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Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit
Dekortage writes "'Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit,' announced Iran's President Ahmadinejad yesterday. The satellite, named Omid ('hope'), was launched to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Video shown on Iranian television shows a Safir-2 rocket rising into the sky, as a follow-up to a test firing last August."
I think there's probably a big difference between making a rocket which can reach escape velocity and being able to target a specific location thousands of miles away.
FYI: Canada has nuclear power stations AND has launched satellites. Are you scared now? We have just demonstrated that we can drop nuclear beer and back-bacon on any city worldwide.
Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
Thank you.
John F. Kennedy - September 12, 1962
839*929
The mark of a civilised mind would be to celebrate this achievement. Those gripped by tribal paranoia, searching for ways to disparage the Iranians should take a good look at themselves (I'm mainly looking at you now Americans). Relax, I've played football with some Iranian guys seen for myself in the shower, their dicks are not significantly bigger than the average Western male.
I think there's probably a big difference between making a rocket which can reach escape velocity and being able to target a specific location thousands of miles away.
There is. In reality, this is more akin to Sputnik than an ICBM.
Nevertheless, we and the Soviets started like this, and it didn't take many years before both we and they had intercontinental capability in weapons delivery. Furthermore, the Iranians (and everyone else interested in near-space) have the advantage of knowing what can be accomplished. We and the Russians did not, and spent a lot of time and money figuring that out.
They also don't have to come up with anything akin to a Saturn V or Energia heavy-lift booster to become a real threat, if they want to be. Why they'd want to be on the U.S. and Soviet target list is beyond me though. Being a nuclear power today (even a nuclear superpower) is risky business, no matter how you slice it.
Honestly, I'm not really all that worried about this: a cruise missile is a lot cheaper to develop and deploy than an ICBM, and damn near as deadly.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If it's as simple as all that, why is there a list equally as long, of countries that were unsuccessful? I think calling it routine is naive.
What do you mean? This satellite is a shoe... and it's expected to de-orbit over Texas in the near future.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
from cnn:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/03/iran.satellite/index.html
"The United States has confirmed that Iran launched a low-earth orbit satellite on Monday night, two U.S. officials told CNN's Barbara Starr. "
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
FYI: Canada has nuclear power stations AND has launched satellites. Are you scared now?
Canada is a responsible member of the international community that hasn't made threats to wipe neighbors off the map, allowed criminals within it's own population to overrun foreign embassies and supplied terrorist groups with financial support/weapons.
If Iran wants to be treated like a grown up member of the international community perhaps they could borrow a few lessons from our neighbors to the North? Besides which, ice hockey is way cooler than soccer anyway.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Ah, much like the US funded the Afghan war against Russia... One wonders where all those terrorists got their ideas from...
I can see where this AC is coming from. Iran seems to be doing a good job these last few years, but people still give them a bad rap. This isn't the first headline I've seen with something positive about Iran. If anyone actually bothers reading a bio, you'll see that Ahmadinejad has been doing a really nice job compared to his predecessors. For example, he reestablished relations with the US after 30 years of the silent treatment. That sounds like a step in the right direction to me.
I just hope the intelligent, calm, undiscriminating folk on slashdot can give Iran a chance. Both of them.
Iraq: Invaded another country, didn't have powerful friends.
North Korea: Hasn't invaded another country since the 1950s, has powerful friends in Russia and China, and has enough conventional artillary already positioned to flatten Seoul within an hour.
Nukes aren't the only reason for the current situation.
that hasn't made threats to wipe neighbors off the map, allowed criminals within it's own population to overrun foreign embassies and supplied terrorist groups with financial support/weapons.
Just to be clear, are you talking about Iran or the US here?
Recall that is came out that Nixon was buying weapons in China and sending them through Russia to Afghani "freedom fighters". The same guys we call "insurgants" today. And that was 30 years ago. It didnt stop happening, they just cover it up better these days. Cept for Col. North who got caught.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Other attack vectors (smuggling in warheads by sea/land) may be technically easier and more likely, but (being cold about it) the end damage potential is much less. If terrorists set off a bomb or two, there's lots of damage, but the rest of the country is still intact. But if a missile launches, the end result is basically that all the missiles fly. And that ruins everyone's day.
