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'Satan' Missile Now Launches Satellites
colonist writes "The Russian intercontinental ballistic missile known to NATO as SS-18 Satan was converted to a launch vehicle (called Dnepr) and is now launching American communications satellites for profit. 'The giant rocket boasted up to 10 Multiple Independently-Targeted Reentry Vehicles, or MIRVs, each of which would have a carried a hydrogen bomb thermonuclear warhead to incinerate a different North American or Western European city. Even more terrifying, some of them were believed to have been fitted with aerosol warheads to spray smallpox virus over their U.S. targets.' However: 'With the Space Shuttle still grounded, the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world, the prospect of having a huge already-constructed supply of giant boosters built by the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth has been embraced around the world.'"
Let's hope they load the right payload. Nothing like accidentally sending up a bunch of hydrogen bombs!
Sorry, am I the only one here who doesn't think a virus for which a vaccine exists is a worse threat than an H-bomb?
Because it was intended to rain hell on it's foes.
Standing on the shoulders of giants.
IIRC, the first NASA rockets were invented by the German scientist who invented rockets, so, it's just happening again decades later.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Would YOU want a missile named "Satan" hitting YOU?
These things were set up to carry either nuclear warheads or the smallpox virus. I'd say "Satan" is a pretty appropriate name for them.
...in Soviet Russia, a Satan missile deliberately calles you!
maibe the hydrogen bomb payload could have somthing to do with it ;)
All indicators show that the human race is selectively breeding itself for stupidity.
Ahhh, swords into plowshares....
It makes even this harden cynic smile a bit.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
If the SATAN missiles allow for organizations to get their satellites into orbit at a cheaper price, this is a very good idea.
-- Bryan
It was the Pentagon that called these missiles "SS-18 Satan" in an propaganda effort to demonize the Soviets; the Russian name for them was simply "R-36M".
...and detonating a hydrogen bomb was renamed Freedom Fusion.
Must every slashdot article mention MicroSoft in the headline ?!?
--LordPixie
Why must we have the cliche Russia jokes? No-one finds them funny. So just quit it. But this does sound great. Another case of people working together when it comes to space. Can there be any negative posts about this story?
They didn't call their missile "Satan", that's the name the US military gave it.
I could be mistaken, but believe that NATO not the Pentagon, generates the name designations.
Highly recommended book specifically discussing the Soviet (and many many others') smallpox warfare plans. The Russians made smallpox by the tank-truck-load, and as late as the early 90's, had missle test programs where ICBMs launched, MIRVed, then little bomblets with parachutes descended. Where did it all go when the USSR broke up? How about places like North Korea, China, Iran? The US maintains stockpiles as well, don't let the glasses fool ya'.
Very good book.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is an interesting method to disarm rival countries - buy them out!!! Here's $10M - how 'bout you unscrew that nuclear warhead and attach our new On-Star sattelite? Would you turn that old T35 into a water fountain for $1000? $10k for a MiG crop-duster? This does extrapolate a little from Sun Tzu and Zhuge Liang's theories on conflicts. Get your enemies to see the benefits of working with you and the 'war' is won without firing a shot. A bit flamey, but if the billions used to 'pacify' Iraqi unrest were partially paid to the Iraqi citizens, would the current chaos be quelled? If only me magic 8-ball still worked!!.
Actually they wouldn't.
SS-## and the "S..." names are NATO shorthand from the cold-war era (for obvious reasons, the Soviet Union would rather not offer the specsheets for download at that time).
"Russian" designations for the same systems were R-## etc.
They do -- you just have to be given a 'weak' version of the bomb, and you build up immunity.
At least, nobody has ever complained of _not_ building up immunity.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
::In a Familiar Dana Carvey voice:: And who would it be to help mean old World Com carry their sattelites into space in a firey chariot? Oh, I don't know... might it be..... SATAN!!!
But seriously, way to go, now what can we use old SCUDs for?
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The SS-18 is now the cheapest ride into space. The AMSAT-NA (Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. - North America) OSCAR - Echo
(Oribiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) was launched June 29 by SS-18 (also the Italian Amateur UniSat-3) as secondary payloads.
http://www.amsat.org
73 de w0uhf
The USA does the same thing, Lockheed Martin converts old Titan missiles for satellite launching purposes. See this story for some pictures.
Michael Moore featured this plant in his movie, calling it a weapons factory that makes weapons of mass destruction. When someone challenged him about this, he said that such a rocket could launch a spy satellite that could be the one that starts a war, so he still thinks it's justified to call satellite-launching rockets "weapons of mass destruction".
Go read the writeup on the development of this puppy. What they could have done to the US as of the late '70s is scary. I never really took the propaganda that seriously back then but in hindsight, it was accurate.
jcl
Satan? What's in a name anyhow. The Gipper must be very pleased with this turn of
events as he relaxes up there with the saints. Thank you again, Mr. President!
Possible one of the best weapons to use in xtanks (is it xtanks?) well they cause a lot of devestation.
:-)
Now we all need to download the latest versions, were we can launch satellites and kill each other with badly written imported TV!
MIRVS are cool because their explosions flash multiple colours
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Once you're dead, though, what do you care how it happened?
Aptal soru yoktur; sadece merakli aptallar vardir.
they didn't call it satan. NATO did.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Last time I checked, most folks who were vaccinated for smallpox are no longer immune due the disease, and would hvae to be re-vaccinated. Also, most folks under 30 have never been vaccinated.
How quickly could you be vaccinated, and how long would it take to make you immune? If you were within the effective radius of an aerosol or downwind, would you relly be better off than if you were within the blast radius or fallout zone of a TN warhead? Radiation suits and underground shelters work much more quickly than vaccinations, and fusion bomb damage doesn't spread like a disease (though the local effects are, admittedly, more permanent).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Even more terrifying, some of them were believed to have been fitted with aerosol warheads to spray smallpox virus over their U.S. targets.'"
Don't get ahead of your self son.
The choice is having an H-Bomb or Smallpox gas spray. The possiblity of maybe getting a disease or being instantly vaporized.
__HARD CHOICE__
Jeez, so now we are gonna outsource our sattelite launching...whats next??? (please be the lawyers, please be the lawyers) :P
...and I suck at spelling
In Soviet Slashdot, spelling sucks at you!
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
I suppose these missiles were made in the USSR days, and as even missiles probably have a limited 'shelf life' and they must be 15+ years old
I think it's just common sense to use them while they still are in working order, and make some hard needed cash in the process. I suppose Russia will them build some new ones for they still remaining WMD with the cash they earned this way, or have a completely different delivery system altogether.
Isn't this the same reason the USA are/were using redstone's as launch vehicules?
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
In Soviet Russia, missile renames you!
Has anyone seen my coat?
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Is the first thing that comes to anyone else's mind when they see MIRV Scorched Earth? Man that was a fun game... now I'm going to have to dig it out & get it running again.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
This practice is nothing new....these particular rockets have been used for commercial launches for a few years now, as can bee seen in this wired article from 1999.
I would point out that most "Rad" suits would also protect you from smallpox, and so would underground bunkers ;)
Bloody slashdot, by the time you post something 20 other people have already had the same idea (there was one post when I went to post)
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Gotta love those NATO designations. Imagine what would happen if a bunch of Fundies found out their latest religious program was made possible via a satellite that was launched by Satan. And from the heart of the former [atheist] "Evil Empire" no less.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Probably just because "SS18" sounds like ...Sean.
"satan" if you say it right.
...the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth.. shouldn't this have the tag around it?
--- Bad news for America, good news for Democrats
Good news for America, bad news for Democrats
I would have to guess that it's not quite as bad as getting hit with a missile named GOD!
The West often knew about and gave names to Soviet weaponry long before the Soviets acknowledged the weapon or identified it by name.
In any case. an enemy's nuclear missiles are worth demonizing. I'm sure the Soviet's would have done the same had the U.S. used a similar nomenclature scheme, even if they were on the wrong side.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I guess that's why it was code named "Satan" by NATO
I've never shoed a horse, but I once told a donkey to piss off!
The Pentagon gave Soviet land-based missiles names starting with "S" For example, the SS-19 is the STILLETO, SS-20 is the SABRE, SS-21 is SCARAB, SS-17 is SPANKER, etc. etc. Similar patterns were used for other missiles. Air-launched missiles used names starting with "K" For example, AS-17 Krypton, AS-16 Kickback, AS-15 Kent, etc.
So how do you justify infecting hundreds of thousands of innocent people with Smallpox? I undestand it's wartime, but the people you're killing typically have nothing to do with the war.
Don't kid yourself... they don't have vaccines for the super-bugs developed for use as weapons. Some of them were designed specifically to circumvent known vaccines; so, it wouldn't matter even if you got the vaccine. you'd still be dead.
