I am intrigued, perplexed, frustrated, and somehow slightly amused by this story about the malfunctioning satellite that will be falling to Earth sometime in March. In case you haven't heard, a US spy satellite packed with rocket fuel and top-secret imaging equipment that was sent into orbit in December 2006 never worked. It's been falling to Earth ever since it was released, but it's supposed to enter the atmosphere sometime next month. The military's response? Blow the dang thing up! Why am I not surprised?
I guess that probably is safer to shoot it out of the sky than risking big pieces of it hitting populated areas. I just read, however, that the mission to shoot it down, scheduled for Thursday, is going to cost about $40 million to $60 million!!!! So you're telling me that a top-secret satellite that took about a kabillion dollars to build and shoot into space takes $60 million to blow up? And once again, we wonder why our country is in such bad shape economically! Just think if we would have had that kabillion dollars plus the blow-up money for something like, oh I don't know, health care for the poor. Or counseling services for our troops coming home with PTSD. Or debt relief. Or road improvement projects in Charlotte. I really like the thought of that last one!
Oh, and by the way, it seems that we're not too confident that the first $60 million blow-up will work. It might take a second shot. Maybe this is what we get for being so nosy. hmmmmm.......
before you read any further...
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Monday, February 18, 2008
shooting into space...
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2 comments:
I agree with your heart for the poor and caring for our country, but I'd respectfully point out that our satellite system supports our military, which protects our entire country - and the world. The jihadists we are fighting would like to destroy us, our families, and our neighbors. With a weakened military, we may have more poor to care for, fewer troops returning home, or maybe no home to for them to return to.
The satellite support for the military also saves soldier's lives by providing them timely and relevant information. It's a matter of cost in dollars versus cost in lives.
Let's be thankful for the safety that our soldiers and our dollars have bought us in the US.
Thanks so much for your comment Aimee! That is a great balancing thought to my viewpoint as I definitely don't want to seem ungrateful for the difficult work our troops do around the world. I guess my problem is more with the fact that they need to be out there doing what they are doing in the first place. I realize that they are largely fighting to protect us from people who want to cause us harm.
I wonder, however, if we could maybe scale back some of our weaponry and start using the kabillion dollars that we spend on spy technology and use that to bless our enemies instead.
What if we took that kabillion dollars and drilled wells for them to all have drinkable water? Or bought them livestock, tractors, and farming equipment? Or built some decent schools for them?
I know that there are some insanely angry people out there that would not want us to do that kind of thing and might even try to hinder those efforts, but I wonder if it is worth a shot. I'm no diplomat or foreign policy expert, but I know God wants us to love our enemies. Maybe if we gave that an honest attempt, we would begin to have fewer and fewer enemies so that our soldiers wouldn't have to put themselves in harm's way. Then they could stay home with their families and see their sons and daughters grow up. That's the heart of this posting.
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