U.S. missile defense system hits dying satellite.

A Navy missile soaring 130 miles above the Pacific smashed a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite Wednesday and destroyed a tank carrying 1,000 pounds of toxic fuel, officials said. Officials had expressed cautious optimism that the missile would hit the satellite, which was the size of a school bus. But they were less certain of hitting the smaller, more problematic fuel tank, whose contents posed what Bush administration officials deemed a potential health hazard to humans if it landed intact. The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles - not orbiting satellites - launched the attack a 9:26 p.m. CST, according to the Pentagon. It hit the satellite about three minutes later as the spacecraft traveled in polar orbit at more than 17,000 mph. By Robert Burns, AP military writer.

It's the SDI which detractors nicknamed "Star Wars". President Reagan announced on March 23, 1983 a new national missile defense program formally called the Strategic Defense Initiative. The goal was not just to protect the U.S. and its allies, but to also provide the completed system to the USSR, thus ending the threat of nuclear war. A partisan debate ensued in Congress, with Democrats questioning the feasibility and strategic wisdom of such a program. They opposed missile defense because it could mean junking the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. The Republicans talked about its strategic necessity, promising to protect America. The national missile defense program largely collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Well what happened to the program? Under the first President Bush Congress didn't allocate funding for the program. Under President Clinton some testing continued but the project was not given much funding. Than on December 16, 2002 President George W Bush signed the National Security Presidential Directive 23 which outlined a plan to begin deployment of operational ballistic missile defense systems by 2004.

Now the world knows our defense system works and that Americans should feel safer knowing that we can stop an incoming nuclear missile. Not only did that SM-3 missile hit the satellite, which was traveling at 17,000 mph, it was 130 miles above the earth in outer space. That's Star Wars baby.


Technorati Tags: Satellite

She wants her TASER in pink.

An Arizona entrepreneur gathers women in her home for stun gun parties, and is selling the weapons like hotcakes. Before she lets them shoot her little pink stun gun, Dana Shafman ushers her new friends to the living room sofa for a serious chat about the fears she believes they all share. Welcome, she said to the taser party. On the coffee table, Shafman spreads out Taser's C2 "personal protector" weapons that the company is marketing to the public. It doesn't take long before the women are lined up in the hallway, whooping as they take turns blasting at a metallic target. "C'mon! she said "give it a shot". Shafman isn't an employee for Scottsdale, Ariz.- based Taser International. She's an independent entrepreneur who been selling Tasers the way her mother's generation sold plastic food storage containers. Amnesty International, which has criticized Taser's assertion that its weapons are nonlethal, frowns on the C2 and any attempt to spread the use of stun guns. Officials with the human rights organization said the weapons are frequently used in excess by trained police, and they're likely to be abused by the public as well. By Chris Kahn, AP business writer. All animals, when they are attacked, defend themselves. When we are attacked we should be able to protect ourselves in any way that we can. I think Amnesty International wants the government to protect us. When they remove our means of protecting ourselves, we become like sheep for the slaughter. I don't know about you but I'm not a sheep. I am a human, that when attacked, will use what ever means possible to protect my family and myself. I don't care what Amnesty International thinks or says.