They are saying that they did it because the 5000 lbs of fuel would act as a bomb and fly hrough the atmosphere and kill people. But, old space junk hits earth all the time, and some organizaion said the satelite would have hit the ocean anyways, even if it did hit the earth, the risk of a car-sized satelite hitting a civilized place would be miniscule. One bm3 (or whatever the missle is called) costs 10 million dollars! Now every space-venuring nation has to dodge all the crap when they launch. Funny because the US threw a fit some time ago when china blew up one of their satelites. Those are the facts, but IMO the gov is just showing off their guns