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The US Missile Defence Agency and American aerospace behemoth Lockheed is chuffed to announce that they have carried out successful hover tests of a Multiple Kill Vehicle space interceptor system this week. Here's a vid of the test, courtesy of the missile-defence people and YouTube (remember you need Flash and a multimedia- …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    >the theory that everyone deserves some of the pork.

    The theory is actually that competition is the best driver of innovation.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Coo !

    Multiple Kill Vehicle space interceptor system

    Is this another one of those Manga cartoon shows?

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  3. hugo tyson
    Coat

    Thunderdome

    Mad Max, Tina Turner and a fire-spurting robot dustbin. But which is better? Only one way to find out.... CAGE FIGHT!

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  4. Steven Raith
    Pirate

    That is the coolest thing I have ever seen

    Especially if that really is 7m in the air, and not 70cm as it looks like....

    Mind you, stick some .50cal machine guns with a targetting servo on it and you have a proper meatbag-chasing killbot of death.

    Terminator-esque HKs are on the way!

    Steven R

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  5. Warhelmet
    Alien

    Telescope?

    Hmm.

    Black Missile? Shiny Missile? Stealth Missile? Decoy Missile? Lots of chaff? etc etc...

    defeatable.

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  6. Graham Jordan
    Coat

    Some one clear something up for me, I'm confused.

    These things are going to reside where exactly?

    On a Navy ship? Thus they have to be fired into the atmosphere first of all to do their job wasting valuable time getting into the desired position to begin firing spit pellets off?

    Or will they live on satellites thus break that whole no weapons in space pact?

    Come on Obama, do the right thing, shut this crap down,

    Man getting his coat because its cold in the office.

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  7. James

    7m???

    No way! It doesn't matter how I look at it, that doesn't look anywhere near 7m.

    Unless the cage and trampoline are much larger than I can get my head around.

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  8. Chris Thomas
    Boffin

    slow motion?

    is it me or is the video in slow motion, because the object falls and bounces very slowly for something I expect to be heavier

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  9. David Given
    Thumb Down

    7 metres?

    No way. Judging by the way everything moves, I think you mean seven *feet*. If that was seven metres up, then the net mesh would have strands about 3cm thick and the whole video would have had to be sped up.

    ...now, if this were DARPA, I could believe that.

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  10. Schultz
    Black Helicopters

    Video game stuff

    Gotta see it life to believe it. It surely beats the moonlander machines of Doom that we saw in video recently, but the Californian sky gave some realism to that.

    Who need black helicopters any more?

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  11. raul izquierdo
    Dead Vulture

    huh?

    why not just let them land on us the whole world will then starve!

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  12. Joe Cooper

    @BLoad

    "And the difference between 23ft and 'The Final Frontier' is......"

    They use a multi-stage rocket, kind of like a weapon-grade sounding rocket, to flog it at the target.

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  13. ratfox

    What's the machine-gun sound?

    For a while, I thought this is a new type of anti-personal mine designed to spray bullets all around.

    Are these impulsion-based propulser, like on space shuttles (I think?)

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    RE: slow motion?

    FALLS very slowly for something you expect to be heavier? uh oh, better reexamine your knowledge of physics!!

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  15. Rick Brasche

    waitaminnit. this was done already for SDI years ago

    they had a "golf bag sized" kinetic kill vehicle that was demonstrated in an identical manner years ago. I think they still have an exhibit at LLNL.

    Other than for show, what is the point of the hover test? These will be released in free fall, unless you're trying to demonstrate it's directional thrusters can move it at 1G..and hopefully in more than one direction.

    The big killer of SDI was never the missiles, it was the detection, discriminating between decoys and chaff and targets. The computer, sensor and network hardware wasn't up to the task in the 90's.

    Now, it's pretty damned close. And compared to the complete waste, or actually dangerously pathological bailout fiasco, a SDI system is a bargain!

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  16. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    Very stable....

    Overly so, I think. The "control jets" (if that's what they were) are all in one plane, and yet the thing never rotated or drifted along its long axis.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is all good and well...

    But it is not a flying car! Where is my flying car!?

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