@Morely Dotes
He was referring to *South* Americans. Boy you guys living in the USA are sure paranoid.
The US military has issued a warning notice barring flights above a large area of the northern Pacific for two and a half hours early on Thursday morning. The stricken spy satellite marked for destruction by US warships will pass over the taped-off area just at this time, indicating that the first shot will take place then. …
"plenty of elbow room to fire their interceptor missiles up into the descending spacecraft's path"
And what happens to the ones that miss. It seems we're trading one bit of wayward satellite for lots of rocket-propelled live ordnance - no wonder they want people out of the area!
PH - the usual reasons.
NOTAMs are usually only suggestive even in U.S. airspace unless they specifically create a TFR (temp. flight restriction). NOTAMs aren't designed to create long-term no-fly-zones. Anyway, why would you have to sneak into the area, and why would anyone want to? By being in there you are the only one that stands a chance of getting a missile or satellite dumped on your head and if you get too close to the AGEIS cruisers I'm sure they'll let you know. Its too big an area to patrol, and so big why would they want to? Its for the benefit of everybody else, mostly commercial jets I'm sure.
send blokes up in the shuttle to paint a union jack or a picture of John Simpson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Simpson) on the satellite, then let the US air force know about it, im sure theyll find some way of blowing it up. and your troops don't have to come to your ally's country to explain why you did it whilst out on a jolly.
little bit of politics ladies and gentlemen, my name's ben elton, good night!
"Yes, the well-known inability of the American military to hit anything is what caused Hitler to successfully invade and conquer Britain back in the day, isn't it?"
err right? when was that? why was that? what did the yanks provide and when did the UK manage to finish paying them off? what did the usa pay for the jet engine? the merlin engine? that computer thing? and we get mac Donald's "friends" and W bush killing 100,000's of people. bring back Ronald Reagan, at least his dementia was bad enough that Nancey would see a clairvoyant to make major policy decisions.. bush coldn't think what to do for 15min's when told in public that 2 planes had slammed into the world trade center buildings. can he go weewee on his own?
Please guys, official units only.
Area
The standard unit of area shall be the nanoWales, defined as 1nWa, representing 0.0000207km2 or 20.78m2, 5.195 Thai talang wah or 28.99 Old Spanish square vara. The microWales, milliWales and Wales (Wa) are, naturally, accepted multiples of the base nanoWales.
* Football pitch = 194.89nWa
* Wales = 1,000,000,000nWa
* Belgium = 1.47Wa
* Democratic Republic of Congo = 113.3Wa
* Known universe (rolled out flat) = 19468502x1012x10256Wa
Example:
* The eruption of Vesuvius took out an area of 13 milliWales, although the effects of the blast were felt up to a thousand brontosauruses away. Survivors reported rocks and pumice the size of Bulgarian airbags falling from the sky for three days before the tragedy, and experts have calculated the total debris would fill around 120,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
I do aircraft spotting for some lasers in Hawaii*, and at 0330 there's not much out there, other than possibly some flights eastbound from Asia for early-morning arrivals. Everything else tends to operate hours earlier, or take routes south and/or east of the satellite's ground track.
*If you have to ask, you don't need to know.
Sorry to state the bleedin' obvious, but there's a damned good reason why it doesn't have a self-destruct capability.
It wouldn't be as much fun.
Waxproof jacket, green wellies, flat cap and bring round my Aegis destroyer with the hastily modified missiles please. I'm off to go *extreme* clay-pigeon shooting with me mates......
>[to safeguard] the satellite's technology.
Maybe, or just possibly because its the only place where the Americans would be allowed to fire their missiles... One side of the conversation...
"Hey, Mr Putin, its GW here. Could we bring a few anti satellite missiles into Siberia so that we can have a go at shooting down a satellite"
"No, Of course they wouldn't. What makes you think our missiles might miss and hit the wrong target?"
"Whaddya mean, ask the Brit Army?"
And of course the Atlantic is narrower and busier...
or has the acronym been updated?
the 'taped-off' area seems relatively unused, has a v low permanent population and is mostly west of track from areas of oggin that are easily accessible by USN surface craft; should be a really good test of SM-3 capability
(for once): good luck Yanquees
So they're doing all this about ten minutes, orbital time, from my house? Won't even have time to duck and I'm having enough trouble sleeping as it is.... Friendly fire and civilians don't mix. Welcome to British Columbia, the Middle East of the Pacific.
Here's hoping the mods to the missiles retain the self destruct feature, small payload or not.
AC as I live way too close to the border and the US flies over lots.
Mine's the one with the Kevlar liner and the round hat.