Meteorite crash in Russia: explosions in Chelyabinsk

[AntiFascist]

112. This line of thought deserves to be pursued further...

the object was only 10 feet in size and the space shuttle even travels at over 17,000 mph in low earth orbit (the Apollo lunar module achieved speeds close to 25,000 mph). The Mir was a hollow space ship, but it's conceivable that some sort of experimental weapon could be dense enough to withstand reentry and perhaps fired at approximately twice the speed of orbit. There's also the extremely unlikely coincidence that this happens to be one of Russia's most secretive nuclear weapons development sites (which the media so far has not mentioned). Google Chelyabinsk-70

If this were the case, I would suspect the Chinese over the US, as US scientists (Lawrence Livermore lab specifically) have been collaborating with nuclear scientists at Chelyabinsk.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/chelyabinsk-70_nuc.htm

Chelyabinsk-70 / Snezhinsk
Russian Federal Nuclear Center
All-Russian Institute of Technical Physics (VNIITF)

...

The primary mission of VNIITF is designing nuclear weapons and providing scientific support to nuclear weapons throughout their life-cycle. The Institute is responsible for all gravity bombs and SLBM warheads as well as for numerous other types of strategic and tactical weapons. It also was the primary designer of peaceful nuclear explosive devices.

...

VNIITF joined the Russian-American Laboratory-to- Laboratory program early in 1995, and has subsequently become one of the principal Russian institutes working in the program. The main initial focus of the laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation has been to design and implement nuclear materials protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) enhancements at a physics research site known as the Pulsed Reactor Research Facility. It has several critical assemblies that use highly enriched uranium, in various forms. Plans for MPC&A improvements had been developed by VNIITF specialists starting several years ago, but implementation was slow because of budgetary constraints. One of the first concrete results from the Laboratory-to-Laboratory cooperation was the installation of pedestrian monitors at the entrance to the site in June 1995. A vehicle monitor was installed in the Fall. Operating experience with this equipment has been favorable, and additional portal monitors will now be deployed this year across several other VNIITF sites. Also to be completed in 1996 are MPC&A enhancements at the Pulsed Reactor Research Facility.

In early 1997 Chelyabinsk-70 boasted about its import of a U.S.-made supercomputer, thus setting off a U.S. criminal investigation and attempts in Congress to reverse Clinton administration decisions that relaxed computer export controls. There are at least five American supercomputers in two of Russia's nuclear weapons labs: Chelyabinsk-70 and Arzamas-16. Minister Mikhailov of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy said in a speech in January 1997 that they will be used to simulate nuclear explosions, and that the computers are "10 times faster than any previously available in Russia." Four of the five supercomputers in Russia's nuclear weapons labs came from Silicon Graphics. Silicon Graphics sold supercomputers to the Russian nuclear weapons laboratory Chelyabinsk-70 without bothering to apply for a Commerce Department export license. Silicon Graphics said it thought the end user, the Chelyabinsk-70 physics research laboratory, wanted to use the devices for environmental research.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has listed Chelyabinsk-70 as engaging in weapons proliferation and has required U.S. companies to inquire about whether to submit license applications for all exports to these destinations. This addition to what Commerce calls the Entity List were published June 30, 1997 in a Federal Register notice.