Dale, The capability (or rather lack thereof) of the current U.S. missile defense network is off topic (and a long conversation), but in the opinion of many experts such an attempt was never considered except to drum up public/political support for the sputtering program. But with regard to the Shuttle, it is going to dock with the space station, which is at an altitude of slightly less than 340 km. An ICBM can reach as high as 1,000 km. So, altitude isn't an issue. The Tapeo Dong II, in addition, was launched about an hour and half after the Shuttle (the first Scud was launched at about the same time, but of course, it doesn't have the range to go into space), so not sure how that computes with whatever altitude the Shuttle was at that time. One of our science fellows is looking into it, initially he was concerned that the Tapeo Dong might have presented a debris risk to the Shuttle. Best, Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Dale Ireland [mailto:direland@drdale.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 1:46 PM To: SeeSat-L Subject: N. Korean launches Hello There was some talk last week that the U.S. might attempt to shoot down the N. Korean long range missile. Of course the rocket didn't get very far but I was wondering if the launch times had any relation to Space shuttle passes. I was just wondering if they may have thought the US might hesitate to fire an anti-icbm with the shuttle in the area? Would this be a realistic scenario or is the Shuttle way too high? Dale ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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