The United States of America owns space.
When Neil Armstrong stabbed the Stars and Stripes into the moon, he permanently tied the conquest of the cosmos with the red, white and blue. To date, our flag is still the only one adorning the magnificent desolation
as Buzz Aldrin called it.
Of more than 800 man-made satellites orbiting Earth, a little more than half belong to Uncle Sam. We use some of them for weather and communications, but they're much more handy for tracking your location at all times.
Cementing our dominance of space, the United States has recently announced they will be shooting down a broken spy satellite within the coming weeks. The move is being criticized by some, including my token wussy friend, who says the move is a bullheaded retaliation to a similar action taken by the Chinese in January 2007.
China's aggressive, unprompted display turned heads around the globe, but painfully showed this was baby China's very first arms race. China was quieter than a Democratic congressman during roll call about the missile launch, which made some observers even more nervous.
China's missile defense showcase had all of the fun and doomsday undertones of the Cold War days, but it lacked the brilliant subtlety and deniability of the United States' current satellite destruction.
The satellite we will shoot is crippled, the government tells us. It is limping out of orbit and back into our atmosphere, carrying enough toxic fuel to contaminate the area of two football fields. We are uncharacteristically not interested in blowing up the satellite but rather puncturing a hole in the gas tank, which is an even smaller and more impressive target.
As a fearmongering conservative, I must remind readers that the satellite could hit anywhere on Earth if allowed to plummet unfettered. New York City is a theoretical target, as is any state more Blue than Red, but that lung-shredding goo will most likely demolish your own backyard. You can never be too afraid of toxic goo, Bobcat Nation.
The American government isn't so much afraid of infecting dozens of people as it is of losing the information stored on the spy satellite. It may hold some of the nation's greatest secrets ' such as Saddam Hussein's baseball cap size or the probable whereabouts of international super thief Carmen Sandiego. We must stop this satellite dead in its orbit before these secrets reach the ground, where our enemies are always lurking in the shadows.
In fact, there are so many secondary reasons for destroying the sinking satellite that the American government is denying any obvious suggestions that the action is meant to send a message to America's adversaries. That's how politics is played, China.
If you want to be a player in international relations, you can't just go shooting missiles and blowing stuff up. You have to make up silly reasons to shoot off missiles, like saving people from toxic fuel, and let people's unquestioning nature work from there.
China, you seem like you may be a fun adversary some day. Economic investments suggest you've got a heck of a future in front of you and that repressive Communist government means you can get away with just about anything domestically without answering for it. But if you want to be a big dog and roll with the true players in international politics, coming up with bogus justifications is just as important as figuring out how to escape Earth's gravity while still hitting a minuscule target.
Chris Yonker is a senior journalism major. E-mail him your toxic goo at cy129904@ohiou.edu.
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Chris Yonker