Osama Bin Laden isn't actually hiding from America. He's got how many wives? I'd say he's using the time-tested technique of Hiding From the Inlaws. Man has perfected this technique over the millenia to an artform. No-one'll ever find him.
This is nothing new.
The russians have been launching small payloads on their submarine-launched Volna and Shtil for years.
More info on the R36 family of rockets is available here
Something I've been wondering for a while, who dreams up those oddball NATO designations? How the hell do we get from 'Flanker' (SU-27), 'Badger' (TU-16) and 'Fishbed' (Mig-21) to 'Satan' 'Havoc' and 'Foxbat'?!
Did the old guys get fired for not taking it seriously enough?
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
The parent is labelled +5 Funny, yet the great grandparent is labelled -1 Offtopic? It's the same friggen joke! How on earth did they get modded differently? At least the great grandparent was about the article!
Paging Zephram Cochrane....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Don't kid yourself. Virus (and bacteria) undergo genome shifting in nature. This allows them to avoid all the traps that all of life sets for other invaders. Also, it allows a bug to enhance its own arsenol (the ability to hide, the ability to process different food, the ability infect in a new way, the ability to resist an antibiotic, etc). weapons-grade bugs were simply shifted or enhanced in an artificial fashion.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
All countries ended up with missiles with 1337 names (USSR:'Satan', France:'Hades', UK:'Polaris') ... while the US had their puny 'Minuteman'.
Reagan didnt get any coverage other dead Presidents didnt enjoy. How about Kennedy? Also, its been a while we lost a President and a Republican one at that, during a Republican administration, at these times of turmoil.. Ofcourse, half the country would want to show their respect.
Now, I disagree about the part about him changing the world for the better. Rest of the world really doesnt care when he was alive, far less now that he is dead. The only time that I ever heard of him was his name associated with the infamous "Starwars" and Reagan-omics. Both really bad ideas (ofcourse can be disputed). But the fact of the matter is Gorbachev had more to do about putting things in order than Reagan purely because (1) Russia was already crumbling (2) Gorbachev was more far sighted than all the Russian presidents before him and (3) Gorbachev realized the world was changing and he had to lead his country to change with it.
The only smart thing Reagan did was he realized what Russia was up to and instead of thwarting their efforts (and making sure Cold war stayed the same), he realized his legacy would be remembered for ending it, and helped Gorbachev speed things up. Also like how Clinton is remembered for not screwing things up when the economy was in an upswing, Reagan will be remembered for not screwing things up. You cant measure a president and his legacy especially when he passed away recently, especially when his memories are fresh and emotions supercede reason and logic, but for definite, years from today, he will be known as a president who was sensible and farsighted enough to let Russia and Communism die a slow death and not for being a visionary neither a statesman.
Now your thoughts about W just plain out scares me. W is neither a statesman nor a visionary. He spoke of bipartisanship and pledged compassionate conservatism but showed neither. The country is more divided than ever and we are at war with different enemies and the army is stretched thinner than butter on whitebread. What were to happen if a new adversary emerges, taking advantage of this situation? How would the world respond? No Sir, these are troubled times and instead of being fortunate enough to be led by a president who were a true leader, a free thinker, an optimist and a realist, what we have here is a fragile humanbeing who is being manipulated by his cohorts, by the religious right, by the same people who should keep his course straight, but instead choose to lead him astray. No Sir, W will be known as a president who could have achieved far more, but fell far short of his goals and led the country through a path of gloom, down a road littered with the corpses of its own soldiers and its shattered dreams.
Rapid Nirvana
I happen to work for a company based in the US that uses the same launch site that the Satans are using.
IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist), but if you are putting satellites in geosynchronous orbit on that side of the world, wouldn't it be easier to launch them from there?
-- Bryan
There seem to be something funny about these rockets we bought from the Russians. I mean, 70-75% of Earth's surface is covered with water, yet everytime one of these things have delivered a satellite into orbit the remaining rocket have fallen down into a large american city. What are the chances of that??
Traditionally, the designations for Warsaw-Pact hardware was based on function. Fighters were given names beginning with the letter F, e.g. Su.27 Flanker, MiG-29 Foxbat, etc. Bombers began with B (e.g. Bear, Badger, Backfire), and mulitpurpose or miscellaneous aircraft began with M (e.g. Mainstay, May).
Missiles had a similar designation system, with Air-to-Surface beginning with K and Surface-to-Surface beginning with S. I doubt it was an effort to demonize the Soviets, more likely some computer spit out the word when they discovered there was a new missile on the block, since there are probably a hundred or so missiles designated in this way.
--Storm
NATO named all the Soviet missiles with code-names starting with an S. Scud, for example. I'm sure the Russians actually called it something different :-)
10 warheads makes it a "giant rocket"?? A Poseidon missile carried 14 warheads (officially), and wasn't even particularly large (less than 30Mg), much less "giant"
And smallpox virus was "even more terrifying" than ten cities vaporized??? Some people are frightened of the oddest things.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The grandparent post refered to NASA rockets, not rockets in general. Those, indeed were developed by Von Braun and other former German World War Two rocket scientists.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The military went away from liquid fuel for logistical reasons and the Minuteman missle series, using solid boosters, were deployed. The Minuteman 3 evolved into the MX Missile aka Peacekeeper, which required only a small crew and was portable making it a "mobile missle" in some deployments.
This logistical advantage was the basis of was the basis of E'Prime Aerospace's proposed launch vehicle series in the late 1980s. Through an effort with the Reagan Administration they acquired rights to acquire the existing assembly lines, 2 of which were still packed up in crates, and managed to cut preliminary deals with the contractors for the parts. The design mods included stripping off the radiation hardening, saving substantial weight, and replacing the kevlar fiber with graphite fiber in the tankage windings, something the Air Force had already funded at about the time the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty put an end to their further development. The launch site preferred was Ascention Island due to its location near the equator, ease of access from Florida (where the production lines were to exist) and a landing strip there that could receive the stages of the rockets in separate shipping containers via DC-3 transport, and launch from a cliff to the east. There was also a problem with the upper stage of the MX containing nitroglycerine, and that stage was eliminated or modified in E'Prime's designs.
It was a good idea. Something not quite as radical was, later, picked up by Orbital Sciences Corporation in their Taurus launcher, which used some surplus MX segments. E'Prime didn't want to do that due to quality control problems on stages that had been stored -- and indeed I was told that when O.S. procured their first MX stage, it had already been rejected by E'Prime due to a huge occlusion in the X-Ray image. They obviously could never have flown stage in any mission and it is unclear why they procured it.
The company had management as well as funding problems, and when I came on board in late 1991 as VP for Public Affairs, it was a few weeks from closing its doors. I really thought the idea of putting the MX into commercial production for satellite launches was a good one and hated to see it die, especially since I had just testified before Congress regarding commercialization of space technology on the day SALT was put into action. I was already broke due to the grassroots lobbying efforts but decided to go on my credit cards and take an unpaid job at E'Prime to help save the company. While there we managed to get the first Ka band license put through the FCC for one of E'Primes potential customers (Norris Communications' NORSTAR satellite), and as a result the stock, by then it was a pink sheet penny stock, had a rebound, going from a low of fractional cents per share to 30 cents a share. I had to leave E'Prime when after a few months they still were unable to pay a salary and I was at the end of my rope. The IRS had a lot of fun with me during a subsequent audit, and they're after me again subsequent to another effort of mine, but that's another story to be written. still being written. Suffice to say I'm getting really sick of the way the US government acts toward inventors and technologists -- most of whom need to be tax lawyers these days in order to avoid prisoner gang rape these days due to the incomprehensible statutes written by tax lawyers for the rest of us to follow.
PS: For more information you may be able to get the article I wrote for "Space Technology International" annual edition in 1992, from interlibrary loan.
Seastead this.
He truly changed the world for the better.
Wrongo. He might have changed the United States for the better, but not the world.
The existence of "two sides of the world" (the capitalist and communist spheres) during the Cold War (mind you: the Cold War was not a war in the physical sense, the Americans and the Russians were at peace!) actually meant stability for the world, because none of the two powers was able to assume the role of the world's leader; the two powers actually regulated each other's actions reciprocally (read about The Prisoner's Dilemma for further insight on this).
Now, remove USSR from the table and what do you get? A single super-power who wants the rest of the world on bended knees. This is true of the American government no matter how hard you try to deny it.
I don't think this is a better world than the one we had before (even though I'm only 18 years old, so I can't really have any memories from those times). An American might think it is a better world because he/she is on the power side. The hate some people have towards America is probably comparable to the hate Americans felt against the evil communists (and the other way round too).
Seriously: Americans can't root for the old "We-Good, They-Evil" bullshit anymore, even if They keeps changing. G.W. is just another fundamentalist, and just like Reagan, does not deserve recognition for what he's done.