To quote Stuart Slade, defense analyst (emphasis mine):
The problem with missiles is this; once they are fired, they are on their way. Nothing can stop them (in the sense that the launch decision is final; contrary to many people's opinion, ICBMs do not have a destruct system - ones fired on range testing do, but operational ones do not) and nothing can prevent them striking their targets. The other problem is that they are very fast-moving and give the forces on the other side very little chance to decide what is happening and why. If a launch is detected now, the President has less time to make his decision over future action than most people to chose their meal at a restaurant.
Thrown into that is the inevitability of the whole thing; a missile fired means a target hit. Unless the wretched thing malfunctions, of course, but nuclear weapons are not a good place to start relying on luck. So the simple fact that a missile is on its way means that a country is about to have some fairly catastrophic damage inflicted on it. But is that all? Is that first missile the start of a salvo? Is it aimed at the deterrent forces on the ground - so that any response will be ragged? Without going too deeply into the dynamics of the decision (that would take a book rather than an answer to a question on an essay), the odds stack so that if a missile is inbound, it requires immense faith and courage not to return fire. That's step one.
Now we go to step two. The nation that has let one fly either by accident or design. Its government knows that the "other side" has immense pressure on it to return fire, that the odds in the decision-making process stack in favor of opening fire. If they hang around and wait to see what will happen, the rest of their forces get caught on the ground - and destroyed. So they require immense faith and courage not to continue firing.
Step three - the nation that is being fired on knows that the other guys are working on the basis that the odds stack in favor of continuing firing. That ends it; they know the other guys will open fire, so even if they had decided not to, they will reverse that decision. The guys who fired first know that so, even if they had decided not to fire, they reverse that decision.
Everybody fires, everybody dies. More or less. Both sides know it so they don't bother with the question. One flies, they all fly. The only question is the timing.
How does BMD figure into this? It buys time. A single missile inbound can be shot down reasonably easily. So if a single inbound is detected, it can be shot down - stopped from reaching its target. That takes the dreadful time squeeze out - both sides can afford to wait to see what happens. The side that is being shot at can see what develops and also contact the other side and ask. Not a joke - that may be the most important single step. The side that let one fly by accident knows that the other side is going to wait so they can also afford to do so. And the whole situation is a lot cooler.
That's not to say we shouldn't secure ports and borders and all that. We certainly should. But we can't ignore the less-likely but potentially more catastrophic threat, either. The "we can't stop everything, so let's do nothing" approach is stupid, too.
It should also be noted that the US had a working missile defense system in the 70s.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
No army before WW2 eh? So how did we fight world war one? How did we fight the civil war? How did we fight all those wars before then?
We had a policy to stay out of European affairs but we damn sure had an army. We changed that policy after being dragged into two world wars and seeing the tragic loss of life they caused.
Sure, we do have a lot of bases worldwide but many of them are because of defensive treaties. For example our bases in Japan are there for defensive purposes and were used for reconstruction of Japan after the war, same with Germany.
Also, a lot of them are holdovers from the cold war in which we prevented the soviets from taking over Europe. Or do all you Europeans want to be praising the soviet motherland?
"Riiiight... That's why the term "rocket scientist" is used as a synonym for intelligence - because the engineering is so easy anyone can do it...
Oh wait, it requires expertise in (per wikipedia) fluid mechanics, structural mechanics, orbital mechanics, flight dynamics, physics, mathematics, control engineering, materials science, aeroelasticity, avionics, reliability engineering, noise control, and flight testing among other domains. Yeah, real easy."
When I said that it was only the autopilot that one could be assuming was a hard barrier to an IBCM, the closely attentive observer will clearly read this in the context that Iran, in successfully launching a satellite, has already demonstrated competence at everything you list above. That leaves the autopilot to bring it down (since going up to a stable orbit clearly worked). So I'm not sure why you think the additional work is particularly hard for the same nation state's scientists that originally put the satellite up.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
You should try getting the story right at least. Accuracy is a basic requirement for being taken seriously. You aren't even close.
