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North Korea Launches "Communication Satellite" Rocket
Mad Ivan writes "The BBC has just reported that North Korea has launched a long-range rocket, which they say is a communications satellite, but that the US and Japan fear may actually be a ballistic missile. Details are still arriving; the rocket passed over northern Japan on its way up."
First (and last) post!
I've had fun reading Slashdot all these years. Too bad it had to end so soon.
Any latest news about what is happening would be appreciated.
The summary is just wrong...
Nobody is suggesting (except the person writing this summary) that the payload of this rocket was anything more than a communications satellite.
What the international community is concerned about is that this really isn't about the satellite and is instead just an excuse to test better ICBMs.
North Korea is banned from launching ICBMs but allowed to conduct space exploration.
As if this regime needed to be any more creative to continue their quest to piss off the world. Yeah, U.N. sanctions don't really mean a whole lot these days (did they ever?), but this is ridiculous.
Honestly, if I thought for one moment that North Korea actually had peaceful space exploration motives in mind, about 50% of my objection to this would vanish instantly. As it stands, the regime is run by a madman with serious nuclear ambitions, something people tend to forget about.
Personally, I wish we'd dealt wish North Korea a long, long time ago... perhaps in place of Iraq. I'm certainly no foreign policy expert, but I have served in the military, and I've always considered North Korea a much larger looming threat to regional and global security than Iraq ever was (with the exception of the Gulf War, that is).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Now we know that the only thing stopping North Korea from hitting anything in Japan or elsewhere is intention or lack therof rather than ability.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Jack ass
N. Korea is a pimple on the ass of world politics, but they do nicely for us to be scared enough to support funding massive defense assets.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
But if they are really testing ICBM's (i.e. not expecting something to reach orbit) they would be a fool to announce it before hand.
They'd be fools to not announce it beforehand. You do not go launching major rockets of any sort, young man, unless people are warned. Otherwise, you run the risk of being very swiftly annihilated.
*slaps with rolled-up newspaper*
Holy cow It must be a weapon of mass communication. Stop it now!! Let the UN deal with it or let another nation attack them with our patented excuse.
But if they are really testing ICBM's (i.e. not expecting something to reach orbit) they would be a fool to announce it before hand.
What in the hell are you talking about. The only reason we (or the Russians, or the Chinese, or anybody else for that matter) don't already have troops on the way to take Kim Jong Il's government down right now is because they've been talking shit for the last couple weeks. A surprise launch like this would not go over well with the international community.
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The economy is no longer news because unless you live in a cave everyone knows the US is in a recession. I bet you would be posting drivel if this article was about the economy too and how the "world should stop revolving around the US"
Not every story is because the US is trying to invade another country, and to top that off, there is a different president in the white house. Just because the last one was a moron doesn't mean this one is. Stop assuming things that you obviously know nothing about. Like another poster said, North Korea would be absolutly retarded to not announce a missile launch. They would be a parking lot for the next thousand years if they hadn't.
Asia + Europe + Africa are all joined by land (not counting canals and rivers), so that would be one huge island. I think the word you're looking for is peninsula. There's a peninsula off Asia that includes North and South Korea. North Korea borders China and Russia. There's a Sea to the east of it that the North Koreans call the Korea East Sea, South Korea just calls the East Sea, and Japan and most of the rest of the world calls the Sea of Japan. On the east side of that sea is Japan.
As for them being a small, third world, militaristic dictatorship, you're definitely right on the militaristic dictatorship. As for small, I'm not so sure, they're about the size of New Mexico. Smaller than the mean average for a country, bigger than the median. As for third world, it depends on your definition of third world. The original definition was not being aligned with either the communists or "the west". North Korea had a pretty definite alignment in that respect. It's also at least semi-developed. It's people are generally pretty desperately poor though.
As for needing a communications satellite... Why does any country need a communications satellite? For that matter, what did the Soviet Union need Sputnik for? It's like saying, what do they need nuclear reactors for, except for producing nuclear warheads? It's one of a long list of things that have both valid civil uses and military uses.
Now, personally, I'm not very comfortable with North Korea having orbital delivery vehicles/ICBMs. But I can't help noticing that the countries strongly opposed to them obtaining these things have their own space programs and nuclear capacity (the US obviously has plenty of nuclear weapons, Japan doesn't have nuclear weapons but has plenty of nuclear tech and could probably manufacture nukes pretty easily). The reassurances that North Korea are the "bad guys" and the US are the "good guys" still don't make me feel happy about anyone having tons of nukes. Now that the cold war is over, the claims that they would never use them seem a little hollow in light of the way that both the UK and the US threatened to use them against Iraq.