Score: i, Imaginary
> Even more terrifying
Ok, I've got to ask this question. What exactly do you Americans think the rest of the world thinks when you announce a new form of destruction?
Seems you guys think it's ok if you have big guns, but it's not ok if others do. Here's a clue for you: this is why you're a terrorist target.
The decomissioned Minuteman II missles are being used as small payload launchers. The bottom section is the Minuteman II, and the upper stages are from Orbital Sciences Pegasus vehicle - the Orion 50 XL and Orion 38. The official vehicle name is "Orbital Suborbital Program Space Launch Vehicle".
Stanford University is using this vehicle to launch small satellites into LEO.
Because the missle could rain the proverbial hellfire down on you... One missle could carry more than enough payload to destroy any european country. They had as many as, say, 100-150 built in the '80's. They could either be configured with 10 500-750kT warheads or a single 20MT warhead. Very deadly...
I'm definitely glad they've found a peaceful use for those boosters.
WHAT IS MORE TERRIFYING THAN A FREAGIN' NUKE?!!
Sorry, but smallpox doesn't hold a candle against a thermonuclear weapon. Middle-ages vs Einstein. Hasn't Civ III taught us this much...
/dev/random
Don't worry, smiting is soooo 500BC
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Actually Robert Goddard was first in a number of these desiagns. Konstantin Eduordovich Tsiolkovsky has many ideas that in some cases predate Goddard's, for example the use of liquid fuels, or ideas that follow Goddard's, such as the use of multiple stages in a rocket, which Goddard received a U.S. patent for in 1914. Of the two, Tsiolovsky was more the theoretical scientist and Goddard more the technical specialist or engineer. I'll leave the Hermann Oberth research to somebody else.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
If America did this, there would be a rocket for everybody! lets all go to space! :-)
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Furthermore, not sure whether it is just a coincidence, in scandinavian languages 18 is "atten" (see attometre, 10^-18 metres), and "ss-atten" could easily sound like "satan", which in scandinavian languages is one of the worst cursing words you can find.
("Å satan å gamle Erik i det røde helvete skal steiki i faen...")
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
QUOTE
Even more terrifying, some of them were believed to have been fitted with aerosol warheads to spray smallpox virus over their U.S. targets
UNQUOTE
I fail to understand this. Hydrogen bombs, especially some of the city destroying bombs developed by the Soviet Union were very scary. Smallpox aerosol has a much smaller probability of causing death. Pardon the probable redundant nature of this post.
Would YOU want a missile named "Satan" hitting YOU? If I am being hit by a missle, I'm pretty sure it's name is not going to be too important to me.
The issue of the names assigned by NATO to the Soviet missles/planes/tanks/whatever raises a question in my mind:
What were the names assigned by the Soviets to our stuff, specifically the SR-71? They had to know of its existance long before the name Blackbird (or Habu) was made public.
www.eFax.com are spammers
"With the Space Shuttle still grounded"
The grounding of the space shuttle has nearly no effect on the demand for space launches. It was forbidden from carring commercial payloads after the Challenger disaster. Additionally, almost any payload that the Shuttle has to carry to the International Space Station for the next few years can *only* be carried by the shuttle.
However, space station material resupply is shuffled over to Soyuz launchers.
tm
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very scary.
This is true of the American government no matter how hard you try to deny it.
This is true of the Neocons, Neolibrals and CIA which make up a fair portion of the American Government. Of course, speaking as an American Bush fixed the election by giving double ballots to the millitary, threatening a coup if they weren't counted, illegally disenfranchising 55,000 mostly black voters by claiming they were felons, etc.
Of course, LBJ's mistake in Vietnam was treating the enemy as a single entity rather than seeing it as a conglomration of many factions.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Well, "Satan" is a NATO designation, it was not named "Satan" by Russians.
;)
NATO probably knew why they named it "Satan", I'd say
The thing is that an SS-18 launch would be looked upon by China or the West as an attempt to start a nuclear war. Whatever the missile carried, it would be looked upon as a worst-case scenario. Smallpox or Anthrax is as you point out, quite mild by comparison. The response would be nuclear according to the MAD policies.
See my journal, I write things there
i'll take the SS-17 SPANKER any day please :D
And do you know how a vaccine works? Go to the back of the class.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I remember reading as a kid (say, in the early 80s) of curious space launches on the last page in the official daily. They would crop up about every month or so, and say in small print that a whole bunch of satellites (they were all designated "Kosmos", that is, "Space", so it would be "Kosmos-2754", "Kosmos-2755" and so on - 10 of them) had been launched at the same time. Didn't strike me as odd at the time, except that I thought "Why would they need this many satellites?" Of course, those were the old 10-warhead ICBMs which were near the end of their usefulness and needed to be disposed of.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
I got vaccinated back when smallpox was still around in the wild. It made my arm hurt for a few days. No big deal.
I say: Yeah right! The shuttle hasn't launched a satellite in years, let alone a commercial payload. And the 'new generation' of American boosters aren't 'still being developed', they exist right now: the Pegasus and Taurus (Orbital Sciences Corp) at the low end of the market, and the EELVs, i.e. Delta IV and Atlas V (Boeing and Lockheed respectively), at the high end of the market (NASA 'next-gen' launch vehicle will most likely be one of the EELVs). Yet Boeing and Lockheed both claimed they couldn't get sufficient commercial launch contracts for their EELVs, and thus jacked the price up on the DOD launches they were slated to do. Even Pegasus and Taurus launches are rare. Why? Because the cost a crapload! Launch costs can be a significant fraction (up to 50%) of the cost of a satellite. Commercial contractors are launching on Russian rockets because they can do it for 1/5 to 1/10 of the price of a US launch.
The only 'next-gen' launch vehicle likely to put a dent in that anytime soon is SpaceX's Falcon, which promises launch costs on the order of $6M. If they can actually pull it off, Falcon has the potential to be a game changer in the launch market. Until then, cheap Russian launches are the way to go.
Hell, ***France*** could turn much of the US (or any other nation) into a parking lot.
Not that the weapons weren't powerful... but let's put things into perspective.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
> If the SATAN missiles allow for organizations to get their satellites into orbit at a
> cheaper price, this is a very good idea.
Are you sure? We're sending SATAN up in the skies, now what will GOD think of that...?
Title should have been something like:
"In Capitalist Russia, Satan Launches Satellites"
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"a spray dispenser of smallpox"?
Let me see if I have this straight: the auther thinks that a spray of smallpox is scary? While major pieces of entire *CITIES* and their 'burbs by 10 or 20 megaton H-bombs, with radiation strong enough to sicken or kill outright over hundreds of miles, killing millions in an instant, or over the next month, he thinks "a spray of smallpox" is horrifying?
Does he think that nuclear bombs are only videogames, while smallpox is real?
Most likely, the reality of war, much less nuclear war, is so incomprehensible that he's irrationally terrified of stubbing his toe.
mark "and plastic and duct tape won't
help, either"
Plus, you're probably going to get a launch at one of your cities for each of your launches before the target finds out that you aren't using nuclear warheads.
This isn't to say it's impossible--it sounds technically doable--but under what cases would it make any sense? The referenced article had as much techical detail as the Slashdot article--one sentence. A Google search for "aerosol warhead" suprisingly produces only a single reference. I didn't know there was and query that would produce a single response, unless you just copied the whole document into the search box . . . .
With the Space Shuttle still grounded, the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world ...
The Shuttle hasn't been in the satellite launching business since the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. The "new" generation of American boosters are variations of existing boosters so it's not like there's a supply vacuum (as it were) as the author suggests. As for demand for launchers ... I'm not going to take the author's word for it due to the cyclic nature of the launch industry.
The irony of the rocket's new popularity has not been lost on the veteran space engineers of Baikonur. [NASA] is now grounded despite annual approval of budgets of close to $20 billion.
Since the only role NASA has in the launch business is as a customer, claims of "irony" are ... well ... ironic.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
A fine motion picture that's got "MST3K" written all over it...
G.W. is just another fundamentalist, and just like Reagan, does not deserve recognition for what he's done.
That statement alone explains how it is you can have such a distorted view of history and of the United States. Your beliefs are nothing at all except reactionary. You define yourself as the political negative of those that are religious.
In short, you're not thinking for yourself.
So many religious skeptics (I'm an atheist, in fact) believe that they need to be on the political team opposite those that are religious. It's a mistake. There are plenty of fvcked up ideas on the political left as well as the right and plenty of stupid ahistorical hate-america-firsters. Don't get taken in. Take a more balanced view.
As far as Reagan goes, he was a genuinely good man. There was no smallness in him. Blowing him off because of his religious views is terribly unfair. He was a better man than most. Again, I'm an atheist, but after learning about him and his life, I would say he mostly represented what is best in men.
