Lucy in the sky

(...) General Cartwright said that the gas might cover an area “roughly the size of two football fields” and any unlucky person who wound up within proximity “would at least incur something that would make you go to the doctor.”

The price tag for shooting USA-193 is up to $60 million. Try making a list of the threats to your personal safety that could be reduced for that amount of money. For instance, there’s a construction site next to our office building, and I personally spend a great deal of time worrying that the monster crane will come crashing through my office window and squash me. I bet $60 million would go a long way toward convincing the contractors to find another way to lift things.

(...)

Small, paranoid minds wondered if the government was not being completely forthright about its motives. The weapons the military mobilized to do the shooting are part of the missile defense system. Some people think the whole poison-gas story is just an excuse to give the Pentagon a chance to test its hardware.

(...)

The only known instance of somebody shooting down a satellite occurred last year when the Chinese brought down one of their old weather satellites, also citing vague threats to humanity. At the time, the United States was extremely peeved and complained the Chinese were creating space debris. (If you’re going to play in outer space, you really should clean up after yourself.)