Does toxic fuel mean (nuclear war head) by any chance?Good way to explain a bigger than estimated impact explosion.

Are you kidding? Why not let the Chinese watch us flex our muscle too? Heck...their barely getting guys in space but they're watching stay up there for days on time. If they want to be the big kid on the block, then let them watch and learn from the real big kid.

Why not aim and fire another one at Iran at the same time?

This is not a message to China - because hitting a bus size satellite falling down is easy. Really very easy. Militarily, it is about as challenging as shooting an elephant or harpooning a whale. If the Chinese could do it to a 527 mile high orbiting satellite, we can pretty much hit anything that is much lower.

I would say this is definitely a message being sent to China and Russia.

No, hydrazine is a common rocket fuel that is highly toxic. the Sat failed right after liftoff, so there is a full fuel load of hydrazine on board.

I've long thought the US vulnerable because of their military and communications reliability on satellites. I told people for years that this was the logical tactic for China.

Whether or not the need to shoot this satellite down is justified alone by the risk posed by the 1,000 pounds of hydrazine on board or if we want to ensure that no sensitive secret technology survives re-entry, the side benefit is surely the ability to demonstrate our technology. It also gives us the ability to re-take control of where it will re-enter the atmosphere and where any debris lands.

The question is this solely a message to China, I doubt it. We have had the ability for over 30 years to shoot down satellites and have even done so using missile fired from a fighter jet. However it does prove the effectiveness and adaptability of our anti-missile system to all who are watching not just China alone but a belligerent Russia who is advancing their missile technology and to Iran with it's new "space program", which is in fact their ICBM test program. This mission does all those things.

However, it might also prove to the audience that the gap between our technology and theirs is not so huge as they may have once imagined and may in fact point out weaknesses in the system. There are two sides to every coin and sometimes by laying down your winning hand, you allow your opponent to know just how close they are to over-taking you. In another instance, it could work also to cause your enemy to adopt a new approach to which you have no defense. If you demonstrate an invulnerability at the front gate, the enemy may then embark on discovering other weaknesses to exploit instead of wasting time trying to break through a well defended point.

All in all, there is a lot to weigh on whether to expose your superior war fighting technology prior to it's use in battle. It may act as a deterrent but it may also allow your enemy to form better battle plan as well.

Personally, I do not think the Chinese need a lesson to know we have a superior anti-missile system. The Chinese are quite aware of our superior missile technology and that is why they spend such a tremendous amount of time and effort stealing every little nugget they can get their hands on. I don't see making such a demonstration as necessary to impress China, their already impressed or they wouldn't steal it. China already has stolen much of the Aegis technology via leaks from Japan.

I tend to buy the story that the anti-missile system is the most effective method of bring the satellite down in an area we can determine with a greatly reduced risk of a hydrazine poisoning incident and ensure our technology on board the satellite remains a secret. Demonstrating our technological missile capability to the public and our enemies in this instance, I think has as many negatives as positives.

I certainly hope this sends a message!! Better hurry before the Democrats takeover, the military will only be allowed to serve tea at the White House!

Well, lets just hope they don't miss or that would be rather embarrassing! I hope they hit it and it sends a message loud and clear. We need to show a little muscle at this point. Our economy leaves us looking very vulnerable.

Yeh! It will attract some serious attention in the red world of China and Russia. I think we should make Bill Clinton push the button too. That might tick off his friends over there.
john k Ormond Fl.

Duh !!!

China doesn't have to fire a missile. They can bring us down by simply not funding our national debt.

Here's the real info on the satillite:
1. Solar Powered no nuke powerplant.
2. Its not as big as a Greyhound bus.
3. Yes it has hydrazine on board, the fuel tank will likely destruct thru aerodynamic forces at 17,000 mph rentry speed.
4. I worked on the Delta2 launch vehicle that launched it.
5. There was no concerns for our crew from any radiation
6. Sit back an watch the show as it fireballs in.

May be China & the Russian should attempt to hijack this satellite by bringing back into their territory.

If they miss and a bunch of folks die the governemnt will definitely use that as the start of a big push for putting a few hundred billion into missile defense/star wars programs. Basically a fals flag attack.

A message to China? Hardly that! Nor is it for the official reason that they're worried about several hundred to 1,000 pounds of hydrazine reaching earth's surface. Just check the flash point of hydrazine. Thanks to the heat of re-entry, the hydrazine would have burned off long before it could reach the surface. What does that leave? Try the really nasty Plutonium 238 that powers the satellite. That stuff spread out by re-entry would poison thousands of square miles.
Courtesy of George Ure's urbansurvival.com daily update, the link is to dropzone.jpg, graphic developed by halfpasthuman.com to portray area where linguistic analysis shows disproportionate surge over the last few months in references to being impacted by energy from space.

