Thursday, February 21, 2008

4.21 - The One with the ultimate snipe

I've been playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and there's a mission where you're a sniper and have to hit a target about a mile away. You have to take into account the distance, the wind, and even the curvature of the earth. When you hit the target it's really satisfying...all that work for one shot. Gives you a new respect for the snipers in the military...

Last night the US military upped the ante and shot down one of their dying spy satellites orbiting 130 miles over the Pacific Ocean with a missle. The 5,000-pound satellite, roughly the size of a school bus was traveling over 17,000 miles an hour when it was shot down. Because it was in orbit they couldn't use the heat signature to hit it...imagine the amount of math that had to go into this? That's impressive. Now the questions remains...was this a little too much? Granted the satellite was going to fall out of orbit soon and did contain toxic gas...but maybe the US wanted to make a statement..."hey look...we just shot a moving target from really far away..." Whichever is the case...I'm still impressed.

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