It's not frigntening that the USSR had ICBMs because the United States had the exact same thing and if one attacked so would the other. That war never happened because both sides realized that there was no way anyone could win. I hate the way people think that the United States can have weapons piled to the moon, but if any other country has them they are somehow below us and don't deserve the right to defend themselves. I'm not saying we should give Osama some WMDs for his birthday, because people like him will use them. It is unfortunate that these weapons have to exist, but if everyone had them, no one would start any wars. I believe that the USSR was a respectable enemy, and they deserved to have these weapons just as much as the USA
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
Umm, you do realize that the Polaris was actually a U.S. sub-launched missile that was sold to the Brits, right? (Check out wikipedia.)
Don't mock a country's phallic symbols!
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world, the prospect of having a huge already-constructed supply of giant boosters built by the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth has been embraced around the world.'
The new generation of American boosters have already been developed and are 100% successful. Both the Delta IV and Atlas V have flown several missions with complete success. A heavy lift version of the Delta IV is scheduled to launch in September. It will be the most powerful unmanned launcher in the world.
The Russian Sea Launch launch vehicle (Zenit 3), specifically its Block DM upper stage has failed yet again, leaving another satellite in a low transfer orbit. So much for the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth.
an ill wind that blows no good
To your points on W, the "doom and gloom" is coming primarily from the media and his enemies right now. You confuse "difficult" with "bad"...the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are hard things to deal with, but he took responsibility and stepped up to the challenge instead of hiding his head in the sand (after lobbing some bombs at an aspirin factory) like his predecessor. The economy is in an upswing, jobs are being created, we just handed over sovereignty in Iraq. Rather than being manipulated by the polls, he's holding the course in an election years of all things.
MiG-29 Foxbat
Actually, the MiG-29 is/was designated "Fulcrum". "Foxbat" was the designation for the MiG-25 recon/interceptor.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
It is not because we have big guns that we are a terrorist target.
The US is a terrorist target because our way of life threatens their way of life. In other words, we seek freedom for ourselves and believe others should have the same choice. Most of these terrorist are from oppresive regimes that require terror and force to remain in power, hence we are a threat to them and they are using the only means they know how to react.
For your information all coutries are terrorist targets. The US just happens to have the highest profile because other that Israel and Russia very few countries are actively trying to combat terrorism.
What will your claim be when Terrorist bomb the summer olympics? You know its a target, I don't think athletes have guns.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
. . . When I think of all my lefty punker friends in the 80's who insisted that Reagan/Amerikkka was the real Satan for refusing to up and drop our nuclear arsenal and envelop those peace-loving Soviets in a brotherly embrace of peace.
Protesticular ninnies today can't even imagine that there was ever a time when we had a real live Enemy. Surely the Soviets were only acting defensively, protecting their wonderful and loving and 'earth-friendly' way of life!
**>>BELCH
1. Betray God.
2. Launch sutff in space.
3. ????
4. Profit!!
If only people over 40 live, that's kinda it... if all children die and you are left with only women over 40, repopulating the species is a bit tough...
Note: I don't AGREE with the Slashdot crowd, I think that we would survive a Smallpox attack, and I also think that the bio-engineered smallpox would never launch... it's not a USEFUL weapon (the goal of a weapon is to defeat the otherside), it's a doomsday weapon... i.e. If a US First Strike annihilates EVERYTHING (cities, military bases, missile silos, etc), but the Russians could launch 2 of these, the US still loses. Doomsday weapons are part of the MAD game theory, but not something that would actually launch.
HOWEVER, if you wipe out everyone under 40, then yes, that's all she wrote... even if the adults get to go around without kids and party for 50 years, that's still it for civilization.
Alex
Well, what you fail to realize is that "R-36M" is a russkie codeword for "BLOODTHIRSTY BEAR!"
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Ah, much more logical than metric tones (or tonnes or whatever). Not hexadecimal, but nice to see.
-I am an elective eunuch.
"Satans jävla jävla jävla jävla..." -Swedish general watching the JAS Gripen on its maiden flight coming down the runway - rolling.
There's a funny t-shirt about that, the ship "Wasa" and swedish military engineering somewhere.
--
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
This is a great post and refers to a great book. I've OCR scanned Preston's 'The Demon in the Freezer' and try to keep it available on Kazaa.
Since smallpox is so dangerous, so contagious, and has been erraticated from the earth, anyone who generates stockpiles of the virus outside of a stongly supervised international research study is committing a crime against humanity. They should be standing trial in The Hague, regardless of their national or religious justification.
The difference between atomic weapons and genetically engineered super diseases is that that the atomics are limited in the damage that they can do and can be precisely focused on a certain place. They have literally solved the problem that mankind has faced since the beginning of the agrucultural age of how to provide for an effective defence against marauding neighbors.
Genetically-engineered super-disease is an 'omnicide' technology. This is a word that I made up from 'omni' (every) and '-cide' (death) to refer to a technology that will kill every human on earth if engaged. People who do omnicide research and development are committing crimes against humanity. They have declared war on every person in every country and every religion. They have no legal, national, or religious justification for their activity and must be stopped. To use national defence as a justification for developing omnicide technology is a form of madness that is left over from the Cold War and is the worst legacy of the 20th century, which left a string of really bad legacies.
Of course, all this gets secondary consideration to the seriously important news of the day, like Janet Jackson's titties. But its an issue now that will never go away.
From the UPI article: "The giant rocket boasted up to 10 Multiple Independently-Targeted Reentry Vehicles, or MIRVs, each of which would have a carried a hydrogen bomb thermonuclear warhead to incinerate a different North American or Western European city. Even more terrifying, some of them were believed to have been fitted with aerosol warheads to spray smallpox virus over their U.S. targets."
Is it even possible for the media to forego the use of FUD given the choice, rationality not withstanding? These birds haven't been pointed at us for over a decade. Why not just punctuate an article on gardening with a mention of how rich the soil was around Pompei after Vesuvius buried it?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
You say the SS-18 is the cheapest ride into space. Out of curiousity, how much did it cost? Say I build myself a satellite, as the radio amateurs did, how much will the Kazakhs / Russians charge me to put it into orbit?
In addition, Reagan was just continuing a policy initiated by Truman. If anyone in the US should get credit for aiding the collapse of the communist regime in the USSR it's Truman, not Reagan. As you point out, Reagan's main contribution was that he didn't change how things were already headed.
I find it amusing that if the missile is pointed at us we call it 'Satan'. If we point it at them, its called a 'Peacekeeper' whose role is 'Nuclear Deterence'.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
SKYNET prefers Nukes !!!
:)
:)
It would have solved it's human infestation problem easier using bioweapons, rather than using nukes, time travel and shiny robots
*_*
PS: As this is really a Physicist Vs Biologist thing...
SCREW U LEGO BIONICLE - The corrupting influence of biotech in our Lego
I fail to see what your point is or why you are dragging Moore's film into this.
So, yes, Russia converts weapons into civilian launch capacity because they desparately need money and because they know that they simply aren't the superpower they once were.
What does that have to do with the US? The US isn't giving up on being a superpower. I don't know why the US converts Titan missiles for satellite purposes, but it clearly isn't because of any serious attempt to reduce US military dominance.
The US continues to maintain and develop a large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, US politicians aren't apologetic about it, and the US military would probably use them if they believe it is in the best interests of the US, as they have before. The only reason the term "weapons of mass destruction" sounds vaguely terrorist and illegitimate is because the Bush administration has been using that terminology so indiscriminately and carelessly in their justification of the war with Iraq.
So, while the US may be converting missiles into launch vehicles, in a deeper sense, the US isn't "doing the same thing" at all: both the motivations and the consequences of the US actions are different.
I thought that all virii resisted antibiotics fairly well.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
All history builds on what has gone before, so I'm going to have to start this with a couple of statements that you'll have to accept as "givens" for the moment.
1) The Soviet Union did all the heavy lifting when it came to defeating the Nazis in WW2. That's not to say that the Western allies didn't contribute AT ALL, but the Soviets bore the brunt of it and did the lions share of destroying the German army. Accordingly, the Soviets got VERY good at large-scale land warfare, especially with tanks.
2) Communism had been on the US radar at least since 1917 and probably earlier. Pure-form Communism (the spontanious revolt of the working class against their opressors) had been the greatest fear of any US captain of industry since the first worker uprisings, and Soviet-style Communism was seen (by some) to be the fullest expression of the spirit of worker revolt as threat.
3) More than a few Western generals and intellectuals wanted to keep on going after the defeat of Germany and go after the USSR next. Patton in particular was a very vocal proponant of defeating the USSR NOW (in 1945) while they were weakened, and while the US Army was already there and fully equipped. After all, they were going to have to fight eventually, why not get it over with?
