recall that some of our older satellites had Polonium 210 coatings applied to some surfaces which could not be allowed to become frozen (batteries, etc.) in the deep cold of space (including parts of our Apollo Lunar Rover if my memory serves). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium

Wait a minute!!!, Wasn't this the secondary plot to G.I. Jane?

Your Nerd License is hereby revoked

[Anonymous Coward]

It is "Only one man would dare give me the Raspberry", not "Only on man would dare use the strawberry..."

Will it burn up?

[hax0r_this]

I've always thought that things coming down from space have a tendency to burn up in the atmosphere, but on the other hand chunks of that space shuttle landed all over the place. Can someone who knows what they're talking about enlighten me as to how much of this satellite is likely to survive?

Which brings me to something else: do these satellites have some sort of self destruct mechanism? What was to stop, say, the Soviets or Chinese from going up and physically stealing a very expensive satellite that presumably contains technology/information we don't want them getting their hands on?

Re:Will it burn up?

[clarkkent09]

I've always thought that things coming down from space have a tendency to burn up in the atmosphere, but on the other hand chunks of that space shuttle landed all over the place. Can someone who knows what they're talking about enlighten me as to how much of this satellite is likely to survive?

Most of it will burn up on reentry. Depending on how large it is and the materials used, there will probably be many small pieces of debris reaching the ground across hundreds of miles.

Which brings me to something else: do these satellites have some sort of self destruct mechanism? What was to stop, say, the Soviets or Chinese from going up and physically stealing a very expensive satellite that presumably contains technology/information we don't want them getting their hands on?

The same thing that stops them from say seizing a US ship somewhere on the ocean and ripping out its radar and other technology. Its piracy and it would invite if not all out war then at least some sort of major retaliation by the US.

Re:Will it burn up?

[jaminJay]

More importantly, will it blend?

Re:Which is it?

[Sub Zero 992]

Well, your options are not mutually exclusive.

Most likely:

a) its solar wings failed to deploy
b) it is therefore in deep sleep
c) what goes up (and remains within the Hill Sphere) must come down

ymmv

oh no!!

[Runagate Rampant]

A communications disruption could mean only one thing: invasion

Re:Only one man would use the strawberry...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surrounded by assholes.

Re: (Not in) My Backyard

[Zoxed]

> I would hope that it does not contain an RTG or other nuclear components.

This was the first thing I thought of when I read the same story at BBC News. But that article says the fuel is hydrazine.

(But as the source was anonymous, and the satellite is US Military, that leak could just be a PR move !!)

Re: (Not in) My Backyard

[icebrain]

I really doubt you'll see any RTGs on an earth-orbit satellite. It's a lot cheaper and easier just to use solar panels; RTGs are reserved for deep space missions or other things where solar panels lose effectiveness due to distance (Jupiter/Saturn adn beyond), dust (MSL rover), or extended shadow (moon surface experiments).

Re:Enough already

[Ihlosi]

Show me ONE EXAMPLE of someone held in Gitmo who WAS NOT an ununiformed combatant fighting our troops or implementing terror attacks.

If he did, he'd probably get stuck into Gitmo for violating national security.

Re:Enough already

[Mr2cents]

I have to ask, if they refuse to participate in the process that could win their freedom and prove they shouldn't be held, then why should I care if they are being held? I mean it doesn't make them look less guilty by refusing to participate in the one thing that could secure their release. Who says they refuse to participate? Their lawyer? The judge? Or could it by any chance be the military who's holding them in the first place?

And I have to ask, how exactly are you supposed to defend yourself if you're not charged with anything?

PS: <sarcasm>They do have a lawyer, don't they?</sarcasm>