The point is, I'm a little torn. On the one hand, I prefer to avoid nuclear proliferation. On the other, this is all obviously a little hypocritical.
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So did the Satellite get into orbit? Has anyone seen it as it went up or got into space? I would think a comm satellite would be relatively easy to pick up with radio equipment. Just curious.
From TFA, North Korea's neighbours suspect the launch was a cover for a long-range missile test.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Nothing in particular is wrong with speculation per se. But did the missile actually succeed in sending a satellite into orbit? Regardless of whether the missile is really a veiled thumping of chests; as was the little nuclear fizzle of two years ago in the same reason.
At least Iran spent enough on possibly developing an accurate missile technology that is capable of sending a state tv satellite into orbit (That functions no less! Look at the success of a 50 year old concept with modern but limited technology!).
Ahhh... The spelling success of a cold six pack.
I don't think that word means what you think it does.
I wonder why nobody even tried to demand the inspection on their rocket and everybody just waited for its launch.
I don't think it's loaded with much of anything. They just put some crowbars aboard, for the construction workers to use.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1582
Nothing high tech, like a nuclear warhead, or a communications satellite. ;-)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
ATTACK!!!! their computers are down!!!!
because that sounds like the dialog for that show.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
The US president told Pyongyang to "refrain from further provocative actions".
There are so many idle threats used these days against these totalitarian governments. The US, Japan, South Korea, and practically most of the rest of the world for that matter, has sat around and threatened N.K. with action. Yet all that we ever see is more hot air.
You would think that if they are not going to actually do anything, they may as well just sit down and shut up. Because all N.K. ever does is bandy words of compliance, and then turn around and do it. They know no one is ever going to do anything.
It might help to keep in mind that while the Russians were more organized and had more power, they were sane.
Russians were more organized
Aiming for the Comedian achievement?
It seems the only country that really needs to worry is japan. Since the USA has had its cock all over japan since the 1950's we're also in it but what I REALLY want to know is what China thinks about this. I mean... if China complied with Japan and the USA... any attempt by north Korea to do anything would be ultimately futile and devastating to their leadership. Why would they even try to leverage them selves with weapons instead of diplomacy? It seems sort of non-sensible to me, it contradicts logic. Though, I'm not Korean... so how would I know what they are thinking?
Eat sleep die
So did it, or didn't it, put a payload into stable Earth orbit? That would answer a lot of questions as to just what this launch actually was.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I wonder when we'll see TLEs and frequencies. There's nothing on Celestrak or the ITU frequency lists yet...
The World can enjoy uninterrupted reality shows beamed directly from North Korea. I wonder when they will start selling alpha-, beta-, X- and gamma- band receivers around here though.
what is the difference between UN and US? For non americans it is same.
Thus far there just isn't a good suggestion for how you'd deal with North Korea and not have it lead to massive loss of civilian life on one or both sides.. Oh yes there is. Just act diplomatically until the current crop of hard liner dies out. As long as NK don't make a REAL hostil action (like firing their artillery or bombard another country) there is really no reason to NOT wait it out.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
We tried to deal with them. It didn't work out so well.
Incoming!
You announce it first just to make sure te watchers know exactly what the are watching although sometimes things do go wrong like the until now secret J/FPS-5 making a hash of things http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2241/dprk-blip-on-a-screen
Once the satellite is orbit, the second stage of Kim's horrible plan begins. Korean reality TV shows are beamed down on a unsuspecting world. Can we do nothing to stop this madman?
...in a faux-german accent, as a parody of Werner von Braun:
"I aim for ze stars, but zumtimes I hit London"
Dunno what a faux-Korean accent would be, but I expect a few one-liners like this about the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il and his communications satellite aspirations.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Simple game theory.
Deleted
It looks like the launch failed. Says the South Koreans. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7984254.stm
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
What is the difference between a ballistic missile and a one which puts a satellite into orbit?
When asked what the difference was between an Atlas rocket which put John Glenn into orbit and an Atlas rocket used to threaten Russia with nuclear retaliation, President Kennedy replied, "Attitude."
BBC News just quoted the US military who said "two stages of the rocket and its payload landed in the Pacific Ocean".
So whatever the payload was, is now down in Davy Jones' locker.
And Nelson says: "HaHa!"
Does North Korea have zillions of liters of valuable oil beneath it or many neighbors who do and aren't under our thumb? If not, we should look for someone else to spend a trillion dollars invading. We can always send out press releases condemning them for irresponsible / ineffective missile launches.