4) There was a certain amount of Soviet resentment over how long it took to get the Western allies into the fight, and I think (given the anti-Soviet statements that kept turning up) a lingering suspicion that the delay was purposeful, with the intent that the USSR should bleed its strength off against Germany so that the West could come in and finish the Soviets off. Certainly Stalin felt that way, at least for a little while.
So then, at the end of WW2 you've got a Soviet Union with a lot of waretime experience, that feels threatened by the West, and which paid a HORRIFIC cost in lives and is VERY much determined to never go through that experience again.
They may or may not have had expansionist goals as well. Certainly at the time we expected them to come pouring through the Fulda Gap at any second. I know *I* certainly expected them to attack first. Now I'm no longer sure.
But anyway, the Soviets know armoured warefare, right? And one of the tenets of fighting an armoured battle is the concept of "defense in depth". You cannot just line up all your soldiers along the border, WW1-style, because the enemy will mass his forces at a single point, punch through, and now he's running amok in your rear while all your soldiers are up on the border.
So instead, you put a screen on the border, and you keep massed maneouver units some distance behind the border. When the screen locates the centre of axis of the attack, you counterattack the main thrust with your own thrust.
But this caused a couple of problems for the West.
First, the Soviet army was VERY much larger and more powerful than the Western armies. Unit for unit, the West was better, but the Soviets made up for the quality gap with quantity in spades. "defense in depth" wasn't going to be enough - the West needed "force multipliers" like chemical weapons and nukes. Accordingly, it was NATO policy to "go nuclear" IMMEDIATELY.
Quick aside: In the late 80s, Canada bough CF18 fighters, which are really lovely aircraft, but it retained a couple of squadrons of CF104 Starfighters as "ground attack" planes. The F18 is a great ground attack plane, while the F104 is about the worst ground attack plane you could possibly imagine. The 104 goes really, really fast in a straight line, and not much else.
Canada is all about "do more with less", but this always struck me as being singularly unwise.
Well it turned out that the REAL mission of these planes was NUCLEAR ground attack. Load up an American nuke bomb, and then go like hell towards whatever massed formation got discovered and nuke it.
Anyway, the combination of "defense in depth" and "nuke first" did not sit too well with the West Germans, because, well, West Germany
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
For your information all coutries are terrorist targets. The US just happens to have the highest profile because other that Israel and Russia very few countries are actively trying to combat terrorism.
European nations have been the target of modern-day terrorism for decades. It's just that many Americans (you are an example) have been living in such ignorance that they never noticed that, either domestic or elsewhere. Only when terrorists struck a bunch of iconic buildings did the general US population finally notice, and the reaction has been paranoid and ineffective so far. It's been paranoid because, despite all the fear mongering by politicians, terrorism remains a negligible cause of death in the US.
As for why the US is the target of Islamic terrorism, that shouldn't be a mystery to anybody: it's because of US middle-east policies, foremost support of Israel. Those policies may or may not be justified, but whether they are doesn't change the fact that they are the cause of terrorism.
If other nations had done to the US what the US has done to a country like Iran, Americans like you would be literally up in arms: you'd be the terrorists. Those people are pretty much of the same mindset as you.
The US is a terrorist target because our way of life threatens their way of life.
That is true, but not in the way you intended. The US way of life threatens "their" way of life because of the voracious American appetite for natural resources and military influence. If the US stopped engaging in the Middle East, there would be no Middle Eastern terrorism against the US. Oh, sure, those people would still not like the US, but they wouldn't bother coming here to bomb us.
In other words, we seek freedom for ourselves and believe others should have the same choice.
Nations like Switzerland and Sweden are highly tolerant, open, and free societies, far more liberal socially and far less religious than the US. If terrorists acted because they felt threatened by political freedoms, sexuality, and godlessness, as you suggest, they'd pick Switzerland and Sweden as their primary targets. But, in reality, those countries are largely being left alone by terrorists.
That statement alone explains how it is you can have such a distorted view of history and of the United States. Your beliefs are nothing at all except reactionary. You define yourself as the political negative of those that are religious.
Keep your flames down some, please. I didn't see any mention of religion. "Fundamentalist" is today used as often about any set of ideas. "Dogmatic" migth be a better way to describe GWB and his staff.
[[ Note: this post is not offtopic because this story brings up a lot of stuff about nuke- and bio-warfare that is obviously touching a nerve amongst us here at Slashdot. ]]
/emigrated to the U.S. or Britain.
... let me in on how our foreign policy needs to change. We can't catch all the terrorists, so we have to build "bridges" to reduce the hatred. Let's hope that hatred doesn't teach us lessons grief that prevent further lessons in shared joyful caring from ever happening.
The authoritative mass-audience (non-biochemist) book on biowarfare is 'Plague Wars', by Mangold and Goldberg, amazon is here
This book is copyrighted 1999, but it does not matter. It covers the history of biological warfare from earliest days to current. It is meticulously researched, including many interviews with first-hand participants ranging all over the world. Included as well is in-depth coverage of the true extent of the massive Soviet biowarfare effort, 100,000 people strong, with extensive development and testing.
Re: Soviet bioweapons and how we found out. There was one much-discussed (by anti-bio-warfare activists) event that killed many people (exact quantity unknown, if memory serves it was estimated in the several hundred range). The event was a soviet Anthrax factory where a worker forgot to put a new air filter in when he took out the old one, releasing weapons grade anthrax spores across the city (some small town in south west asia whose name I don't remember, sorry). Initially covered up, the event became public and was confirmed by many of the Soviet program's lead scientists who defected
The Soviet program was only one of many. Pro-apartheid South Africa had an extensive program and is reputed to have sold a CD-worth of data to Quadaffi on exactly how to synthesize and weaponize various diseases. Many other countries had (and almost assuredly still have) active programs in this area.
Biowarfare agents are doomsday material, and our governments' refusal over the years to sign and enforce treaties has NOT helped. This mostly was at the behest of major pharma companies rather illogically protecting their labs' secrecy at the cost of danger to their customer base, humanity!).
I'm not up to date on what our (U.S.) (military USAAMRID / CDCP) labs are up to in terms of attempting to synthesize antidotes and develop procedures for cope with attacks WHEN they come (not if, this stuff kills too easily to be ignored by terrorists forever, look at the Aum Shinrikyo anthrax attack previous to their Sarin nerve gas attack). I have to trust that my leaders make good decisions, and try to vote for people who take the threat seriously and devote money to the science and R&D.
One thing though is that my wife and I have spoken about this and we will not live in a major city. Metro area, maybe, but not the city itself, its too dangerous. You can bet anytime someone mentions a new new mystery disease making the rounds I'm going to take vacation, though, and/or work from home until we find out the extent of it.
I don't scare easily; there's lots of madness in the world and most of it doesn't affect my quiet life. But, this book
-- Kevin J. Rice
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Um, this is almost certainly incorrect. While it's possible that a terrorist who seeks martyrdom might develop a biological weapon as lethal to the terrorist as to his enemy, the coldly rational people who did this research had no such desire.
You need to achieve differential lethality, which is why you use agents to which you can immunize your own forces. In the case of biologicals, you also need to immunize your own population, unless you intend your soldiers to become farmers when they get hungry.
Nobody could guarantee that a real use of these weapons wouldn't spread unchecked and wipe out all humanity (and this is one of the reasons that such agents weren't emphasized more), but even the most crafty weapons designers didn't plan to design slate-wiping agents.
I don't think you're overstating the horrors of biological warfare, but I think you may be underestimating the horrors of nuclear warfare.
An H-bomb of the size of modern "big-player" weaponry will end up with a near 100% casualty rate at the primary target. Those who don't get vaporized instantly or burn to death or suffocate from the lack of oxygen as it burns off die from radiation or lack of potable water or lack of food or opportunistic infections or any one of a number of horrible ways to die. People survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but those were pop caps compared to what they have today.
Put it this way - if you were standing in a room with a switch that lets you choose to release smallpox into the room or detonate an atomic bomb in the room in 30 seconds, which way are you going to point that switch?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Does it bother anyone else that this rocket is named Satan? I mean, Satan? What's next, the Beelzebub moonbase? Or, possibly, the Evil Overlord of the Universe mission to Mars?
Trust me, this will be worse than Microsoft.
The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD , "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
I've thought quite a bit about what happens after an omnicide event (massive plague).
I'm figuring that the U.S. gets repopulated before Chile, because we have nicer infrastructure.
Given, almost eveyone is an immigrant, but if I lived in rural Mexico or Guatemala, a plague wipes out most of my country, I can live where I want, right? So, I either move into a very nice house in Guatelmala, or I move north and find a nice unoccupied 5 bedroom ranch on a big farm near Hoisington, Kansas (a very nice, typical, small farming community).
So, maybe the rest world gets depopulated, but I'm guessing the U.S. and western europe don't. Though, anyone left would probably want to learn english or whatever language everyone around them happens to speak.
