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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.'"
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.
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".
IANA-Doctor, but I've read that the majority of people vaccinated against small pox more that a couple of decades ago are not nearly as immune anymore. Furthermore, I don't think they've done smallpox vaccinations in quite a while. You don't see those two little scars on one arm of kids less than 30 years old.
Speaking of which, is anyone over the age of 30 just amazed at what a different world this is from the 80's? Sure, communist menace is substituted by 'terrorist menace' but at least MAD is less likely.
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.
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
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
Saddly no, and they're all wrong too.
The smallpox strain the Soviets put in ICBMS was called India1. It's an extrodinarily "hot" strain of pox gathered in India shortly before eradication was complete.
The Soviets then "heated" the India1 Strain up, probably by introducing the human IL4 gene to it. IL4 acts as a jammer against the human immune system, as the pox replicates it generates a huge volume of human immune signal chemicals.
A independent tests have shown IL4 mousepox to blow through vaccinations that in mice as well as natural immunity to the virus. The only mice that survived an IL4 mousepox were naturaly immune mice that had been infected with a less dangerous strain of the pox within a week or two.
Because mice and mousepox are reasonable models for humans and smallpox, this is terrifying.
Furthermore, WHO stocks about 1 dose of smallpox vaccine for every 17,000 people on earth. Since smallpox has a multiplication rate of somewhere between 10 and 30 (i.e. each patient infects between 10 and 30 other people) a massive infection such as an ICBM delivery of the disease would be completely uncontainable using the ring vaccination methodology employed by the WHO eradicators.
For more information on smallpox check out Richard Presonton's "The Demon in the Freezer."
India 1 is still out there by the way, and the Russians have told us they know that Iran and North Korea have it as well as a few other countries.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
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.
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.
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
You might enjoy this then. (No, I didn't write it, but I play it on TV!)
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.
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
The same way you justify firebombing Dresden during WWII. If it brings the war to an end faster, demoralizes the enemy, helps your side, etc.
The US had more nukes aimed at Russia than they had aimed at us. And these weren't tactical nukes for the field. These were 'take out Moscow and Leningrad' nukes.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
During WWII, the US Army Air Technical Intelligence group analyzed Japanese equipment. Because we did not know the Japanese names for much of it, we made up our own. Thus the Mitsubishi A6M became ZEKE, the Mitsubishi G6M1 became BETTY, etc.
This practice carried over to NATO and Soviet equipment. S was used for surface to surface missiles. The deignation woud be S-## and a common name. Thus you had Scunner, Sandal, Skean, Scud, Sapwood, Satan and others.
This continues with Chinese designations- the DF-31 is referred to as the CSS-X-9.
IANAD BIDSAAHILN (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night)
No, a vaccination against small pox is simply a matter of being infected with the vaccinia virus. This virus has a similar makeup to smallpox, but is not nearly as deadly or infectious. A "heated up" strain of India-1 (which is already extremely virulent) would blow through any vaccination that is out there.
Smallpox comes in several "colors". You have your Variola minor (chicken pox style 1-3% fatality), your Variola major (pustule style 30-50% fatality), Hemorrhagic (shudder, just hope you don't get it), and Flat (another deadly strain). The occurrence of the last two in individuals with Variola major is about 7% combined. This is the average run of the mill smallpox. A heated up strain of India-1 would have a much higher fatality rate and a much higher occurrence of Hemorrhagic smallpox. And as TGK mentioned, it probably has been modified to carry the IL-4 gene, which would cause your body to go into a cytokine storm before your internal organs liquefy.
It is a slow and painful death that you are conscious through for the greater extent. I never understood how hateful it was to wish a pox upon someone until I learned about how horrible smallpox can be.
I am not a *blank*, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
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.
For maximum effectiveness smallpox vaccine needs to be readministered every 3 - 5 years. All those over 40 that were once vaccinated will derive very little benefit from it now.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
The way I read it was that, in the event of a nuclear war, some of the warheads would be biological, rather than nuclear. The idea being, I suppose, that the few that survived nuclear armageddon would be wiped out by a very nasty disease. The same principle as twin-strain antibiotic doses, only somewhat less benign.
1: The USSR had stocks of artificially enhanced virus, designed to bypass the vaccine. Like how immunity to one flu strain doesn't work for others.
2: Smallpox vaccine is considered effective for only ~20 years. So except for certain health workers and the military, effectivly nobody in the USA, Europe, and most of the rest of the world are immune.
3: They didn't just load up with smallpox. Imagine trying to deal with a plague, pneumonia, smallpox, and polio pandemic all at the same time. Death rate would exceed 10% very easily.
I don't read AC A human right
Given the number of countries they invaded (Poland, Check-ican'tspellitwtf, Afghanistan) I'm guessing, yeah, they had expansionist goals.
[o]_O
-- $SIGNATURE
Dates are not completely accurate
? 3 Kingdoms: Silla, Goguryeo, and Baekje. China's little b1tches
660 Silla hooks up with China and puts the beat down on Baekje
668 Goguryeo falls also, leaving a united Silla
918 Warlords knockdown Silla founding Goryeo
1256 Mongols make Goryeo their b1tch
1392 With China's help Mongol supported dynasty overthrown
1592 Japanese invade
1627 Manchus Invade
1876 Japanese force trade agreements on Korea
1897 Korea tries to shake Japanese influence
1904 During Russo-Japanese War Japanese invade Korea in the name of "protecting it".
1910 Japan gives up the charade and annexes Korea
1945 Japan surrenders to the allies. The US/USSR split Korea in half. Giving you the North and South Korea you have today.
So... Korea has been one country much of its existence before WWII. Unfortunately they have been proxys, b1tches, getting pushed around or under total control by foreign powers much of their existence. Particularly by what is now China and Japan.