Wait, wut? That's what we already do? Nevermind.
The US and their cohorts continually hype Iran's reactor being built by the Russians as a "secret nuclear weapons program", even though the IAEA has reported no nuclear fuel being diverted towards weapon production. In fact the uranium in Iran is only being enriched to the level needed for a power station, not the 95% or so needed for a weapon. It strikes of buffoonery to keep reading this hype from the usual suspects, but it seems to be the only song they know.
The Tea Party is just the GOP with a bag over its head.
should be accused and consistently vilified over their "luxury" expenses at the cost of their own people it is North Korea. There never seemed to be and end to the bellyaching over India launching satellites as people pointed to all the people living in poverty there. Yet the only concern here seems to be that they now have a long range rocket and it might hit a civilized country. I guess we are so over the fact we can't do anything about North Korea that we totally ignore the people that live there.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You killed it
on bbci they said that there sat was sending data back, but US navy sadid it fell into the pacfic ocean.
That's the thing, though. Nobody has good intel on NK, and what little the West has says that the populace is in lockstep behind Lil' Kim. Bad intel equals bad action -- witness the Bay of Pigs.
Frankly, I think what's going to happen here is that the world will wait for KJI to kick the bucket, and see what happens next. The country's in effective stasis until then; the world can't attack them because they threaten Japan and South Korea; "regime change" can't happen without serious infiltration; and, theoretically, NK can't do crap themselves because they know that there are several countries that would not hesitate to bomb them the rest of the way into the paleolithic era if they put their army into use. The missile thing is a wildcard; with 70's-80's era missile tech, NK could do very nasty things to a number of highly populated targets before they met their fiery doom. In the Soviet Union, ignoring the possibility of internal rebellion, it was never "one nut with his finger on the trigger;" in NK, it very well may be that way by design.
I'm in S Korea right now. My korean isn't so good, especially when watching the news.
But I do remember seeing an image representation of US and Japanese fleet near the northwestern coast of japan and seeing images of Phalanx sentry guns (Japs have their own version) when watching last night's news.
Nothing really special. Just letting you know.
No one could own that dialog like he did.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
The Satellite's Communication: SEND US MORE MONEY NOW!
Right now we're concerned that the people of North Korea are going to become a danger to the rest of us, in the same way that the people of Germany and Japan became dangerous - it doesn't matter if you pick up a gun and fight or not, if you're not working against a war, you're supporting it just by going about your business back home. Same goes for the citizens of the USA right now, of course... So it's all a bunch of flag-waving bullshit - except that N.K. is the only country that much of the world believes is likely to actually use a nuclear weapon. Whether that fear is justified or not is the big question.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This thing takes weeks to prepare. It's a sitting duck for a cruise missile and with all that warning plus knowledge of the exact time and place of the launch probably an easy target for ABMs from the Aegis ships. They have shorter range missiles that are mobile and more flexible that still have enough range to be a threat.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
And this probably won't end until NK *does* nuke someone, and the rest of the world bombs NK into oblivion.
I don't see any better end for this so long as the current regime is in power.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I don't see any better end for this so long as the current regime is in power.
Wait, are you talking about the Federal Reserve, or the World Bank, or the WHO, or the WTO... Or some supposed meta-illuminati? :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you REALLY think that NK considers it's missiles and nukes as anything other than a deterrent against western sponsored "regime change"?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Kim Jong Il: Now you see, the changing of the worrd is inevitabre!
Lisa: I'm sorry, it's what?
Kim Jong Il: Inevit, inevitabre.
Lisa: One more time.
Kim Jong Il: [shouts] Inevitabre! Things are inevitabrey going to change! Goddamnit, open your f**king ears!
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Hans: "The UN must be firm with you. Give us full access or else!"
Kim Jong-Il: "Or else what?"
Hans: "Or else the UN will become angry with you; and we will send you a letter telling you how angry we are!"
Kim Jong-Il: "Okay."
...might sound like this...
This is what Kim Jong Il actually sounds like.
Russia: Fighter jets on standby. Vladivostok wating on futher orders from Medevev.
China: Extra guards, but they're not talking about the incident. Must look perfect for General Mao.
S. Korea: Practice drills. Military on standby. Emergency meeting. DMZ probably closed.
America: Warships on standby. Fighter jets on stand by. Recovering the rocket, with payload. Obama gives a speech.
Japan: Changing their pants, but have Patriot missles on standby. Emergency meeting.
N. Korea: Reloading, hoping not to miss twice.
Brazil: A man is coughing.