This is funny. American hubris always so funny.
I think you slogan spouting flag humpers had better shoot it down successfully before crowing about your great messages to China, who by the way owns you.

Those who spout off about American space prowess would do well to consider hat lately the only way the US can get anything successfully into space is to hitch a ride with the Russians who have also pulled your fat cans out of the fire in getting home a few times now.

My guess is the white elephant military will screw up and probably tip the thing into a new fall pattern which land it on their own heads. Hopefully that will be right on top of the "Tainted House".

I love it, boasting about what they are going to do. Just do it flag humpers, then boast OK?

China has spiked all your Navy computers with special weak silicon chips due to your lowest bidding contractors cutting corners in case you have forgotten or didn't know. The USA is a sitting duck so any suggestion that some belated shoot down of a satellite will even make them blink is hilarious. You can't even defeat the Taliban or a rag tag resistance in Iraq. The USA is nothing but a big phony.

We have to be wary of that potential super power
in the far east. Our high technology currently
gives us the advantage. But if for any reason
it should fail, the eastern power might have
the advantage. They could put tens of millions
of combat troops on the field and very few, if
any, of them would be pregnant. But our Navy is
on the case!

The Navy In Action!

A U.S. Naval Task Force
operating on the high seas
will track and plot the course
of spent satellite debris.

Force = mass multiplied by acceleration
is your basic equation of motion.
It applies in almost every situation
even out over the ocean.
The equations of motion will determine
the precise orbital path
with high speed computers doing
all of the detailed math.

It is best to intercept the target
over international waters
as far as we can get
from territorial borders.
The whole operation
will be an adventure in high tech
that will require the coordination
of all hands on deck.

Humor

But what about searching and destroying the asteroids
before they crash through the atmosphere
and destroy all of the steroids
wine, cheese and beer?
And what about that new rumor
full of mystery and intrigue
about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens
forming a new minor league!?

I wonder how this "obsolete" spy SAT lost control in the first place, and I wonder where this SAT was capable of spying...China perhaps?

Did the Chinese melt it's brains with a laser? It's funny how it is projected to drop into US airspace. Sounds like Chinese arithmetic to me.:/

The fed is saying, "there's nothing to see here."

Anyone remember why we were told to not touch any of the debris from Columbia? It was the same reason, hydrazine residue.
Now, one would think that being exposed to the 3000 degree Fahrenheit heat of reentry would be more than enough to induce a 1000 pound tank of volatile fuel to explode on its own, but it's apparently well-insulated. Fair enough.
I find the part where "we don't know where it's going to come down" a bit hard to believe, after all, there are three Air Force Space Command (PAVE PAWS) sites that specialize in tracking space junk. Inconsistencies in orbits tend to be related with the "shrink and swell" of the atmosphere related to high solar activity, but the Sun is at the low point in the 11 year solar cycle.
All of that aside, it's more than irresponsible to permit this to have any chance of coming down over land. If they explode it after it's begun its reentry over water, then more space junk won't be created, and the hydrazine will vaporize on its own.

Thank god i found you guys the news is so repressed taken me days to fall on this site maybe weeks i tell you i saw the satellite last night not for long but was beautiful to look at almost like watching a passing, then i found the site saying where it was going to be blasted at, guess what its 50 miles from where i live ireland so guess all that help the brits did for america has been in vane as they have to dump on the brits . Incidently the site that eventually led me to you guys is http://whatsitallabout.com

Id love any comments or answers as i feel alone in watching the world go to world war 3. and im thinking am i gonna survive what will it be like should i stock up now or is it just me being paranoid, eigther way who's gonna press that button ultimateley the end of mankind as we know it making way for the new from worlds we dont know about yet or do we!!!!!!!

The world is evolving into a multilateralist model of global consensus with regional compliance. U.S. global influence is receding. Both China's and Russia's military are emerging or reemerging respectively toward challenging U.S. global influence. Under the developing "New World Order" multilateralism, compliance to global policies are being enforced only in the interests of the regional authority. Challenges will occur when the self interest interpretation of the policy comes in contact with the region. Therefore any global policies the U.N. attempts to promulgate are worthless unless it is to the advantage to all of the regional powers. Since China and Russia are using the U.N. as a political, economic and military chess board, this is unlikely in the future. Bottom line: The missile shot is strictly one of those challenges. A symmetrical response. Hopefully we are developing assymetrical strategies in other area's i.e. nano technology and electronic information warfare, where both China and Russia seem fairly adept.

Obviously there wasn't much room in the rocket for a warhead after they put a bass fiddle in it.