In all of the hysterical opinionating over the recent Naval exercise to test our ability to shoot down space based vehicles, or rather the "emergency" shoot down ao a horribly toxic satellite that threatened life itself on our planet, Rich Lowry of the National Review takes the cake. There are times that I feel that Lowry is an editor of The Harvard Lampoon rather than the National Review. His essay on "Weapons in Space", which I read in The Oregonian newspaper, is one of those times. When he refers to the " 1,000-pound tank of toxic fuel" he fails to realize that while hydrazine will form a chlorine-type gas, you would have to stand over it and breath deeply a number of times to get the full toxic effects.
When he states that we "have resisted...getting pushed into an unenforceable treaty against weapons in space" is he referring to the "Outer Space Treaty" of 1967 to which we are already bound. The only thing I see that might make it "unenforceable" would be our recalcitrance in following it's dictates.
As for ICBM's, for the most part, the part at which we would be able to try to shoot them down, they are sub-orbital, and thus not space weapons.
Finally, the V-2 reached a height of 50 miles before shutting off it's engine, much lower than the spy satellite the Navy shot down and, again, hardly an example of the weaponization of space that Mr. Lowry so deeply fears.
In all, Mr. Lowry is a prime example of the old saying about opinions. Every one has an opinion and an asshole, yet for the most part we don't really want to hear them. Still, someone pays him none the less. What a cool gig.
3 comments:
yes, and also many people seemed oblivious to a few odd things about this story that made it seem rather like a contrived "need" to shoo t the satellite down:
first, they JUST launched this thing. Probably for the express purpose of shooting it down with something other than what they claim they used to shoot it down.
second, the hydrazine was LESS than in the space shuttle which broke up all over Texas and yet they said not one word about that.
third, there was probably NO hydrazine in the tank if they simply put something up there for the purpose of shooting it down.
You don't suppose we were just tit for tatting China for doing the same thing do ya? Or Russia for shooting off that "uncle of all missiles" or whatever the hell that was a couple months ago?
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Going on almost a year and no rants Phil?
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