The Soviets (Russians) had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Immediately afterwards, Carter (not Nixon) approved sending arms to the insurgents within the country. This policy was continued by the Reagan Administration. The Soviets withdrew in 1989 with their tails between their legs. This was all above-board, the US made no bones about opposing this and arming the insurgents.
The Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was aligned with Moscow and Havana which was unacceptable to most people in the US. From the instant that the Sandinista regime was in power (1977), there was a homegrown insurgency against the communist-dominated regime. The US began assisting the insurgents shortly thereafter. However, some Massachusetts and NYC Democrat types managed to get a set of amendments collectively called the Boland Amendment tacked onto some other bills which specifically instructed the DoD, CIA and ultimately the rest of the US Government to cease supporting the Contras. In this context, the Iran-Contra Affair occurred. Finally, we get to Ollie North.
I recommend reading the talk page on the Contras. The disagreements there, while profound, are also enlightening to show how much politics affect remembrance of the past.
Sheesh, kids these days. No one remembers the Cold War.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...plus OUR "rocket scientists" have already done all of the hard
work. 99% of the relevant necessary information is probably
available from the USPTO and various academic journals.
HELL, our entire stealth program is based on an article from a
Russian academic paper from the 60s.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It explains why the US didn't invade North Vietnam, or bomb China in the 50s, or make a real attempt at invading Cuba. It's why neither side pushed too far in 1973.
To quote Mr. Slade again:
When a country first acquires nuclear weapons it does so out of a very accurate perception that possession of nukes fundamentally changes it relationships with other powers. What nuclear weapons buy for a New Nuclear Power (NNP) is the fact that once the country in question has nuclear weapons, it cannot be beaten. It can be defeated, that is it can be prevented from achieving certain goals or stopped from following certain courses of action, but it cannot be beaten. It will never have enemy tanks moving down the streets of its capital, it will never have its national treasures looted and its citizens forced into servitude. The enemy will be destroyed by nuclear attack first. A potential enemy knows that so will not push the situation to the point where our NNP is on the verge of being beaten. In effect, the effect of acquiring nuclear weapons is that the owning country has set limits on any conflict in which it is involved. This is such an immensely attractive option that states find it irresistible.
Only later do they realize the problem. Nuclear weapons are so immensely destructive that they mean a country can be totally destroyed by their use. Although our NNP cannot be beaten by an enemy it can be destroyed by that enemy. Although a beaten country can pick itself up and recover, the chances of a country devastated by nuclear strikes doing the same are virtually non-existant. [This needs some elaboration. Given the likely scale and effects of a nuclear attack, its most unlikely that the everybody will be killed. There will be survivors and they will rebuild a society but it will have nothing in common with what was there before. So, to all intents and purposes, once a society initiates a nuclear exchange its gone forever]. Once this basic factor has been absorbed, the NNP makes a fundamental realization that will influence every move it makes from this point onwards. If it does nothing, its effectively invincible. If, however, it does something, there is a serious risk that it will initiate a chain of events that will eventually lead to a nuclear holocaust. The result of that terrifying realization is strategic paralysis.
With that appreciation of strategic paralysis comes an even worse problem. A non-nuclear country has a wide range of options for its forces. Although its actions may incur a risk of being beaten they do not court destruction. Thus, a non-nuclear nation can afford to take risks of a calculated nature. However, a nuclear-equipped nation has to consider the risk that actions by its conventional forces will lead to a situation where it may have to use its nuclear forces with the resulting holocaust. Therefore, not only are its strategic nuclear options restricted by its possession of nuclear weapons, so are its tactical and operational options. So we add tactical and operational paralysis to the strategic variety. This is why we see such a tremendous emphasis on the mechanics of decision making in nuclear powers. Every decision has to be thought through, not for one step or the step after but for six, seven or eight steps down the line.
We can see this in the events of the 1960s and 1970s, especially surrounding the Vietnam War. Every so often, the question gets asked "How could the US have won in Vietnam?" with a series of replies that include invading the North, extending the bombing to China and other dramatic escalations of the conflict. Now, it should be obvious why such suggestions could not, in the real world, be contemplated. The risk of ending up in a nuclear war was too great. For another example, note how the presence of nuclear weapons restricted and limited the tactical and operational options available to both sides in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In effect neither side could push the war to a final conclusion because to do so would bring down nuclear
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Respect. The USA does not treat countries without nukes with the same kind of respect as they do otherwise.
