I thought the hydrazine angle was BS... but I don't think anyone is worried about sensitive components surviving impact... I just think the Navy wants to blow something up.  They've been really left out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I just hope the hell it works.  It would be very embarassing, and worse, would undermine our credibility in anti missile technology if we can't blow our own satellite on a known orbit out of the heavens.

Seems weird to me--If the government said "We're gonna blow it up because it's sensitive" I'd say "good."  Is there something bad about having secret stuff on a spy satellite?  I don't get it.  Why would anyone bother "covering up" what would seem perfectly natural?

I believe the reason they are blowing it up is:  This is such a large chunk of metal that it will not burn up enough during re-entry to render the surviving pieces harmless.  There are likely to be some pretty big chunks, which might make a rather impressive hole in any roof they chanced to breach.

By blowing it up, the pieces will be made small, will return to earth later, I believe.  And will mainly burn up into harmless stuff.

@ChanRobt

The administration will work its anti-Midas touch on this, too.  

To paraphrase Zuzu: "Teacher says, every time a spy satellite gets blown the fuck up, an angel gets a scorching case of herpes."

It's a freaking spy satellite, of course it's got James Bond stuff on it. I mean, either that or nudie pics of Robert Gates' wife, and we don't the Chinese or the Russians or, God forbid, the Iranians retrieving either of them.

"I believe the reason they are blowing it up is:  This is such a large chunk of metal that it will not burn up enough during re-entry to render the surviving pieces harmless."

Skylab and Soyuz both burned up quite nicely.  They were pretty large chucks of metal.

Like I said, the Navy just wants to blow stuff up.

There was a report on NPR Thursday afternoon about this story.  When I first heard the Bushies want to blow the thing up for "safety",  I knew it was garbage.  Bigger hunks of metal have come to Earth with little issue (as mentioned before, Skylab).  The satellite was dysfunctional soon after launch according to the report,and an expert they interviewed was very skeptical of the issue of hydrazine being a safety issue in this situation.

This all smacks of CYA; the administration doesn't want sensitive instruments to be revealed.  Why don't they come up and say that?  They instead say "public safety"?  Since when has that been of any concern for shrub bunch?  They could care less if innocents got killed,as long as their precious weapons and surveillance systems aren't revealed.

I don't see how using "National Security" as an excuse would play badly?  Just say you're blowing up the satellite because you don't want sensitive materials falling into foreign hands... who's going to disagree with that?!

I would be mad if I were in charge and I were actually doing it for safety reasons but nobody believes me, and my statements otherwise just cause them to believe the opposite even more.  Maybe if they just said, "We're blowing it up because aliens are on it," then everyone would say, "Oh, who would have thought the Bushies cared about our health? G Good for them!"

Showing off our newest anti-missile technology.

If they can knock out a satellite all the way up ithere...

My first reaction was cooooool too, I love all that military hardware hocus-pocus (Mom was an electrical engineer who built spaceships and weapons, back when feminism actually meant something).  It sounds like a good idea to shoot it down if they had to concoct that lame of a story.

Does anyone know how that poo-bah terrorist ghoul was finally killed yesterday?  I love the predator drones, I hope they were involved.  

I still have a photo from of the front page of the NYT of a spot in the desert amusingly notated as "remains."  Something about it being a carload of ghouls at some point.  

Well, Columbia had a similar hydrazine tank on board, and it survived reentry intact. Landed in Texas. Fortunately, the shuttle returns to earth with its fuel tanks mostly empty.

So the safety concern is perfectly valid. I mean, honestly, what would we all be saying if the Sierra Club were issuing a press release today slamming the Bush administration for allowing a spy satellite to rain toxins down on the environment and unsuspecting people somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere?

Second, what's wrong with the Navy testing its AMB system? The Air Force's ABM program in Alaska is a joke. But the Navy's lower-profile ABM program is the one that could actually have a situational, non-destabilizing deterrent effect, and it's also more likely to succeed. Basically, the naval ABM strategy relies on parking Navy ABM ships off the coast of countries thought to be considering a missile launch, so their deployment would represent a non-aggressive step in crisis escalation, rather than a permanent strategic threat.

Also, this intercept will be of limited deterrent or demonstration value anyway. For one thing, it's during reentry, so it won't prove that we can shoot down satellites in a stable orbit. For another thing, it's a satellite falling out of orbit, so it also won't prove that we can take down a ballistic missile. So it's a useful exercise for the Navy, with a useful system, to achieve a useful result, with no real strategic value. What's the harm?

Plus, if, say, North Korea erroneously reads this shoot-down as a signal that we can now park Navy ships off their coast and intercept their missiles, how could that possibly be a bad thing? Scaring hostile nations into not attacking us is actually kind of the point of having a military, especially for liberals who prefer peace to war, right?

I really hope it isn't a repeat of one of those "tests" they were running a couple of years ago when the firing unit had to supply all the necessary information to the anti-missile unit in order for the target to be actually hit.  It was pretty embarassing and made it look like the Chinese or whoever, if they ever attacked us, would have to email us the tracking coordinates first before we'd have a chance of shooting down their missile.

ironyroad, the Air Force's ABM program has been a fiasco, as you describe. But the Navy's ABM program has actually done reasonably well in testing (and it's based on extending shipborne antimissile defense systems that have actually been tested in battle). It's a lower-tech, lower-ambition system, it works better, it's more strategically useful, it's more tactically flexible, and it costs less than the Air Force's ABM program.

The Bush administration, therefore, has done everything it can to starve the Navy ABM program and promote the Air Force ABM program.

Thanks for the clarification, rhubarbs.  Ah, strategy!