Direct hit!

U.S. missile hits spy satellite
By Andrew Gray, Reuters
Thu Feb 21, 2008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A missile from a U.S. Navy warship hit a defunct U.S. spy satellite 133 nautical miles above the Earth in an attempt to blow apart its tank of toxic fuel, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

On some level this is sorta cool: we shot a satellite outta the sky! Brings back fond childhood memories of watching very old Flash Gordon serials on afterschool kids' TV shows.

But, that's not the point of this post. The point is to express curiosity about the real reason for shooting the thing.

The public cover story - that the nearly full fuel tank posed a public health risk - is just silly.

Thinking about the cost-benefit analysis underlying the decision to shoot the thing down suggests that the perceived benefit was huge.

We angered our two big military & space rivals - Russia & China. We reignited international debate on "weapons in space" and the "militarization of space". This seems a fairly substantial cost to incur to protect public health (especially for W's administration, which has not shown a lot of concern for environmental of public health issues to date).

So... what's the real reason that provided a substantial benefit to offset the very real costs?

My bet is we didn't want to risk the technology falling (literally!) into the wrong hands, subject to reverse-engineering. A friend speculates that maybe it wasn't really a spy satellite, but instead in fact carried a warhead.

It's unlikely we, the people, will ever know the truth.

On the bright side: we got it! Cool!!
[Here's a link to ABC News video of the missile launch & satellite destruction.]