Ya gotta wonder what chemical companies have planned to do about operating their 'cannot be shut down in less than a month' toxic-chemical processes if theres an event like this. Will enough workers survive to keep the plant from exploding?
And who guards the weapons and money vaults if eveyone gets sick?
--Kevin J. Rice
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
The best place to launch from is the equator due to the extra boost you get from launching from the point where Earth spins the fastest, plus you don't need to use up fuel getting into the proper orbital plane.
GEO satellites are launched into egg-shaped transfer orbits by rockets, then after the upper stage separates from the payload, the payload uses its kick motor and on-board thrusters to maneuver to the proper orbital position. What matters isn't the launch site; it's the latitude of that site (for greater payload capacity) and the on-orbit maneuvers that are carried out that matter.
Check out Sea Launch -- they use a converted oil-drilling platform to launch from right on the equator. Other launch sites are in northern South America (the Ariane site) because it's near the equator, and in in Florida (far south as US territory goes, plus spent stages hit the water, not land).
Sites farther north or farther south suffer a performance penalty because of the aforementioned geographic advantage. This is part of why a Soyuz launch pad is going to be built at the Ariane launch site -- it will allow an increase in payload capacity using a derivative of the same rocket design that's been used since Sputnik 1 in 1957.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Incidently, if there are any former Soviet armoured officers reading Slashdot, I'd love to hear from you
As an ex-Soviet armour official I can tell you that
in Soviet Russia, the defense attacks YOU.
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
Not entirely so. Shuttles were still used to do commercial work after 1986 (the Intelsat retrieval on Endeavour's first mission comes to mind), although a lot of the paying customers went away, and that's part of why we have a thriving launch industry in the form of Soyuz/Ariane/Dnepr/Proton/Progress/Pegasus/etc. rockets. The DoD quit using the shuttle, though, and some payloads were shifted to other launchers.
Yet, as you say, some things will only fit the Shuttle (large probes were some examples -- Galileo, Magellan), observatories (Hubble, Chandra, etc) and many space station parts. We simply can't afford to get rid of the shuttle until an equivalent is in operation, and the shuttle that flies now may look like what we used to fly, but honestly, it's vastly different on the inside.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Just my guess, but in 50 years or so Reagan will probably be classed about with Truman. He will be considered to have done a good job, probably rated better than average, but some of his decisions will be analyzed the same way as Truman's decision to target cities with the A-bomb, and historians and pundits will split over whether those were good decisions, for much the same reasons.
Who is John Cabal?
The same Truman who dropped the ball w/ Red China? That Truman or did you mean the guy who wrote "In Cold Blood"?
of the obscene destructive power of a nuclear arsenal, and the fact that twenty years ago we all lived with the fear of global thermonuclear war in the back of our minds...
it makes all the current hand-wringing over terrorism seem a little, well, silly.
Actually my first thought was that I could see a Korean reunification being a good thing for the South Korean economy for a similar reason. S. Korea has little to no launcher technology, and the ballistic missile program in N. Korea could serve as a starting point for a commsat (or any other satalite) launcher program. Sure not quite the same, but close enough to make the problem much easier.
Of course, the conservative think-tanks here are generally opposed to Korean reunification (as they fear that it could lead to a standoff between China and Japan) but it will happen, and when it does, I hope that we in the US have helped the process along rather than stalled it (stalling it would alienate us and make a China/Japan standoff scenario more likely IMHO).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Headline: "Satan launches new Vatican satellite radio and television service" -or- "Crowds cheer as Satan boosts Vatican into orbit"
Keep your flames down some, please. I didn't see any mention of religion. "Fundamentalist" is today used as often about any set of ideas.
A quick search on yahoo for "fundamentalist" shows 18 out of 20 pages connecting "fundamentalist" and religion. "fundamentalist christian" gives over 700,000 pages.
It's obvious "fundamentalist" meant religious fundamentalist. Most people that use the word mean religious fundamentalist.
"Dogmatic" migth be a better way to describe GWB and his staff.
Not really. If anything, GWB is too pragmatic and unprincipled. What does he really believe? You always knew where Reagan stood, but Bush? Who knows? Sure, he believes in a Christian God, but politically, does he have any vision at all? I don't know.
The guy who dropped the ball w/Red China. What does this have to do with the USSR and Reagan?
The U.S. builds a 5 storie-tall armoured robot that shoots rockets out of it hands, has laser beams for eyes, and powered by a nuclear reactor.
Bush is reported to have said "In your face Kim Jong!... Boo-yeah!"
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
his foreign policy is being written by militant zionist hawks
Modded down as flamebait for the above comment. Whether you agree with his policy or not, calling it a result of militant zionists serves no purpose other than to propegate a flame war.
See MOST : Canada's First Space Telescope
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
1) See Biohazard (1998 - Ken Alibek, I think now at Batelle Labs in OH) The Soviets had generated a variety of variants, including plague and smallpox strains that were immune to most antibiotics. The strains of smallpox used would circumvent vaccines made with previous strains - thus new vaccines would have to be produced very rapidly to stop them. In addition to smallpox, plague, and anthrax, they had a variety of other goodies, most of which have no treatments. They might not kill everything, but 90% is probably "good enough".
2) To toast lots of people with nukes, you have to hit lots of targets at once. Bioweapons don't require that - one shot in a high-population area is enough. Your targets spread the devastation for you, which lowers your requirements - instead of hundreds of warheads, you only need a few to have the same effect. Even if they warheads miss their targets, most of the payload agents are weaponized and will survive for long periods of time outside, so wherever they hit is going to be uninhabitable Bioweapons have the potential of widespread (worldwide, perhaps) damage because of their ability to be amplified, while nukes (with no such ability) will cause mainly localized damage.
3) Bioweapons are there to generate fear, just like city-buster nukes. They are intimidation weapons, rather than weapons to disable enemy soldiers. Most of the species on those warheads can't be stopped by anyone, so they don't make good weapons for anything but fear and mass murder.
No, Clinton will be remembered as a President with a lot of potential, but did nothing with it but commit perjury over an affair with a fat intern.
Which part do you object to? "militant" or "zionist"? I'm guessing the "zionist" part as too few people are too scared to talk about that concept without being labeled as an "anti-semite". I'm certainly no racist but I do understand that Israel has significant influence in our Middle East foreign policy development. Iraq was definitely no threat to the US but it was a regional nussance to Israel, hence they actually reap the true benefits of us overthrowing Saddam. Zionism is a real thing, believe it or not. Have you listened to Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson lately? They'll certainly look the other way while the US takes out Israel's pesky neighbors while Sharon keeps building his human cages around Palestian villages. Of course, in typical slashdot fashion this will probably get modded down.
he believes in a Christian God
huh? Even muslims agree we all worship the same god. Are you saying as a christian your god is different then other religions gods? Blasphemer!!!
"If the SATAN missiles allow for organizations to get their satellites into orbit at a cheaper price, this is a very good idea"
But does it scan for vulnerabilities in the rocket?
If I was given the choice of an H-bomb hitting my town, or a nasty virus, I think I would go with the nasty virus.
I grew up in a time when full-scale nuclear war appeared likely. We were pretty close during the Cuban Missle Crisis. While I don't like terrorists much, I happen to prefer it to the weekly "duck-and-cover" classroom drills.
A fair and objective comparision between the USA of 1980 and the USSR of 1980 will show that the USA was, indeed, better, and the USSR was more "evil." Both sides broke treaties, but the Soviets broke more, including the conventions on biological weapons. A pre-emptive nuclear war was NOT part of standard American strategic planning, but WAS part of standard USSR planning.
The American government was measurably less corrupt at that point in time. The USA took much, much better care of its environment than the USSR (like that was all that hard to do...). In the USA, the average standard of living was higher, healthcare and education better, and basic human rights like political expression more protected.
America really shined after Chernoble. Even though the USSR was its sworn enemy, Americans felt compassion for them and sent aid. After all, even though they hated the Soviets, those were humans dieing over there. We all thought "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Compare those feelings toward America's sworn enemy, to what some in the world said about 9/11, and then tell me that American's are not a more compassionate and caring people than their enemies. If thats not "better," I don't know what is.
There is a valid argument between a multi-polar vs. a uni-polar world, but, if one side had to eventually lose, I, for one, believe the world is better with the USA as the sole superpower, rather than the USSR as the sole superpower.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
If Reagan-omics where a bad idea why do we still use it today?
You could say that the boom in the 90's was do to Reagan-omics.
But maybe if you know the other name for Reagan-omics that is free market economics.
Reagan-omics and trickle down economics are just buzzwords for standard economics.
"StarWars" help fund research for faster computers and other new technologies that are in use today, so I feel we got some good use from the money spent on it.
