Misses?? OMG please don't say misses!

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, of the Marine Corps, said “a window of opportunity” to pick off the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere will open in the next three or four days and last for seven or eight days. If the first shot misses, there should be time for a second attempt before the satellite enters the atmosphere...

How many megabazillion dollars have we spent so far on "Star Wars" and now they have a broken satellite that's been sitting up there fat and sassy, long time to aim, and they're planning to shoot it down and they're thinking they might need a second try? Yikes! I'd hate to be the tech support guy who gets the call on that one. (Look under the desk - is it plugged in?).

You can read about it yourself. It's the Navy that's going to try to shoot this thing down, with their experimental (experimental!) modified Aegis radar and modified Standard (modified standard?) Missile 3. (What happened to the Star Wars? That's not working yet? What's keeping us safe from outer space? Nothing's keeping us safe from outer space?)

Turns out, this happens all the time - satellites falling out of the sky - but they pretty much never hit anybody that we know about, generally often usually in part. (In part?)

Many satellites have fallen harmlessly out of orbit during the space age, in part because they often break apart and the pieces generally burn upon re-entry. And when pieces do survive re-entry, they have usually landed in remote areas or in an ocean, simply because the Earth’s surface has more remote regions and seas than it does heavily populated areas.

Whew. Last time I'm going swimming, Bunky. I mean it. They fall down in the ocean. Read it for yourself.

Some guy named Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, sez “one could say we’ve been lucky so far.” Sez the Times.

What I say is: Duck!