The potential for the satellite shoot-down to go terribly wrong..

source: edition.cnn.com...
Without intervention, officials say, the satellite would fall to Earth on its own in early March. However, since it malfunctioned immediately after it was launched in December 2006, it has a full tank -- about 1,000 pounds -- of frozen, toxic hydrazine propellant.

Authorities said the fuel tank likely would survive re-entry and could disperse harmful or even potentially deadly fumes over an area the size of two football fields. Hydrazine is similar to chlorine or ammonia in that it affects the lungs and breathing tissue.

The goal is to strike the satellite in low orbit, just before it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, at an altitude of about 150 miles. The missile will not carry a warhead. The idea is to blast the satellite apart on impact so that the hydrazine tank explodes.

The smaller debris would be more likely to burn up in the atmosphere. Most of the debris would re-enter the atmosphere within hours of impact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has said.

The military has timed its shoot-down attempt so that resulting debris will tumble into the atmosphere and not interfere with other satellites, said Christina Rocca, a U.S. diplomat and expert on disarmament. Her comments were included in an online United Nations report on this month's Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland.

I was reading the article which I found the above information in when I thought to create this thread. I'm sure there are quite a few "satellite shoot down" threads out there, however, this one explores one specific undiscussed scenario and possibility there-of, and in that respect it is unique and so in my opinion should remain as such. That's just me.

The idea is pretty simple. The United States goes to fire on the spy satellite as it gets a clear shot on one of the 10 second windows it will have each day, one for each, over the next several days, starting today. The missile, equipped with a non-explosive warhead made to "smash" through the satellite, thus popping a considerable hole or tear in the fuel tank of the satellite holding the ton of toxic hydrazine fuel, creating an explosion in space as I understand it, scores a hit. But it is a glancing blow.

But instead of the missile doing this as they intended, let's say it just breaks the satellite in twain; the fuel tank still fully intact as a piece of debris. It should be able to survive re-entry as the fuel tank holds the vast majority of its' weight. Then it lands on some poor guys in a third world country, or in someone's drinking water .. like dams and reservoirs, or even rivers.

WORMWOOD

[edit on 2/20/2008 by runetang]

The Satellite has been hit!



Defense Department: Navy missile hits dying spy satellite

Well, now all we can do is sit and wait the next 48 hours out and see what happens, see if the fuel tank lands in someone's backyard or on their patio, heh.

The Government / Military cannot even tell if they hit the tank itself, adding that they won't know until this window of time passes. Here they go into that possibility, acting as if it is a very real one indeed, read the Military's words regarding that possibility below:

source:
edition.cnn.com...

It was unknown whether the missile hit its precise target -- the satellite's full fuel tank. The Department of Defense said it won't know for 24 hours whether the fuel tank had been hit.

"Debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately," the department said. "Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days."

However, even if the missile didn't score a direct hit, "any kind of hit provides a much better outcome than doing nothing at all," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

I guess we will see within the next two days if anyone's well gets poisoned .. by wormwood-esque hydrazine toxic radiating space fuel!

[edit on 2/21/2008 by runetang]