Target Practice

by Damon Gambuto     Department: Space

The reasons behind the shooting down of a dead spy satellite are either a simple space clean-up story or a next generation global superpower showdown.   Or a bit of both.   Here's a little video to get you in the mood.

First, the facts, or as I like to call the stuff I hear at Pentagon press briefings, propaganda.  I kid the Pentagon.  Actually, I tend to find the military spokespeople and their bad haircuts a lot more informative than their politco counterparts.  In general, our generals aren't trained liars.  That is to say, the dissembling is often trained out of them.  The general in the instant case is James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He was charming in that plain-spoken-engineer kind of way.  If you absolutely must form your own opinion, check him out here.

On the off chance you don't have the stamina to watch an entire press briefing,  I'll summarize for you.  The spy satellite in question had been spinning around our planet for a little over a year not gathering secrets using technologies that are, well, secret.  Why wasn't a spy satellite doing any spying? Turns out all that secret tech was transformed into public (space) trash almost immediately after it was deployed in 2006 due to a computer failure (way to go, Pentagon!).  

Normally, this would be little more than minor news on a space-geek news site or a government waste blog.  But I don't trade in normal.  This space trash became exceptional because it was destined to become terrestrial trash.  Toxic, terrestrial trash.  Due to fall out of orbit and onto terra firma sometime in early March, the spy satellite jumped off the literal radar and onto the metaphorical one when someone realized that it contained a fuel tank full of hydrazine.

Hydrazine is highly toxic stuff.  Exploding a gas tank full of it over a populated area would be not so good for the people doing the populating.  So what to do?  Track it, target it, shoot it down.  Scary?  Kinda.  Totally videogame cool?  Definitely.  I mean, hey, why spend all those tax dollars on those 'men with guns' (and goofy haircuts) if they aren't gonna shoot at stuff?

Okay, so this all seems pretty normal, right?  Wrong.  That was a test.  Pay attention.  We are looking for exceptionality.  The reasons to go through all of this are manifold.  At least, that's what I (and others) are speculating.   Stay with me.  

If you are a global hegemon and you are worried about a next generation competitor supplanting you, what are you to do?  Or more, accurately, what are you fighting for?  Space.  The supremacy of our earth orbit space specifically.  Well, how do you prove to that fledgling superpower that you own the (night) sky?  You show off how good your missile defense system works!  The U.S. shooting down a satellite is the military equivalent of an old West gunfighter shooting a tin can out of the air before it hits the ground.  It's a warning about his capabilities.  But what would demand such a warning?  Hmmm, maybe because that other gunfighter already proved he could do it. 

So it seems that the shootdown may have been a militarily convenient choice.  That is to say, the hydrazine danger was real, but the full motivation for the shoot down was a little more complex than the official Pentagon version. 

What are the DIY elements of this spy story?  I fear I've babbled on too long and lost the DIY plot a bit.  More on that in the next entry.  

Tags: behind the scenes, DIY, military, Pentagon, satellites, space, spying