Well, ignoring for the moment the possibility that the satellite was intentionally disabled in order to provide a thing that needed to be shot down... Oh yeah, and the fact that they're not really worried that it will land on someone, so much as that it might be reverse engineered...
This honestly wasn't an anti-sat missile. The sat (due partially to being disabled) was in a sufficiently low orbit that it could be hit with traditional missiles. Further, part of the problem with China's test was that it left debris orbiting the planet that will stay up there forever, damaging one sat or ship at a time. All of this (sat+missile) will be down sometime this month.
I can see how this can be considered a second step in the weaponization of space that China started last year, but even if the sat was disabled on purpose, it's equivalent to "China pulls out a sword and rattles it", followed by "The US (who admittedly has a LOT of swords) pulls out a knife and starts cleaning its fingernails while whistling aimlessly".
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Date: 2008-02-21 02:51 pm (UTC)Well, ignoring for the moment the possibility that the satellite was intentionally disabled in order to provide a thing that needed to be shot down... Oh yeah, and the fact that they're not really worried that it will land on someone, so much as that it might be reverse engineered...
This honestly wasn't an anti-sat missile. The sat (due partially to being disabled) was in a sufficiently low orbit that it could be hit with traditional missiles. Further, part of the problem with China's test was that it left debris orbiting the planet that will stay up there forever, damaging one sat or ship at a time. All of this (sat+missile) will be down sometime this month.
I can see how this can be considered a second step in the weaponization of space that China started last year, but even if the sat was disabled on purpose, it's equivalent to "China pulls out a sword and rattles it", followed by "The US (who admittedly has a LOT of swords) pulls out a knife and starts cleaning its fingernails while whistling aimlessly".