Satellite shoot down was reckless

I was relieved to find out today that I am not the only one who found last week’s satellite shoot down to be completely unnecessary. To believe the rationale provided by the Bush administration and military, that chemical gas was going to contaminate the atmosphere wreaking death upon a random populous, required the active suspension of my disbelief. Danger Room quotes two space security specialists who also criticize the governments faulty reasoning:

• “The hydrazine tank is a 1-meter sphere containing about 400 liters of hydrazine. The stated hazard area is about 2 hectares, something like 1/10,000,000,000 of the area under the orbit. The potential for actual harm in unbelievably small. Which means the hydrazine rationale just doesn’t hold up, literally not within orders of magnitude.”

• “The cynic in me says that the idea that this is being done to protect the lives of humans is simply a feel-good cover story tossed to the media. It is true that hydrazine is very toxic and could result injury or death, but the odds of this happening are minuscule … Having the US government spend millions of dollars to destroy a billion-dollar failure to save zero lives is comedic gold.”

Clearly, there was dispute over the reasoning here. In yet another pathetic display of journalistic integrity, the media sunk into collective awe over the simulation and video of the shoot down. They simply fawned over the technical accomplishment and sidestepped all serious accusations made against the intercept.

I wished the media had probed the government over the timing of the shoot down. Just one week removed from a Russian/Chinese proposal to ban weapons in space, it seems more likely that this incident was intended to display a capability rather than save lives.

Rep. Edward J. Markey spoke to the ramifications of this cowboy showmanship. “The Bush administration’s decision to use a missile to destroy the satellite based on a questionable ‘safety’ justification poses a great danger of signaling an ‘open season’ for other nations to test weapons for use against our satellites. Russia and China are sure to view this intercept as proof that the United States is already pursuing an arms race in space, and that they need to catch up.”

As I argued last week, Russia and China are collectively concerned over the technical advantage held by the US in space weapons systems. Instead of finessing this fear, the Bush administration chose to highlight it in an acute attempt to display American hegemony in space. This was a provocative threat to the Russians and Chinese and certainly won’t go unanswered. As Rep. Markey suggests, that rebuttal could be in the form of a space arms race.