Slashdot Mirror
'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.'"
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?
Ahhh, swords into plowshares....
It makes even this harden cynic smile a bit.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
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?
Once you're dead, though, what do you care how it happened?
Aptal soru yoktur; sadece merakli aptallar vardir.
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"
...the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth..
shouldn't this have the tag <sarcasm></sarcasm> around it?
(gotta learn to preview)
--- Bad news for America, good news for Democrats
Good news for America, bad news for Democrats
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
> 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.
Na and Cl are both nasty chemicals, but I eat NaCl every day.
"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.
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 . . . .
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.
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.
Well lets be honest, von Bruan designed a lot more than just the Saturn V, although without any argument the Saturn V is the crowing acheivment. I just wanted to note that von Bruan started and sustained the US space program all the way upto the 1970's
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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