"there's nothing the military can do to make the outcome worse."

Is anyone else screaming in fear over this quote?

Yes, that’s NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s opinion of the Navy shooting down a wayward, and quickly falling, potentially dangerous, could kill a lot of people, spy satellite.

Let us all back up a bit to last week, when the Government announced that a spy satellite was falling to the earth... no big deal, don’t worry about it, stuff falls from space all the time.

Then it was: Ok, so there’s some toxic liquid on this particular bus-sized spy satellite that is hurtling its way to the earth and we’re not quite sure where its gonna land, but don’t worry, that toxic liquid stuff will more than likely just burn up in the atmosphere when it comes down, no biggie, everything is fine.

Now its: Ok, so the Navy is going to try shooting the satellite down because that liquid on it... well, its sorta really poisonous and we’re afraid that it’ll kill everyone in a region the size of two football fields, although we’re not quite sure where that region is, since we have absolutely no control over where it lands, so we’ll shoot it down and be done with it.

That’s where we are now, with Mr. Griffin’s quote: “...there’s nothing the military can do to make the outcome worse.” Which begs the question: “What do you mean... worse?”

Coming from a military background, and coming from a contractor background, and coming from a tv and movie viewing background, I can assure you that things can get a WHOLE lot worse.

Scenario 1: The Navy shoots the rocket into space, the rocket malfunctions and explodes in China, who then shoots off their missiles at us, full scale war, and the stupid satellite falls harmlessly into the ocean.

Scenario 2: The Navy shoots the rocket into space, it hits the satellite and explodes it... causes its toxic payload to spread throughout the entire atmosphere and kills everyone on the earth except cockroaches.

Scenario 3: The Navy shoots the rocket into space, the satellite is stronger than first thought, the rocket ricochets and hits the space station, which then falls and squishes all of Nebraska. Nebraska declares war on the U.S.

Scenario 4: The Navy shoots the rocket into space, the satellite explodes and everything seems ok until the toxic fumes from the explosion and fuel cause humans to mutate into giant mosquito-people (hey, its happened once already, haven’t you seen Mansquito?).

Yeah, so there you go Mr. Smartypants NASA guy, there are at least 4 scenarios where the Navy can make the outcome worse. Oh, here’s one more actually:

Scenario 5: The Navy tries twice and can’t hit the broadside of a barn, the stupid thing falls harmlessly into the ocean, but we are now the laughing stock of all nations, a government inquiry takes places and all government contractors are recognized as the worthless leeches that they are, they are all fired and nothing gets done because the government has relied so much on contractors for years that nobody knows how to even make coffee, and Canada easily defeats us in a war where no bullets are fired because a contractor had the key to the armory and didn’t give it back.

Well, at least we’d finally get free healthcare... eh?