When China shot down its own old weather satellite last year, the US was all upset. Yesterday night, the US did the the very thing that it accused China of wrong doing, under the pretense of eliminating the risk of hydrazine exposure - the US basically said that it had to do it, to protect people from sickness or death from exposure to hydrazine in a fuel tank on the failed spy satellite. Now, the Chinese aren't happy (rightfully so) with the US' double standard.
Based on Dr. Patrick Durrell's opinion, I guesstimate that the chance of exposure to hydrazine on the dead satellite, if it were allowed to freely fall on earth, would have been less than one in a billion. Now, when we deal with other toxins, we don't give a hoot if they pose less than one in a million risk. So, why bother spending $6o million to eliminate a de minimus threat, when we are accepting a significantly higher risk, say, just by drinking water from our rivers on a daily basis?
Also, if the US can assert "freedom of action in space", why can't China (or Equatorial Guinea or the Republic of Kiribati for that matter)?
Under a space policy authorized by President Bush in August, the United States asserts a right to "freedom of action in space" and says it will "deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so."
The policy includes the right to "deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.
