http://www.stratcom.mil/Spch&test/CC%%20MilSpace%%20speech%%206May08.html

[USSTRATCOM Commander] General Chilton's speech at MilSpace Conference
in Paris
May 6, 2008

[snip]

Just how important is this human resource I’m talking about as opposed
to the launch vehicle or the satellite? At the end of the day I think
it’s the ultimate and most vital element of the space program. I’ll
give you an example where this was highlighted to me particularly this
year.

Actually the story begins back in December of last year when I met Dr.
Scott Large, the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, at a
meeting we were having down in Florida. We were just chatting
afterwards and he said, "Kevin, I’m really concerned about this
satellite we have that’s going to reenter early next year." I said,
"This isn’t the first time we’ve had satellites reenter in an
uncontrolled fashion. What’s unique about this?" He said, "Well there
is something different about this one. It’s got a thousand pounds of
hydrazine on board that has not been used and we’re pretty sure,
because it’s in a titanium tank, that this tank will survive reentry.
So we’re not talking about the risk which is a pretty low probability
of anyone being injured by debris; we’re talking about the risk of
this tank surviving to the ground and bursting open and exposing
people to the hydrazine inside it which can be fatal." It’s a pretty
toxic, those of you in the business know, chemical.

I said, "Well, I’m sure glad I didn’t launch that thing." [Laughter].
He said, "Do you have any ideas?" I said, "I don’t know what you'd do
other than we start preparing for the contingency when that happens,
to be in a position to support wherever it lands." He said, "I’m going
to give [Lt. Gen. Trey Obering a call and see if there’s anything they
can do." Trey runs the Missile Defense Agency.

About a week before Christmas Trey called me, this is about two weeks
later. He related the conversation he had with Scott. He said,
"Scott’s asked me to look at this." He said, "We’re going to start,
and I’ll call you between Christmas and New Year’s, and let you know
what we found out."

So I get a call about the 28th of December and it’s from Trey. He
says, "You know, we’ve taken a look at this. We’re not sure we can do
it, but right now our engineers are saying they don’t see any show
stoppers. It’s going to be tight. This thing is going to reenter the
first week in March. I don’t know if we can pull it off, but we’re
ready to go to work full time on this if it’s what the country wants
to do."

That led to a meeting the first week in January with the President of
the United States, laying out what we estimated was the risk, the
likelihood of the satellite surviving, the likelihood of the tank
surviving which was all high for the tank, and the risk for the
populous on the planet should that tank land in a very densely
populated area like Paris, or out in the country in some remote parts
of Texas, or anywhere else.

Although the probabilities were, of course, low for debris, the
probabilities of affecting someone from the hydrazine gas were at a
level that the President felt it would be very hard for him, in a
worst case scenario, to ever look a parent in the eye whose child had
been injured by this hydrazine and have to tell them, "You know, the
United States of America put this satellite up there and we might have
had an opportunity to do something about it but we didn’t even try."
It was on that basis that the President made the decision to try.

We didn’t know if we’d be successful in this regard. The secret was
not our technology, although that was pretty marvelous in and of
itself, but we brought together 16 different parts of our government
-- from the State Department to the emergency response teams at FEMA,
to all the services, to the Missile Defense Agency, you name it …
anybody that could or had an ability … NASA was a tremendous help in
this … all came together. It was the people in these organizations
that literally didn’t sleep for the ensuing month, worked 24 hours a
day, just straight through, wore themselves out to pull this all
together and make it happen. Sure enough, by mid February we were
ready and able to execute and successfully engage the satellite.

To give you an idea of what we were really doing here, the satellite
was probably from that wall to this wall long; and probably about
eight feet in diameter. So you can imagine that size. But that’s not
what we were trying to hit. What we were trying to hit was a 40-inch
diameter tank that was embedded in the middle of that satellite. That
was mission success. We were able to do that, which is absolutely
phenomenal in my mind.

At the same time we had to prepare for, “what if you miss?” “What if
you hit and don’t hit the tank?” “What if you hit the tank?”

If you hit the tank, that was all good news for the most part. If you
miss the tank and it reentered, you had to be prepared just as if you
had missed altogether or never tried. So again, it was very important.
We postured an alert force on 24 hour response to be able to deploy
anywhere in the world, to support anyone who would ask for our help
should that land.

What we realized, though, is that we couldn’t get there fast enough to
do immediate response, so transparency became paramount. Information
push became paramount for us as well. Letting the world know what the
real hazards were and how to deal with those hazards should this tank
survive reentry and land.

So our goal was to eliminate the risk. We had to balance that, though,
versus the creation of orbital debris which is a real concern. I was
kind of glad that STRATCOM was involved with this program and I was
involved with this program because I am not a big fan of orbital
debris, having been hit by it on all three of my space shuttle
flights. So we had to balance the risk to people on the ground with
the risk of creating additional orbital debris which drove us to
attempt to engage the satellite as low as possible in an altitude
sense. Then we had to be prepared to assist in case we failed, and as
I said, be transparent.

The results have been much publicized and talked about. Of course we
hit the tank. The hydrazine was vaporized instantly. The satellite
broke up. The good news is that because we were concerned about debris
and had been paying attention to it, 99 percent of the debris created
by this intercept has already reentered the atmosphere and is no
longer a risk to navigational orbit.

We’re tracking today 18 pieces that we can still see, sizes about this
big [holding his hands apart]. We expect all but about four [pieces]
to reenter this month, and the remainder this summer. We expect the
pieces that we can’t see -- but our models tell us are probably there
-- to all be down by the end of the year.

So we would rate this as a pretty highly successful operation in
mitigating the risk to people on planet earth and minimizing the risk
to navigation for satellites on orbit. It was only possible by that
wonderful resource that I talked about earlier, and that was our
people. It truly is a privilege to work with people with such
dedication. And it’s a privilege for me … I’m grateful to even be in
this business, to have had the opportunity to work in civil space and
now military space.