If you haven't heard enough about rockets, then I am here to feed your curiosity and hopefully, allay some of the anxiety that has seized our beloved Premier.
Here are some basic points that I suspected but which are now confirmed as well as some links to yet more background information.
See, Premier Williams, there is no reason for you to be confused if your staff used the internet.
Or called me in. After all, I have spent about half my life on defence issues and I currently work as a defence policy consultant.
1. USAF Space Command knew the Hibernia and Terra Nova platforms were there all along. As their public affairs spokesman said, the odds of a missile hitting a tiny oil rig in the middle of the vast ocean are small, maybe one in a trillion, especially when the platforms are outside the debris zone.
2. The Titan is a combined solid and liquid fueled missile. The side boosters are solid fueled and burn out shortly after launch. The main propulsion unit is the liquid-fueled Titan which has been in USAF service since the 1950s.
3. They have way too much experience with operating this system to make dumb mistakes about debris zones and impact areas for debris. Lquid fueled systems are great because you can predict where they will land with much greater accuracy than solid fueled systems. You can also cut off their power when you want to and do all sorts of other things with them you can't do with their solid fueled cousins.
4. A similar Titan rocket was fired on a similar trajectory in 1994 without incident.
5. The more recent loss of a Titan 4A from Canaveral is worth paying attention to because:
a. the Premier used it to bolster his hysteria at a scrum today; and,
b. he is WRONG.
The incident occured in 1998 and involved an older version of this particular booster. That missile was destroyed by the on-board self-destruct mechanism shortly after launch when problems occured. These were later attributed to wiring problems. It never got close to Canadian waters - in fact it traveled exactly 4, 422 feet from the launchpad. Here's a link to the full report.
A subsequent launch of the 4B version went off flawlessly, as reported at this link.
For a description of a two-stage Titan launch try this link from 2003. The version here had an extra boost vehicle designed to manoeuvre the payload into orbit. I erroneously described this as a second stage earlier; that doesn't change my assessment that there is a near zero chance (one in a trillion) of any debris from the B-30 launch landing within sight of Hibernia and Terra Nova.
6. Here's a link to a story on the delay of the current mission, dated 07 April 2005.
7. Here's a link on the payload likely being carried. It describes radar imaging in layman's terms. Read this and you will understand, Premier, why this launch will not be scrubbed and why there is virtually a zero chance of it being fired off on a trajectory designed solely to calm your nerves.
At least this little episode has caused me to find a raft of new sources on the web for tracking space-related issues.