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20-Year-Old Military Weather Satellite Explodes In Orbit
schwit1 writes A 20-year-old U.S. military weather satellite apparently exploded for no obvious reason. The incident has put several dozen pieces of space junk into orbit. From the article: "A 20-year-old military weather satellite apparently exploded in orbit Feb. 3 following what the U.S. Air Force described as a sudden temperature spike. The “catastrophic event” produced 43 pieces of space debris, according to Air Force Space Command, which disclosed the loss of the satellite Feb. 27 in response to questions from SpaceNews. The satellite, Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13, was the oldest continuously operational satellite in the DMSP weather constellation."
Invade Mars immediately.
Even the military grade tech deteriorates. Surely it should withstand a two degree increase - especially over a century!
An asteroid for instance?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The truth is the explosion came just after a software update.
Sources that want to remain anonymous confirmed the update included systemd.
Aliens.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Explosion after a measurable temperature hike sounds more like a laser or maser attack than a collision. With a collision, there would not be much to measure.
Ok, if the collision just severed some pipes or power or control lines, a temperature hike might also be part of the first consequence. But that would be boring.
It takes a lot of energy to change the weather. Some of it must have leaked.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Well, I guess now we know that this was no weather satellite...
It was bound to happen eventually.
Could be the latest test of the Chinese anti-satellite system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASAT_program_of_China
The Chinese aimed a high power laser at a U.S. satellite in 2006 (without damaging it), and blew up one of their own weather satellites in 2007. They have tested a number of anti-satellite systems since then.
Turns out those green laser pointers you get in the mail are a lot more powerful than you would think.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What no obvious reason? Either the batteries overheated and exploded (fuel and oxidizer packed close together and sitting for 20 years) or the fuel tank vapors exploded on their own (tends to happen with monopropellant--no need to additional oxidizers, just a random injection of energy). Russian rocket bodies used to explode in orbit from time to time from fuel vapors (undesired bipropellant mixing) until they were convinced to burn off all their spare fuel after they deployed their payload into its orbit.
The Russian politician was far from obscure, well known and very vocal as a matter of fact. He was also against Putin and Putin's nut job attempts at bringing back the Cold War. He was someone we like, not someone we'd want to kill.
Your conspiracy theory only makes sense if you know absolutely nothing at all about what's actually going on.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So which overlord should we bow down to this time?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Space heaters are fire hazards.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This satellite blew up at 1715 UTC, and since it was in a sun-synchronous polar orbit, local noon would have put that over the Americas (North, Central, or South). This satellite was sitting under the direct sun for 20 years. If the radiator cooling system failed, things could heat up and fail very quickly (there is no wind up there, remember).
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I miss the good old days, when you knew to blame everything on the Axis of Evil, and you could solve all our problems by bombing Iraq.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...telling us to stay the hell away from their base on Ceres.
We should retaliate by beaming Youtube comments at them.
Perhaps you could be more informative as to the problem? Why wouldn't a coherent microwave beam be every bit as effective as a laser? Or perhaps you simply didn't realize that masers are a real thing, and even predate lasers sufficiently that lasers were originally called "optical masers".
The only potential issue that I can think of is that, due to the longer wavelength, it would be difficult to focus a maser beam as tightly. Of course if you're happy to cook the whole satellite instead of burn a hole in it, then that's less of an issue.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Or are you being insufficiently cynical? We might want a new cold war as well - cold wars are wonderful excuses to tighten the screws on your populace, and ours is starting to slowly wake up to the fact that all the "anti-terrorist" policies we've implemented in the last decade+ are fairly ineffective against terrorists, but *extremely* useful for suppressing legitimate dissent and undermining democracy. Start a nice theatrical cold war though and they could probably get away with putting all those empty FEMA internment camps to "proper" use.
Not that I believe we did it, Putin would be much higher on my list for starters, but I do love a good conspiracy theory.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's a good bet the Empire knows we're here.
Your conspiracy theory only makes sense if you know absolutely nothing at all about what's actually going on.
That's the very best kind of conspiracy theory.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That Russian politician was part of the Yeltsin administration that Putin had promised immunity to when he took control. This killing is very scary politically for what it means.
Well, I know this sounds weird, but during a conflict the U.S. Military and Russia's and China's are not going to be relying on commercial weather satellites. Something about they possibly being pwned by the enemy. Militaries worry about these sorts of things, clearly you have never been in one.
We may have just lost Space:
"The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,[1][2] collisional cascading or ablation cascade), proposed by the NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade—each collision generating space debris which increases the likelihood of further collisions.[3] One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space exploration, and even the use of satellites, unfeasible for many generations.[3]"
Source WikiPedia
The principle of Occam's Razor is not "simplicity" vs. "complexity". It states not to multiply entities unnecessarily, but that does not equate to simplicity.
We have never seen a battery failure like this before (and there are very many of that type out there) so we are creating a new entity with introducing this type of battery failure to our list of known entities. That does not mean (under the principle of Occam's Razor) that it did not happen that way (battery failure) only that we should consider other possibilities that do not include introducing that entity.
Lasers, enemies, interest in dominance, all the other entities required for it to be an attack already exist as known entities. As such it is something to be examined not dismissed. Occam's Razor suggests that this latter hypothesis be examined prior to the former. And that is all it suggests.
Occam's Razor does not determine between simplicity and complexity. The simplest explanation for lightning is that "God did it". Our modern explanation for lightning is incredibly complex. Which do you think is accurate? Which one better satisfies Occam's Razor?
Given all the crap that is going down all over the place right now, someone making a point does not really require introducing anything new and doesn't seem unlikely. Nor does a simple battery failure seem unlikely. But Occam's Razor is not the tool to use here. If we try we wind up in the Procrustean Bed of refining our problem to suit one solution or the other.
Best wishes, sorry I am a bit Aspie here.
From TFA:
Just what kind of questions was SpaceNews asking, that the satellite would explode in response? They should STFU pretty quick, before we lose everything in LEO!
Nah, it was Eisenhower in the 50's. I like Ike.
"clearly you have never been in one"
Actually I was one of the first from the US in Vietnam. Not an enthusiast tho. Military enthusiasts seem oddly lacking in humor, particularly struggling with irony and sarcasm. Yes, that includes the uniformed groundpounders and the suits who think up 'weather' satellites. That lack of humor, which includes most military, government, religious and dictator types, is one of the great tragedies of civilization.
...omphaloskepsis often...