h a l f b a k e r yMagical moments of mediocrity.
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Tomorrow, February 20, '08, the U.S.
plans
to launch a $40M dollar self destructing
missle to 'hopefully' destroy a wayward
spy
satellite that's been adrift (in an orbit, go
figure) for some time now.
If they miss, then it's another $20M for an
extra ball to whack the never before used
machinery. Guess they never thought of
self-destruct
features
for satellites.
Isn't that idea sort of - baked??
Remember
that dead beached whale that they took so
many tons of TNT to back in the 70's?
How's about building satellites (ominously
looming overhead) out of materials that
are
combustable at a certain degree, and
become fully consumed upon re-entry?
It's better than having whale parts all over
your front lawn, or whatever else
(hydrazine) happens to be in its guts!
Whale sign..
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23240631/
[Macdaddyx1, Feb 19 2008]
Task of Shooting Down Satellite Begins
http://www.nytimes....0cnd-satellite.html
“This is about reducing the risk to human life on Earth — nothing more". In other news, the high-grade explosives intended to destroy the satellite will be carried by a swarm of flying pigs. [jutta, Feb 20 2008]
Flash Paper
http://www.penguinm.../product.php?ID=197
One of my favorite things. It vanishes in a flash. [Amos Kito, Feb 21 2008]
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Annotation:
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I thought everybody had just finished
complaining that the Chinese had doubled
the amount of space debris by blowing up
one of their own satellites? |
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Balmy weather we're having! Haven't
you noticed? |
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This US satellite is a top-secret spy satellite that the Americans REALLY don't want anyone else to get there hands on, even if it's a smoldering chunk of casing.
Re: the complaints about the Chinese sat-shot, it's another case of American "do as I say, not as I do" policy. |
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It doesn't have to have electronics. It could just be made of paper and look pretty - like a big piece of origami floating in space. |
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How about clown-car satellites that fall apart in an amusing manner? |
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//another case of American "do as I say, not as I do"// If this spy sat gets blasted, all of the parts will be down within a few weeks. If it doesn't, it'll still be down in a few weeks. The Chinese sat was at a high enough altitude that those parts will still be up there 500 years hence. |
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Imagine, if you will, the spy satellite coming down on Moscow and killing a couple hundred people. Where Putin has been beating his chest about needing to spank the Yanks, and needing to do it soon, and needing to do it with nukes... |
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//Guess they never thought of self-destruct features for satellites.// This satellite has a self-destruct. Had it worked, you would never have heard anything about it. |
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//The Chinese sat was at a high enough
altitude that those parts will still be up
there 500 years hence.// OK, fair
enough. It does seem an odd
coincidence, though, that the Chinese
demonstrate their ability to knock out a
satellite and then, shortly afterwards,
the US suddenly realizes that it needs to
do the same thing. |
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Also, surely many satellites de-orbit,
and the risks to people on the ground
are generally considered too low to
worry about (unless the satellite
contains radioactive material, as in the
case of Northern Canada). |
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I guess I just don't believe that the US is
doing this purely as a housekeeping
excercise. |
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I knew I shouldn't have gone to bed early
on this one... |
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Neutrinos; lurch; Mr.Buchanon: |
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I read in a related report that Russia is
against the shootdown. Maybe they
want to catch the 'pop fly' for its
supposed technology. |
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Or, maybe the spacejunk never had
functioning self-destruct, just like it never
had a working system. (Decoy; ever fool
your kids by raising one hand and tickling
them with your other?) |
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How's about this - components of
hydrazine are amonia, sodium
hypochlorite, and iodide (salt) items
commonly used in
cloud seeding to create tropospheric
activity. (Rainmaker fable) |
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Ian T; Hippo; Abs: (Should I even
address them??)
Look for my next half baked idea -
Laminated Litho-Tronics. (had this idea
for a while; again, you'll be able to find
something like it, but not it.) |
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//This is about reducing the risk to human
life on Earth // (from Jutta's link). |
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So, there we go. All they need to do is to
clad the exterior of the shuttle with
hydrazine-filled tanks instead of those
pesky tiles, and all will be well come re-
entry time. |
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Could this not be accomplished far more cost affectively and accurately with a laser? |
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I thought the Navy had a railgun ready
to go. Maybe there should be a contest. |
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[fries] - to my knowledge lasers powerful to accomplish this are not yet practical. |
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I don't think they give a rats ass about the collateral damage, but it's a great opportunity to test some weapons theory without adverse publicity. |
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I'm betting on at least one failed attempt, with possible success after multiple shots. We'll see. |
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(edit) OK, went straight to CNN.com and they say they hit it. I'm eating my words as we speak. |
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Strongly oppose on the following grounds: A) there is already a large orbital debris problem, B) if the sat is so busted as to need to be terminated (as opposed to passivated, vented, deorbited, or otherwise dealt with safely in a manner still requiring control), then it is unlikely that an intentional self destruct would give you any better odds. |
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A better alternative in my opinion would be to construct hazardous propellant tanks with some part of their pressure vessel specifically meant to fail at high altitude in the event of re-entry. For example, place one of the valves on an exposed part of the sat and make it use an ablative material in its structure. When the sat starts to hit the atmosphere, aeroheating will ablate that part of the valve and it will collapse, venting the propellant (probably explosively) and opening a hole for the rest of reentry forces to tear it apart. |
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Gomer, like the idea of 'safe to go up, falls apart coming down'. However you do not want to de-orbit your very expensive satellite until it has very nearly run out of station keeping propellant. So to have enough left in the tanks to explode the bus on re-entry would take years off its operational life. |
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Make the structure (bus) out of something that degrades with radiation exposure, such as PTFE. On launch it is strong but after a decade in the sunlight it will nicely fall apart on re-entry (and give the upper atmosphere a nice non-stick coating). |
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Your last paragraph is confusing; are you proposing paper or plastic satellites as an alternative to rocket propelled whales? |
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Several governments have, in fact, signed up to a treaty
which would make the manufacture of rocket-propelled
whales illegal. However, the reality is that the stockpiles of
these hideous devices are sufficient to allow their continued
use for decades. |
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It has been estimated that, even if the production of guided
Minkes and rapid-deployment Southern Rights were halted
today, there would be no discernible decline in their use for
twenty to twenty-five years. |
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Even then, some rogue nation is bound to start producing rocket propelled whales for 'research' porpoises, and the whole hideous cycle will start anew. |
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// Gomer, like the idea of 'safe to go up, falls apart
coming down'. However you do not want to de-orbit
your very expensive satellite until it has very nearly
run out of station keeping propellant. So to have
enough left in the tanks to explode the bus on re-
entry would take years off its operational life. // |
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It's not necessary to explode the bus on reentry, just
the fuel tanks. The bus already disintegrates just fine
in most cases (as do the fuel tanks), but even if it
makes it to the ground, it doesn't contain dangerous
fuel. |
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