Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Another flurry of activity. It’s a hit. At 10:26 p.m. EST The Spy Satellite, or as it’s now being called ‘non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite has been hit while in its final orbits.
The USS Lake Erie fired the modified tactical Standard Missile-3 and hit the spy satellite approx. 133 nautical miles over the Pacific Ocean and the USS Decatur and Russell assisted in the task.
Don’t hold your breath though, confirmation on the fuel tank will only be available within the next 24 hours. Debris should begin to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere “pretty much NOW” or immediately since the satellite was relatively low in altitude.
Pay attention here when the DoD says, “Nearly all of the debris will burn up on reentry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days.”
Okay, debris falling imediately, debris falling 23-48 hours and debris falling within 40 days. I got lost somewhere in the debris of the debris. Maybe tomorrow at 7 a.m. when the DoD holds a briefing I’ll have a greater understanding.
The briefing will be live at www.Defenselink.com through the Pentagon Channel.
Labels: Department of Defense, Pacific Ocean, U.S. Spy Satellite, US Navy, USS Lake Erie, USS Russell, Uss Decatur
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Spy Satellite Hit. So says the Department of Defense!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
So the U.S. military hopes to smash that spy satellite, plumeting towards earth, with a single missile. The missile will be fired from a Navy cruiser. The missile needs to hit the out of control satellite before it enters the earths atmosphere.
The Pentagon revealed the spy satellite is loaded with toxic fuel. The fuel, hydrazine is listed at the ATSDR, Agency For Toxic Substances and Disease Registryas colorless liquids that are used in rocket fuels. After a review of “hydrazine” it seems to be actually the very least of the threat this falling satellite the size of a school bus presents. On January 29th the AP reported Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, who heads the U.S. Northern Command dismissed the likelyhood of a toxic threat posed by the satellite when he said, “they [small engines] are not large booster engines with substantial amounts of fuel.”
Was Renuart wrong, or was attempting to downplay the threat from the falling satellite?
As ‘luck’ would have it, U.S. defensive missiles and supporting radar were already being modified and tested to shoot down enemy warheads. Now these defensive missile’s software is being reprogrammed to home in on the signatures of a large satellite instead of ballistic missiles.
The U.S. opposes a treaty limiting antisatellite and other weapons in space. The U.S. says it will comply with other treaties that require notification to other nations before launching a missile aimmed at the out of control satellite. The United States criticized China last year when it tested an antisatellite system on an out of commission weather satellite. the Bush administration called the Chinese test “a destabilizing development.”
NASA administrator, Michael Griffin says, “We looked very carefully at increased risks to shuttle and [space] station, and broadly speaking, they are negligible.” Broadly speaking seems to be the best way to speak. Why get hung up in the details and facts of all the possiblities and ramifications of launching missiles into space to bring down a deadly spy satellite?
Broadly speaking this satellite has lost 50% of it’s weight also. U.S. officials were saying the weight of the satellite was 10,000 pounds, small by fallen skylab’s weight, now weight estimates are 5,000 pounds. Even Jenny Craig would envy that kind of weight loss in only one month.
This from the defenselink.mil: Hydrazine is similar to chlorine or ammonia in that it affects lung tissue. People inhaling it would feel a burning sensation. “If you stay close to it and inhale a lot of it, it could be deadly,” Cartwright said.
If the military did not shoot down the satellite, the hydrazine would disperse over an area roughly the size of two football fields, the general said. Those who breathed it would need medical attention.
“As we reviewed the data, if we fire at the satellite, the worst that could happen is that we miss,” Cartwright said. “Then we have a known situation, which is where we are today.”
General Cartwright serves as the eighth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Photo: Michael Griffin (right), administrator of the National Areonautics and Space Administration, comments on a proposed attempt to destroy an unresponsive U.S. reconnaissance satelite just as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere, during a news briefing at the Pentagon, Feb. 14, 2008. Griffin, joined Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright (center), vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor, is discussing details of the planned operation. Photo by R. D. Ward
Labels: Satellite falling, U.S. Spy Satellite, US Navy
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
U.S. Navy To shoot Down Malfunctioning Satellite. What could possibly go wrong?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Christian Science Monitor has reported the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, and her accompanying ships began exercises Wednesday in the waters off San Diego.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper highlighted in her preliminary injunction against the use of sonar the Navy’s own estimate that these exercises would temporarily disrupt or harm 170,000 marine mammals and permanently injure more than 400.
Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice says, he doesn’t understand “why the sonar has become such a big deal.” Whales and other marine mammals are killed by ship strikes, fishing nets and loud sounds from oil and gas exploration. Rear Adm. Rice is the Navy’s director for environmental readiness. With friends like Rice the marine mammals might be asking themselves; who needs enemies?
The ocean is a mighty big place. It’s could be conceivable there is more than enough room for the Navy and marine mammals to stay out of each other’s way. The days of Navy training exercises being carried out far far away from coastlines vanished with the ‘war on terror’. The U.S. now feels attacks on ports by enemies using ’silent’ subs is a likely potential. This is what has prompted the Navy to move some exercises closer to shore.
Logic could dictate that detecting an enemy’s ’silent’ sub before it came close to port would be the prudent thing to practice.
Navy officials say more than 40 countries are using sophisticated diesel-electric submarines which are less expensive and more stealth. These cheaper stealthier submarines could be accessed by potential U.S. enemies. Navy officials also contend the coast simulates smaller waterways like those found in the Middle East.
Richard Kendall, National Resources Defense Council attorney, believes Bush used an agency within his own executive branch to overturn a federal court ruling which limited the use of sonar during these exercises. “The president’s effort to use a White House agency to override a court order is very dangerous in our legal system, highly illegal, and completely unjustified.”
Read the “Presidential Exemption from the Coastal Zone Management Act”
Council on Environmental Quality Letter to Navy (Don’t miss page 150) of 151 pages pdf format
Photo Thanks: PH3 Kittie VandenBosch, USN.
Labels: California, Sonar, US Navy, marine mammals
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Marine Mammals Paying The Price For The War On Terror. U.S. Navy resumes training with sonar.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Adm. Robert F. Willard, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander appears to be in lock-step with with an administration that prefers to operate with the wool pulled over his eyes, or worse an administration that believes it can operate freely by pulling the wool over the eyes of its citizens.
In just one more example, that points to the fact George Orwell was a card-carrying-visionary, we are being asked to swallow ‘revisionist history’.
Willard has stated there is no scientific basis to believe navy sonar is having any affect on sea mammals! The U.S. navy is funding a portion of a $3 million dollar study to determine what if any affect their sonar has on the Beaked Whales, formerly around the Big Island of Hawaii. Formerly? Beaked whales were only spotted 2 times in 17 days off the Kona coast.
$3 million dollars is approximately the cost of 15 minutes…yes, 15 minutes of war in Iraq. Remarkably we are being asked to applaud a 3 million dollar study!
I challenge the twice-speak being dished out by Willard “The frustration and challenge is that we are being asked to put mitigating procedures into place, or to not operate and restrict our freedom of operations, without any foundation whatsoever,” There is a foundation, there is scientific evidence, there is solid and historic data proving military and commercial sonar does have a deleterious affect on sea mammals.
Any 5 year old, would be able to tell you he, wouldn’t make it through his preschool class wearing a blindfold.
It has long been known that whales navigate their terrain using a complicated system of sonar. Sounds are analyzed by a structure in their heads called the ‘melon’. We know for a fact that the sounds produced by whales are used to communicate as well as navigate. The water amplifies the sounds emitted by the whales and these sounds can carry for many hundreds of miles.
In 2005, after listening to the ’songs’ of the whale for 9 long years, Dr. Christopher Clark, Cornell University said, “We now have evidence that they (whales) are communicating with each other over THOUSANDS of miles of ocean….”
The whales use a ‘mental’ map of the sea beds they have charted by sonar, just in the same way ships map the unseen terrain of the sea.
The notion that navy and commercial sonar is adversely affecting all sorts of sea creatures in not a new one and in fact dates back several decades. For us to be asked to again swallow that this concept is one in its infancy is another insult.
If they say it, it must be so? Give us a collective break!
7 years ago several beaked whales washed ashore in the Bahamas. These whales were hemorrhaging blood into their skulls; they beached themselves and died. Why? Another unsolved mystery? The U.S navy was conducting exercises, at that time, in that area, using high intensity sonar!
Did the use of ‘high intensity sonar have anything to do with the injuries and deaths of those whales?
Ask a 5th grader, and save $3 million dollars.
Photo: © Frank Cippriano
Labels: Beaked Whale, Ocean Mammals, Sea, Sea Mammals, Sonar, US Navy, Whales
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Beaked Whales Being ‘Blinded’ by Sonar
