Shooting a bus out of the sky that's moving 20,000 MPH

This seems as appropriate a place as any to begin. A disabled spy satellite that has been disabled basically since we paid the millions of dollars it required to launch it, is poised to rain down with a half ton of toxic hydrazine fuel on board that will likely survive re-entry. If you want to spin it, I suppose you could say, "...rain down on our heads..." If you are so inclined, please add that. Otherwise the chances of it coming in contact with humans is slim to none with Slim mounting his horse and leaving town. That should make you feel good unless you actually believe you had a chance playing last night's MegaMillions drawing, where your odds of winning the jackpot were less than being hit by our soon to be returned cloud busting spy satellite.

Thinking back to Sky Lab's decent, this one hardly is making much of a splash. My guess is it's the Armageddon factor as we plan to shoot this one out of the sky before it re-enters the atmosphere. I remember my sisters were waitresses at a fish shack by the Rhode Island shore and went to work with decorated hard hats and pretend emergency equipment. Perhaps recent history has made such satire unacceptable, but the customers thought it a riot and they probably made three to four times the typical amount in tips.

The chances of us successfully shooting down the satellite are also somewhat thin. The Navy's Aegis system that will be used, in this case sans warhead, has hit its target 12 out of 14 times in testing. That was at closer range and much slower speeds. The city bus sized satellite will be traveling at 20,000 miles per hour. Don't worry, we're waiting until the Shuttle is back safely and we have already promised to pay any other countries if we damage any of their equipment up there.

Here's to long shots.