And Reagan was one of the most popular presidents in our time, being re-elected his second term by 49 of the states
Liberals want to rewrite history of his time as president and all the good he did because he proved them wrong. He was not an member of any ivy league college, just a down to earth guy with good ideas that reshaped the country and the world.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Wow,
I DID NOT KNOW you could use the words 'screw' and 'Clinton' in the same sentence and be talking about the economy.
They Live, We Sleep
I don't know that I'd call it funny. I honestly don't have a good word for it other then insightful. Perhaps "insightfully ammusingly clever."
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
I for one think this is a great thing for the Russians (not Soviets anymore guys FYI). Their struggling economy has lots of rusting military hardware sitting around. If they can get back some of that investment, and disarm otherwise lethal missles at the same time, I say go for it. Regardless of what we Americans think, the Russians are still the kings of rocket boosters, and I am really suprised that someone hasn't invested some money in the Russian rocket fabrication industry (other than Boeing's Sea Launch). Cheap access to space comes on big, cheap boosters till we actually have a space elevator.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
+1 Bon mot?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
So many religious skeptics (I'm an atheist, in fact) believe that they need to be on the political team opposite those that are religious. It's a mistake. There are plenty of fvcked up ideas on the political left as well as the right and plenty of stupid ahistorical hate-america-firsters. Don't get taken in.
Actually, I am able to discern politics from religion, which is what G.W. Bush (and his fellow men in the Government) apparently can't -- the whole "axis of evil" argument is a religious one, not a political one. That's why I say we must drop our outdated misconceptions of Good and Evil, because they are interfering with what they shouldn't.
As far as Reagan goes, he was a genuinely good man. [...]
What you said applies to most men and women (especially after they are dead). I was focusing solely on his political career, which is what mattered for my post. But then again, perhaps you do have a less distorted view than mine. :)
You can call me a reactionary, I don't mind. As far as I'm concerned, it is best to be a reactionary than to passively accept a reality that seems very wrong to my eyes.
Score: i, Imaginary
The US was first to invent a 10-warhead MIRV weapon: the MX. It changed the balance of everything: where a blip on a radar Soviet screen could be nothing (shadow, meteorite, etc.) or maybe a minor attack on the USRR, with the MX missle that blip could be a nothing or an attack that could wipe out every major city in the USSR and therefore require a decision to retaliate.
What did Reagan (who thought that sub-launched missles could be called back and that there was no segregation in South Africa) call the MX when he announced it?
The "Peace Keeper."
In the early 1980s, the U.S. had almost 100% of the commercial launch industry. By the mid 1990s, it was down to 50%. Now it's barely 25%.
The main reason for this is that NASA has been absolutely killing the commercial space industry in the U.S. ever since the mid 1980s buy launching payloads on the shuttle for ridiculously low prices. It costs around $400 million to launch the shuttle, but NASA heavily subsidized the cost to the point where they only charge around $80 million. Lockheed and Boeing both use to produce unmanned launch vehicles that could launch an equivalent payload for 'only' around $170 million, but no one wants to use them when NASA is willing to charge artificially low prices on the shuttle.
Russia never had anything like the shuttle, so they've continued to develop newer, cheaper launch technology for the past 25 years while the U.S. companies spun their wheels, unable to justify spending money on research and development when they knew that they probably wouldn't have any customers for whatever new rockets they designed. Now Russia is literally decades ahead of us in terms of economical launch technology. Did you know that the Russians can launch a manned space mission for only $20 million? NASA can only dream about that kind of launch economy.
Hopefully U.S. companies will be able to get back in the game now that the shuttle is on the way out, but they're starting two decades and 75% of the market share behind.
"each of which would have a carried a hydrogen bomb thermonuclear warhead to incinerate a different North American or Western European city."
No these were designed for america and america alone....the CCCP had smaller shorter range missles for their buddies in europe...of course why bomb europe at all....its not like they would fight the soviets if the tanks came in or anything.
stendec@gmail.com
Well, "Jennifer", you've got the wrong quote. The passage made famous when Dr. Oppenheimer was purported to have quoted it after the Trinity shot ended with "I am becom Death; The shatterer of Worlds." Read all about it here along with lots of other interesting tidbits about nuclear history.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
And ironically, Gorbachev is one of the more disliked former leaders in Russia. From our perspective here in the West, he was a visionary who was more responsible for ending the Cold War than anyone else. From their perspective, even many liberal, Westernized Russians (i.e. people I've met here in the US that have spent many years working and living here in the US, have Green Cards, and so on) seem to have somewhere between an indifferent and negative view on him. I just dug up this link with survey results on this exact subject. Anyway, I'm sure there are reasons for this, but I've always found it interesting that our perceptions diverge so much on some of these cold war leaders (Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev).
Canada has a satellite? I guess it ranks up there with the Zimbabwe satellite.
So there we have it: 1. Remove hydrogen bomb thermonuclear warheads 2. Insert American communications satellite 3. Launch 4. Profit!
Thanks! I'll check that out later. I was getting tired of that sig anyway. :) Dad's interested in the history of the A-bomb project (he's a nuclear physicist) so he'll enjoy that too.
i am a soviet space shuttle
But the deal fell through... too bad.
Here's the official website of the company that's doing it:
http://www.kosmotras.ru
I was working with US consulting firm Chicago Process Management Group (cpmgconsult.com) who was working with them to improve their efficiency and make them more profitable... we had a great idea to help bring in more attention, more investment, and more tourism, but 9/11 happened and with all the travel restrictions and so on, it got shelved.
They were going to offer tours of the cosmodrome, hands on stuff, lectures from scientists, and set up things like linux conventions and the like, kinda like a geek cruise, but with the end point being a rocket launch.
Please forgive me for saying I told you so. But this information is now about a year or more old.
The Russians have been turning those old, big, dumb ICBM boosters into satellite launch sytems since 2 years after the" Fall of the Wall".
Why is that now such news here?
"Reagan didnt get any coverage other dead Presidents didnt enjoy"
Err, Nixon ring a bell? Died recently. couple watergate retrospectives on CNN. tossed him in a box and dumped him off somewhere with next to no fanfare..
just the closest scary word to the id number
I wondered the same thing. It's been going on since at least the late 90s, a search on space.com could probably provide an exact date
The multiplier factor depends upon population mobility. If someone released the stuff in the middle of a football stadium, maybe it would be undetected for a while. An airburst from a non-nuke ICBM would lead to a lockdown before anyone could say 9/11.
Lastly, how do you stop you infecting your population or even just your military? The Soviet army is massive, but there aren't enough CBW suits or vaccinations to go around.
The soviets undoubtadly had a very nasty weapons program, but the deployed stuff was fairly basic (Anthrax, Bubonic plague, etc.).
And people will just ignore that he supported Saddam and Bin Laden, the whole Iran-Contra deal and Reagonomics. Yeah, you are probably right.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Claiming that Reagan ended the cold war is the equivalent of stating that Al Gore invented the internet; Both politically played an important role in those events but none did it by themselves and none started the process.
... as he also deserve the credit for the economic collapse of is country ;)
The only difference here is that the Gore thing was some badly formulated sentence that he pronounced once in an interview, for what he never meant to give the meaning that the propaganda machine of some party gave it and that he rapidly corrected in subsequent interviews.
On another hand the Reagan thing is something that republicans are repeating over and over without any shame of the exaggeration like if repeating it enough times will make it more believable.
Don't you think that this guy deserve the credit for the changes in is country who made possible the scenario of a peaceful end to the cold war?
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
By "standard" (whatever that means) economics do you mean the economics of today by which the US is starting to lose its global competitive edge, compared to the "unstandard" economics which proceeded it and gave us that edge? Are you also talking about the 90's dot-bomb boom that created one of the longest recessions of the century?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/08/ reaganomics/index.html
As regard's Reagan's popularity, it's certainly debateable who is re-writing history.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/07/ reagan/index.html
Now those are biased sources, but so are the ones that say that Reagan was the best...president...evah! When it comes to Reagan, nobody wants to look at the balanced picture, warts and all (including well over 100 indictments for corruption within his administration, indicating that corruption was widespread and endemic to his policies) because in truth he was very polarizing, and perhaps to blame more than anyone else for the strong political polarization we have today. He did some good things, he did some bad things, and where you come down on him has nothing to do with re-writing history. It has to do with what your politics are. Saying that people who don't agree with you are re-writing history is just a cheap and meaningless smear - an attempt to deflect the tough questions so you don't have to face them.
Some people will automatically ignore all that and more, some will figure M.A.D. was a threat justifying more Machiavellian politics than usual, some will condemn automatically, and some will contend he could have gotten the positive results without the subterfuges and realpolitik. Like it or not, he is going to get at least a share of the credit for the end of the cold war happening as it did.
Look on the "bright" side. Bush 43 is there at the start of the "War on Terror", but does it really like like it will be over on his watch, even if he gets another turn?