US:"Iraq, you have nukes and we must stop you immediately."
Iraq:"No we don't. Look, inspect all you like."
[Iraq is invaded]
US:"North Korea, you have nukes and we must stop you immediately."
North Korea:"Damned right we do. What are you going to do about it?"
[North Korea is ignored]
The ______ Agenda
That list is so redudant, A) every thing on the list is a subset of mathematics
I am an engineer and if you think engineering is nothing more than a subset of mathematics you don't understand engineering. There are many aspects to engineering that have nothing whatsoever to do with mathematics. With a little poetic license math could rightly be called the language of engineering but that does not make engineering a sub domain of mathematics. Math is indispensable to the study and practice of science and engineering but don't ever confuse the the tool with the discipline.
how many new countries have we annexed in the past couple of decades
Nicaraugua, Panama, and in 03 the CIA tried to overthrow Chavez./p>
Ok, that brings the count to zero. Got any more? (Oddly enough, this list doesn't include any of your suggestions.)
This for a country that had no army before WWII.
LOL. Seeing nonsense like this modded up to +5 really turns me off to reading slashdot comments anymore. Metamods, are you reading this?
So how did we fight world war one? How did we fight the civil war? How did we fight all those wars before then?
By drafting civilians into a temporary army for a specific war, as opposed to hiring them for a government career in a standing army.
Apples and oranges. An accidental bombing under the fog of war hardly compares to overrunning a foreign embassy and holding the people therein hostage for over a year.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Do we really have to turn this into a discussion of nuclear weapons? Can't we just accept this at face value -- a very difficult technical achievement made all the more impressive for occurring in a country that's under international sanctions designed to prevent, among other things, advancements in the field of rocketry?
Yes, nuclear missile technology is closely related to satellite launch technology. Yes, future iterations of this could potentially be adapted into payload delivery systems. Yes, Iran has been provocative in the past. But they're not doing offensive missile tests. They're not doing war games. They're not trying to be provocative here -- they launched a satellite, not a bomb. A satellite called Hope. This isn't a message to the world screaming, "Fear Us!". This is a message to the world asking, "Respect Us."
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
Really? When exactly did this happen, in the lead up to the last invasion? UN inspectors were in Iraq only days before the US invaded and only left because the UN told them to get the hell out before the US started dropping high-explosives on their heads. Hans Blix was telling the UN Security Council flat out that Iraq was complying with the inspections and essentially pleaded for more time to complete the inspections before the US decided that Iraq had WMD. The US ignored all of that and invaded anyway.
Some people have fucking short memories.
This isn't a message to the world screaming, "Fear Us!". This is a message to the world asking, "Respect Us."
Yeah, right. Just like China's message to the world after shooting down one of their old satellites wasn't "look, we have the technology to shoot down satellites", it was "everyone rejoice, we now have the means to help defend our great united human race when Mars Attacks!!"
Yes, because it's applicable technology (as you later admit).
Given Iran's recent history of sabre-rattling, I don't see why we can't be skeptical.
I don't really see what the name of the satellite has to do with the fact that Iran has proven it is fast approaching the capability to launch payloads. Whether those payloads will be for peaceful or wartime purposes remains to be seen. However, given President Ahmadinejad's statements over the last couple of years, I think it's important to take this demonstration and its purpose with a healthy dose of suspicion.
He who has no
Of course you can't let it slide, because I'm certain you believe everything they do is exclusively for peaceful purposes. Just like other launches they've done.
I don't recall mentioning Israel in my post. Odd.
It would be fantastic if my point would have been taken at face value. Iran's President has been making a variety of strong statements for quite some time now, and I'm not going to enumerate through a healthy list when Google can provide more than enough articles to illustrate my point. The simple truth to the matter is that Iran's strong words and sabre-rattling imply that we need to take the purposes of this launch with a healthy dose of skepticism. Is that too much to ask?
I wasn't debating what bearing the US' history has had on Iran's statements as of late. I'm simply pointing out that their statements are indicative of ulterior motives with regards to demonstrations like this launch.
He who has no