Madagascar: Shutting...down...everything.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
You know... I'm appreciative of globalism and the fact that Bush majorly f'ed up just about everything with his cowboy, idiot attitude, but...
I've got to say that as a US citizen, when I see riots in South Korea against the presence of US soldiers (and beef, I think?) in Korea, I'm inclined to say to hell with it. Yeah, North Korea is nuts, yeah, they're a major issue for the South and Japan, but how about a little bit of f'ing gratitude toward the US for backing you guys (the South) up every time North Korea acts stupid.
I mean, why are we putting our troops on the line when all I see are protests against the USA? Is there any gratitude and goodwill towards the USA anymore, or are they just going to jump ship to China now? If so, why are we still there?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I meant NK's glorious leader, but any of the above might qualify ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You cold not be more right.
You probably already know this, but the situation in North Korea is so
horrible that the average north korean male is 5.9cm shorter than
the average south korean male, due to chronic famine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/dec/05/northkorea
The government, instead of fighting of famine (or simply accepting the
foreign help), tries to stimulate people's growth with gymnastics
(this isn't present in the link above; I read it on a newspaper and
don't have a link right now).
North Korea is both metaphorically and literally on the Dark.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm
Its leader, however, is a buffoon that lives with comfort, luxuries
and ostensible wealth.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/2009/03/090316_coreiadonorte_pizza_cq.shtml
(the above link is in Portuguese, sorry)
So does North Korea now have the ability to land a "communications satellite" on American soil?
J
The largest size, payload and lift-capacity ICBM ever launched with the Saturn V.
With all the junk in low-earth-orbit, lots of places to hide an orbital ICBM facility, to rain terror down upon those unfortunate, who need to "accept" fate, and render some taxes, for the "good of the world."
However, the orbital ICBM facility was deleted from the 1972 budget and has not been re-instated since.
Why are people so completely and utterly clueless about money? States are NOT private you!
North Korea does NOT have the money to buy imports, it however internally has as much money as it could want. Not that building a rocket costs money UNLESS you have to buy the materials. What it costs are resources and a dictatorship can freely control all the resources that a country has and that is a lot.
Simply put, if North Korea puts a thousand of its scientists on this project and forces a thousand farmers to supply them with food, then so be it. That 100.000 others are starving is of no concern. As long as NK can obtain the materials somehow someway, the labour is essentially free. It is something that americans especially are hard pressed to understand. An american won't do anything except for the love of money. Well, the americans on wall street anyway who after all claim they really run the world so it must be true.
The soviets proved before that you can have a space program without it having to cost billions in any real way. Just don't give your engineers a choice.
Not saying I agree with the NK way of doingthings, but claiming they don't have the money is silly. Dictatorships don't work that way.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I am not a great admirer of North Korea, I have to say, but I feel that we have to stop the constantly confrontational approach to things. Haven't we seen enough times all through history that we tend to get what we wish for in that department? If what we want is confrontation, that is what we will get in the end; is it really worth it? There are better of defusing tensions that are all too rarely tried wholeheartedly, if at all. North Korea is a hornets' nest; don't whack it if you don't want to get stung - it might hurt.
Of course the purpose of launcing a communications satelite is also to test their skills at controlling an ICBM - if you can do one, you can do the other. Life is full of that kind of ambiguities and risks - I mean, if you go to a shop and buy a big kitchen knife you are potentially breaking the law when you take it home (at least in countries where you are not allowed to carry large knives); if you go and buy a crowbar, you "go equipped to commit a burglary" etc. What we want to achieve is not a world where nobody except the elite in the West are allowed to own potentially dangerous high-technology, but a world where nobody feels compelled to use it for weapons. To get there we need to help unstable countries get into a better frame of mind, and threatening them with overwhelming power is not the best way - one would have hoped Iraq etc etc would have taught us that by now. We should concentrate less on confrontation, name-calling and restrinctions and more on positive negotiations and mutual respect.
North Koreans would really believe it was meant to be a communications satellite? On a local scale, they don't even have electricity in most places.. globally, they don't like communicating with people. If it was a rocket, it was an epic fail, what if it hit Japan? Dear Leader, Should have gone to specsavers
The rocket crashed into the ocean. North Korea is calling it a great success since it sent a satellite into orbit that took the US and USSR many years after they had effective rocket propulsion. Maybe they have figured out an easier way to make satellites or just plain suck at making rockets. At least they were smart enough to point it at someone that didn't have a military that would wipe out their smear of an existence before the world knew it happened.