Wired: Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: May 7, 2008 8:43:45 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Wired: Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad  
Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock

[Note:  This item comes from friend Randy Burge.  DLH]

From: burge () proactiveteams com
Date: May 7, 2008 2:58:02 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Wired: Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out  
of the Airlock

Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock

<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/usaf-ridiculous.html>

By Noah Shachtman May 07, 2008 | 3:13:00 PM

No one expects commercials to be word-for-word accurate -- not even ads
from the U.S. military.  But a new Air Force commercial, about the
perils of an attack in space, does more than stretch the truth, a bit.
It snaps the truth into tiny little pieces, experts and former officers
say -- violating the laws of physics and common sense, while flying in
the face everything that's known about the world's constellation of
satellites.

"What if your cell phone calls, your television, your GPS system,even
your bank transactions, could be taken out with a single missile?"the
military ad asks. "They can."

No, they can't.  Not unless there's some new missile out there that can
strike dozens and dozens of targets, spread out over thousands and
thousands of miles.  Even a nuke in space wouldn't do the trick.
Communication, television and navigational systems are handled by
different arrays of satellites.  Each craft in the constellation is set
apart by hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.  And each constellation
is thousands of miles from the other.  At least ten thousand miles, for
example, separates the arrays of communications and GPS satellites. The
communications birds are typically positioned in geostationary orbit, or
GEO, about 22,000 miles away from Earth. The ring of 32 GPS satellites,
on the other hand, circle the planet in a Medium Earth Orbit, or MEO,
approximately 12,000 miles up.  There's no missile that can hit two
targets that far away from one other.  (In fact, there's no
anti-satellite missile, taking off from Earth, that can even reach GEO
or MEO.  China's satellite-killing missile only reached up to about 540
miles.)

And even if such a weapon was one day invented, it still wouldn't cause
much more than hiccups in your GPS or bank service.  Because"while it is
true that a single ASAT [anti-satellite weapon] could theoretically take
out a single satellite, none of the services mentioned in the commercial
rely on a single satellite," says Brian Weeden, who served nine years in
the Air Force's space and missile corps.  "I find it distressing that
the Air Force would resort to such fear-mongering."

<snip>


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