Don’t Look Now
And you thought it was only comets and asteroids you had to worry about.
Ellroon at Rants from the Rookery announced it first, but BossKitty at the American Street has a plethora of graphics for the story of the out-of-control intelligence satellite that is coming out of orbit to slam into some unsuspecting corner of the planet. It’s the size of a bus.
Well, we have contingency plans, right? I mean this has happened in the past and knew it could happen in the future so there’s a plan in place to take care of this in a sane and sensible manner, right? They certainly didn’t ignore the possibility of something the size of a Greyhound crashing into a major city, right? FEMA’s not involved, right? We aren’t going to try to use the missile defense thing, right?
OK, stainless steel colander™, motorcycle helmet, duct tape, and plastic, yep, I know where they are. Hmmm, Geiger counter, gas mask, bio-hazard suit, house jack, I’m set.
9 comments
We send up Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood, Jim Garner, and Donald Sutherland to fix it.
Or, possibly Bruce Willis.
The sucker has hydrazine on it for the control thrusters, and that is some nasty stuff that will do Dog knows what in the upper atmosphere on break-up.
They never had control of this thing [I remember the launch] and couldn’t find it for a while. Well, now they’ve found it and the next question is how big a hole is it going to dig?
a space object with rocket fuel on it, who knew? is this the hazardous substance they can’t tell us about?
Well… my 2c is:
If there is any justice in this world whatsoever… it will crash right into the
whorewhite house with all the administration present. 🙂Ahhhh… I’ll have nice dreams tonight! LOL
But… back to reality! It will probably kill many innocent people. *sigh*
Justice is a fairytale concept.
Though in truth, most of the Earth’s surface is uninhabited. I am sure there are bookies around the World taking bets right now.
Just be thankful this isn’t one with a small nuclear generator and supercooled exotic elements on board. 😉
Oh… wait… NSA… Hmmm.
Regrettably, it won’t be the first time the world has been catastrophically impacted by an out-of-control American intelligence…
It’s the Soviet/Russian satellites that use a lot of nuclear power and are a major danger when they fall for that reason, but any bus-sized object has the potential to ruin your day if it drops in unannounced.
Normally they vent the fuel when “de-orbiting”, but they haven’t been able to talk to this thing since they launched it, so it has to be assumed that the tanks are full.
Just be thankful it’s hydrazine (nasty) and not pentaborane (super-nasty). Pentaborane wasevaluated by the AF as a rocket fuel in the ’50s: they made thousands of metric tonnes of the stuff until they decided it was too touchy for regular use. So then they gradually sold off most of their stockpile for research uses (it’s a great starting material for other boron compounds) until they destroyed the last of it late in the ’90s. Pentaborane is both air- and moisture-sensitive, and has a nasty tendency to explode spontaneously whenever exposed to too much of either.
My Dad was involved with all of that stuff in testing and development. They always had the biggest collect of firefighting equipment I have ever seen on the base where he worked, and deluge showers in the workshops.
Things went “bang” a lot out in the piny woods, and odd colored clouds were not unusual.