Last night (5:36pm HST) the USS Lake Erie supposedly shot down that oh-so-threatening hydrazine-laden satellite (I've seen no physical evidence that it really did, which is why I use the word "supposedly"). I still wonder about the actual motives behind this action. In an online chat yesterday at the Washington Post, Ivan Oelrich, the Vice President for Strategic Security Programs at the Federation of American Scientists said this:
To put this in some perspective, the US produces 36,000,000 pounds of hydrazine every year. The world 130,000,000 pounds. This is transported around the country in trucks and on trains. At any given moment FAR more hydrazine is being shipped on the country's highways, through towns and cities and inhabited areas, than the amount on this satellite. (And far more dangerous materials, like chlorine.)
Oelrich thinks this was more a demonstration of anti-missile defense systems (Star Wars) to the rest of the world, and he's not alone. From Dan Froomkin's column this morning:
Bruce W. MacDonald and Charles D. Ferguson write in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that "the administration put at risk multiple U.S. security interests -- a high price to pay to offset that highly unlikely danger."The administration has insisted that it was not trying to test the anti-satellite capabilities of the Navy's Aegis missile defense system, but that was exactly the result. The action was similar to China's unwise anti-satellite test in January 2007: An interceptor missile was launched, releasing a warhead meant to destroy the target satellite. . . .
As I said below, if we hadn't been lied to repeatedly over the past seven years I might believe the stated purpose. As it is, I don't. I hadn't given much thought to the possibility that doing this might militarize space and encourage other countries (China and Russia) to do so, but I should have.
Froomkin's column cites other editorials which express doubts; read pages 1 and 2.
Posted by Linkmeister at February 21, 2008 09:53 AM | TrackBackI don't even have to read the column. Of course it had nothing to do with hydrazine; like they care about spilling a little hydrazine on people. (I'm just a little touchy about chemicals because of the great Light Brown Apple Moth spraying scare in California.) This was a direct response to China's shooting down its own old satellite; it was a "mine is bigger than yours", or maybe, "there's life in the old dog yet"...
Posted by: hedera at February 23, 2008 07:20 PM