Sorcha Faal went on to assert that “...Americans themselves ...destroyed their own spy satellite with the attack upon it being made by the United States Air Forces' 30th Space Wing located at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.” This wording to me implies an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile attack, but that simply could not have been the case, since a kinetic-energy ASAT strike on a satellite this large would have instantly doubled the debris in low-Earth orbits (LEO), putting all the rest of our satellites at risk and angering all of the world’s governments who have satellites in LEO (Physics Today, October 2007, p. 35). Since we haven’t heard a peep from a single foreign government, this could NOT have happened. However, all satellites of this size have means of being de-orbited. Indeed, the Keyhole satellites have a propulsion system for changing orbits, which almost certainly would be used in the event the de-orbit command is given.
O.K., now suppose that KH-13 was de-orbited (rather than blown to smithereens in space) by U.S. military officers who absolutely did not want it to be used for an attack against Iran. Assuming it shared the same mass as a KH-12, we’d have a reentry package of dry mass 10,000 kg plus up to 8,000 kg of rocket fuel aboard. The fuel would burn, thus accounting for the daytime visibility of the object that created the crater in Peru. Indeed, the reported light emission at such a low altitude is absolutely incompatible with what is known about meteorites of this size. Otherwise, the diameter of the Carrancas crater was misstated by Sorcha Faal as 30 meters, whereas the actually measured crater dimensions were given as 13.3 by 13.8 meters (given in earlier links). And Faal’s claimed impact-energy release of 1 KiloTon of TNT is over a thousand times too large (vide infra).
I did my own calculations by means of a web-based impact-crater calculator:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
For input parameters, I used 7.5 km/second for the orbital speed (typical of LEO satellites), 30 degrees for the impact angle, and for the material density of the impactor I used that of solid iron, because the calculator insists that all stony meteorites 10,000 kg or smaller always disintegrate in the upper atmosphere and therefore never impact the earth (except as small pieces). I then varied the projectile diameter until I succeeded in calculating a 13.8 m diameter crater (assumed into sedimentary rock, as evident from the Peruvian altiplano impact site). The calculator noted that that 99.9% of the initial kinetic energy would have been dissipated in the atmosphere, leaving the energy equivalent of less than ½ Ton of TNT to excavate the crater. But the most important result was that the 0.99-meter-diameter pure-iron projectile that gave the correct crater diameter yielded the sought-after mass of the impacting object, that is, 3,050 kg – or about 30% of the dry mass of a Keyhole satellite. This seems like a reasonable number, since many exterior parts would have been aerodynamically ripped off and widely scattered.
The Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators used in deep-space probes and military satellites (including KH-12) typically employ the Pu-238 as the oxide PuO2. While insoluble in water, PuO2 powder could become airborne in the event of a violent explosion (which this impact certainly was). If so, it would have sickened (and probably will kill) anyone who ingesting even a small amount. This could explain reports of as many as 200 local villagers near the impact site becoming ill with “headaches, eye problems, irritated skin, nausea and vomiting” ...even though their complaints were summarily dismissed as “mass hysteria” (earlier link). No follow-up medical reports have surfaced since the initial reporting. This could this be because it really was mass hysteria ...or because of a rigorously enforced cover up?
I have no idea how much Pu-238 is onboard such satellites as a power source. However, the decay heat of Pu-238 is 0.56 W/g; so, for example, a one kilowatt source would require just 1.8 kg of this extremely radioactive material (half-life 88 years). This amount of Pu-238 might account for reports boiling water in the crater (links above). On the other hand, if it actually was the KH-13 satellite and its fuel continued to burn all the way to the impact point, heated metal parts could have boiled the water for a brief time. In any event, all impact-crater experts would agree that boiling water in the crater doesn’t make any sense if the impactor was a meteorite, because ones of this size always arrive from outer space “stone cold.”
The link below explains why a full-scale air attack on Iran would provoke Iranian retaliation with modern Mach-2.5 “Sunburn” and “Yakhonts” anti-ship missiles which, as already proved in a recent U.S. war game, are virtually certain to sink the entire U.S. Fifth Fleet! And the neocons seem to be good with that ...because they are growing desperate for yet another Pearl Harbor.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18687.htm
Unfortunately, it remains very likely that one of those nuclear-armed AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot actually WAS stolen. The initial reports from Barksdale were that only 5 of the original 6 missiles arrived there. Then there is the fact that the obvious reason for downing the KH-13 would be to prevent its imminent use for targeting the purloined AGM-129 against Iran. (Remember, the Peruvian impact was September 15th and the limit on the $4.5 billion options bet was September 21st.)
I sincerely hope that the publicity given the B-52 incident will prevent the use of the stolen warhead on American soil! Of course, the one person who still retains the motive, means, and opportunity to circumvent the sophisticated multi-layer security system protecting our nuclear weapons is the insane Dick Cheney. Fortunately, however, enough of our high-ranking military officers are sane and know who the real threat is:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20071115/cm_uc_crjcox/op_454396
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