Who is John Cabal?
Fact check. They DID build a shuttle , called Buran, just so they could say they did. Didn't want to lose fact to the USA. However, only flew it once. Too expensive to operate. Now THAT's thinking like a business, whereas NASA is old-style wasted government program that doesn't learn. see www.space.com/news/spacehistory/buran_auction_0205 09.html
"If Reagan-omics where a bad idea why do we still use it today?"
Because low taxes and high spending is politically popular.
"But maybe if you know the other name for Reagan-omics that is free market economics."
Uh, what part of "free market economics" implies dumping in vast amounts of borrowed government money? Anyone can make the economy good in the short run if they don't care about the long run.
"'StarWars' help fund research for faster computers and other new technologies that are in use today"
Right. So why didn't we just spend the money on researching those things directly and get more out of it rather than put up with the friction of directing all that research toward tech everyone in their right mind had already concluded wouldn't work?
"Reagan was one of the most popular presidents in our time"
True.
"being re-elected his second term by 49 of the states"
Which is a stupid way to measure popularity, even though it sounds much more impressive than "58% of the votes" (it's still a landslide). Then again, popularity isn't necessarily the measure of a good president; Lincoln only got 40% of the vote.
People who didn't like him want to write history to emphasize the things they didn't like. People who liked him want to emphasize the things they liked. Big surprise. Neither is rewriting, and nobody has "proved" anything.
"He was not an member of any ivy league college, just a down to earth guy"
When did being smart become a bad thing? I hate that.
Imagine you know two people. One sometimes makes you feel dumb because he's really smart, the other buys you lots of stuff by running up his credit cards. While I'd rather hang out with the latter, which do you want to put in charge of your retirement savings?
The SS-18 was never aimed at the United States. It didn't have the range. SS-18s were and are Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) and not ICBMs.
They sucked, just like the fucking Pershings that the US made to counter them sucked, in that ultimately they were built to do one of two things, either a. help bring the human population to armageddon or b. rust.
Wasted on Iraq that could have been spent helping the Russians demobilize their nukes at the least.
Somehow, I imagine cabinet meetings with W and Dick and Asscroft going somewhat along the lines of Longshanks and his waifish son in "Braveheart", with W playing the waifish son and Dick playing Longshanks.
W: "*I* am the President! Don't you forget that!"
DC: [bitch slap, knocking W to the ground] "don't you EVER forget how and why you got elected."
Bush is holding the course because his view of the world has absolutely no relation to reality. It's not hard at all to be consistent when you think everything is just fine and dandy-- he's not merely hiding his head in the sand, he's created a whole alternate universe to live in.
I dislike Kerry, but I see Bush's complete disregard for reality, democracy, truth, rational thought, and freedom as the greatest threat to American democracy in years. Hell, if Bush was mindlessly manipulated by popular opinion, I'd feel safer at this point.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Do you believe only the former USSR had biological payloads for ICBMs, cruise missiles and in theater weapons? There are things that can't be said for a long time to come.
Many bacteriological weapons have been tested on POWs during WWII both in Europe and the Far East. The results have pretty much shown their relative ineffectiveness, at least compared to conventional weapons. So I wouldn't sweat too much over small pox or even anthrax. Even when spread over large metropolitan areas, more people are likely to die as the result of mass hysteria than from contracted illness itself.
we wouldn't have the most awesome nintendo game ever if it weren't for regan and the iran-contra thing..
be carefull on road
QUOTE ". Then again, popularity isn't necessarily the measure of a good president; Lincoln only got 40% of the vote."
Yeah right, lincoln sucked... everyone views him as a hero.
Everyone views him as a visionary to end of slavery.
The CSA (Confed. States of America) wanted to start a country called (Confederate Staets of America)
Lincoln didn't want them to break away from the US, and brought up the "stop them, they support slavery" deal.... the CSA just wanted to quit the US cause they didn't agree.
Lincoln used propaganda "slavery is wrong, they support it, they are waging war cause they want slavery we dont -- fight and join I want YOU!"
Of course.. the victor of a war always gets to write the history books so of course it's skewed as to mark him as the end of slavery (and not the person to end the right of states to start their own country)
I think it was wrong and we (texas) and the other confederate states should have had the right to make their own country.
I don't agree with slavery, but that wasn't the reason of the War. Do you honestly think lincoln cared about the black guy?
regards
1) I don't have confirmation for Alibek's stuff - I assume he was a source for multiple things I read, so I don't know how accurate he is.
2) The Soviets figured that most of their missiles would be shot down - I think they figured a quarter would actually hit their targets. Thus, if you want to kill or threaten others, you have a problem. One solution (as was done) is to just make more of them. Bioweapons are another solution - while they won't prevent retaliation, they don't require as many hits to kill your enemy. The enemies that aren't killed by your nukes get sick and die, even if you only land a few of them. None of these weapons (citybuster nukes or bioweapons) will prevent retaliation - they are simply there to kill and make your opponents scared. The only missiles that might be able to disable opponents' missiles are the MXs - I don't think the Soviets had an analogous missile to go after ours.
A bonus is that bioweapons can be delivered more flexibly and quietly - if you have truck with terrorists (as the Soviets and perhaps the US did) you can get them to deliver your weapons with deniability. Detection of nukes is easier than bioweapons, and there are more methods to transport and deliver them. (We don't know if they work, but that's another story,)
3) Ebola is a natural pathogen - it has to balance its infectivity against its kill rate. Killing all of your victims quickly prevents Ebola from spreading, and makes it less widespread. Bioweapon viruses and bacteria are engineered to kill, not to survive. Passing on their genes was not relevant to their selective breeding, and so is unlikely to be manifested in their behavior. Bioweapons, unlike natural bacteria and viruses, are like kamikazes - they are selected to kill, not to pass on their genes.
This makes good commercial sense! What is the point of maintaining these missiles for years together at a high cost when the possibilities of using them are minimal and the return on investment is nothing? I foresee that more governments would follow this example. The romantic in me is overjoyed to see the use of dreaded missiles as instruments of global co-operation in harnessing technology for the benefit of man.
Still more on so-called "NATO" designators naming conventions:
r ting-name .html
Fighters begin with "F" words (Fantan, Fagot, Fishbed, Flogger, Flagon, Fulcrum etc etc)
Bombers begin with "B" words (Badger, Backfire, Blackjack, Bear etc etc)
Cargo planes begin with "C" words (Crate, Clank, Crusty, Candid, Cock, etc etc).
Helicopters began with "H" words: (Hazw, Hormone, Hip, Hokum, Helix etc etc).
Miscellaneous function aircraft begin with "M" words: (May, Midge, Mail, etc etc).
For all aircraft types, a one-syllable name indicates propeller engines, 2-syllables indicates a jet...)
Air-air missiles begin with "A" words (Acrid, Aphid, Apex, Atoll, etc etc).
Surface-surface missiles --whether strategic or tactical-- begin with "S" words (Satan, Stiletto, Scud, Scarab, Sizzler, Styx etc etc)
Air-surface missiles begin with "K" words (Kent, Kerry, Kitchen, Kelt, etc etc).
Once of many Google-derived resources for even more excruciating detail:
http://www.free-definition.com/NATO-repo
Don't even get me started on NATO radar names, which include such classics as Short Horn, Wet Eye, Big Bulge...just for starters.
Man, I miss the Cold War. The days when the enemy actually possessed military forces....
are you talking about US army?
SHE does throw dice.
Hmmm, A weaponized smallpox; don't you think it would be a resistant strain?
It's actually the Russian underwater missile I worry over.
The human immune system is the first part of the body to be affected by radiation. The population surving a nuclear attack would have decreased immune system function even from low doses that produce no overt symptoms of ARS. Therefor, the survivors are much more succeptible to infection and epedemic. The prospect of epedemic from radiation impaired immune function in survivors combined the breakdown of infrastructure, healthcare services, sanitation, an nutrition is frightening enough even without the introduction of extra-virulant biowarfare agents.
Despite any propaganda you're being fed, the US Military as a rule does not deliberately target civilians.
This does not mean that civilians are not hit, especially when you're using artillery and or bombs. The geneva conventions specifically allow this collateral damage, as well as directly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure which is engaged in 'assisting the military'. Another problem in the area is that our enemies are not nice enough to wear uniforms, so like the video of the man who's shot while trying to use an RPG, if you remove the RPG, you could argue 'civilian death!'. Recovery of arms is a big thing over there, both for the political value and the value of the weapons.
In this you'd have a better argument about having the USAF hitting civilians, as a 2000 pound bomb is much less discriminatory than a M-16.
I don't read AC A human right
no propaganda. i have seen these wars. i have seen people dying. women, children, my friends. well, you may call them collateral damage but i have been calling her my girfriend.
SHE does throw dice.