China Destroys Satellite With a Missile

chinese-rocket-lauch.jpgChina has become the first nation to successfully shoot down a low-earth orbit satellite with a ballistic missile. Russia, opposed to space weaponry, criticizes the US for the Chinese shoot-down (typical,) and this is certain to heat up the Asian Space Race.

Many countries in the region are advancing their space programs by leaps and bounds over the past few years, which why it’s terribly important for us to keep our efforts going. With this threat, China could create a “Space based Pearl Harbor” since much of our defense integration and network centric warfar methods are based on GPS satellites and other recon sats.

The clear worry of all space faring nations is the potential of one nation taking the “high ground”, and by doing so control access to space for all time.

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Crazed Youth I

One microsecond loss of control and we would have been sushi instead of going to get sushi. One ice-bump under a tire and even if we had survived the crash we surely would have frozen in the temperature extremes.

So, yeah, some mornings I awake with wonder just to be alive.

Many days I awake in sheer wonder that I am still alive. You might ask why and when you do scenes flash before my mind of my crazed and misspent youth. I was highly intelligent when I was young, but I really wasn’t experienced enough to be smart.

So, in the hopes of preventing stupidity I’m creating a new category and tag for my online journal, “Crazed Youth” in which I will occasionally confess my own foolishness.

parks-hwy.bmpIn Alaska the Parks highway stretches about 360 miles between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and it’s a wonderful, scenic drive in the summer. During the winter after it was first built you were taking your life in your hands whenever you drove it. After construction there were few facilities, houses, or anything else along the way but for wilderness and bitter winter cold (one gas station midway, the Tesoro Igloo.)

The problem was that in Fairbanks it was dark, cold and miserable in the depths of winter so occasionally one of us would yell “Road Trip!” in the wee hours of the morn, and we would all pile into my ’74 Plymouth Satellite and take off for Anchorage to get Sushi, or to see women in bars in dresses instead of parkas.

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