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Iran Plans To Put a Monkey Into Space

Posted by timothy on from the why-can't-they-put-them-all? dept.

arisvega writes "Iran plans to send a live monkey into space in the summer, the country's top space official said after the launch of the Rassad-1 satellite, state television reported on its website on Thursday. 'The Kavoshgar-5 rocket will be launched during the month of Mordad (July 23 to August 23) with a 285-kilogramme capsule carrying a monkey to an altitude of 120 kilometres (74 miles),' said Hamid Fazeli, head of Iran's Space Organisation. No mentioning on retrieving the monkey, though."

18 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. I didn't know that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an astronaut!

    1. Re:I didn't know that... by Stormwatch · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's such an offensive thing to say. I demand you apologize to the monkeys!

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    2. Re:I didn't know that... by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh yes! Him and George Bush Jr trained together for the space missions back in '82.

    3. Re:I didn't know that... by jd2112 · · Score: 2

      Oh yes! Him and George Bush Jr trained together for the space missions back in '82.

      I misread as Ham (the first chimp in space) and Bush trained for space missions...

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
  2. You're a little late to the party, Iran. by DurendalMac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This was done fifty years ago. Then again, I seriously doubt this kind of thing has anything to do with an actual space program and more a flimsy facade for a rocket test.

    1. Re:You're a little late to the party, Iran. by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I doubt that any space program in history has been run without thought for the military applications of the technology.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    2. Re:You're a little late to the party, Iran. by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

      And back then no humans had gone into space so it made sense to send animals first. Now that people are living in space long term there is no way Iran can justify sending an animal. If they want to measure acceleration, temperature, vibration, life support, etc, then they can do that with instruments.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    3. Re:You're a little late to the party, Iran. by rhook · · Score: 2

      Yep, the entire space race was about showing off our ICBM technology. All the early rockets were developed with nuclear warheads in mind.

    4. Re:You're a little late to the party, Iran. by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      In mind? BOTH, Atlas and R5 were developed for ICBM use. It just happened that they could also carry some other payload into orbit, and whether that's a human being or a nuclear bomb, does the rocket care as long as mass is roughly similar?

      The whole manned space program (at least 'til Kennedy decided to up the ante) was just to test (and show the other side) how much mass they could send into orbit. And it's more agreeable to population, UN and whoever else might be looking if you put men up there instead of warheads.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    5. Re:You're a little late to the party, Iran. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The Russians wanted to put men in space for military purposes. It was thought they could spy on earth better than an automated satellite, and the put up serveral military space stations for that purpose. Most of them failed and eventually they abandoned the idea.

      The Germans had plans for sub-orbital bombers to hit the USA but never got them past early prototypes.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. This is how you signal ICBM capability by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This sounds all scientific and stuff, but basically the sending of larger mammals (plus life support gear) into space also indicates that you can send a nuclear warhead to any place on Earth. The Soviets first did this with Laika aboard Sputnik II, and this basically started a new phase of the cold war.

    1. Re:This is how you signal ICBM capability by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Reading pre-1958 science fiction is really enlightening about the mindset of the time. No man, no animal had ever gone to this very strange place where the stars always shine, where the air is not there, where gravity takes a break. At this time, no one ever saw a picture of the earth as a blue marble. Space was not the place around earth, it was the place above the clouds, the place from which God and gods had recently been chased in the intellectual pictures of the days.

      In one novel, they were imagining that so far from Earth, human minds can not hold. Various craziness appearing. The only way to travel would be to be in a form of coma, half dead.

      It is right, they did not know many things about how it was, but their imagination was working at full speed and they surely expected unexpected things. Sending a mammal to be sure that it doesn't get instantly fried by some then unknown effects was a really reasonable step.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  4. So ICBM research? by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 2

    Thats all heavy lift like that is at that point, testing ICBMs and throw-weight under the cover of "civilian" or "scientific" research.

  5. Re:Yeah, Africa has about a billion monkeys, and t by Gordonjcp · · Score: 2

    You're going to find a lot of racists in this thread. Already very nearly every post is "ZOMG THE IRANIANS ARE MONKEYS LOL!"

  6. ...all us Europeans are wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...how they kidnapped George W. Bush in the first place.

  7. Re:Yeah, Africa has about a billion monkeys, and t by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What did you expect? There's been a war against the middle east going on for quite some years. Dehumanizing the enemy is always part of the plan, seems it has caught on well.

    --
    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  8. One way trip into space for a heavy capsule. ICBM by Kaptain+Kruton · · Score: 2

    Space exploration or ICBM reasearch? Like another post said, putting a 285+ Kg into space demonstrates that they now have the capability to launch rockets that can reach anywhere on Earth (although maybe not accurately, yet). Furthermore, the fact that they are sending it up into space, controlling its free orbit trajectory, but not planning to recover the capsule suggests they are more interested in the launching and in-flight capabilities of the rocket than any of the other data that may be associated with the 'passenger.' Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but this just screams of ICBM research to me.

  9. Simian munitions mount by AnotherScratchMonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    They don't mention the type of warhead the monkey will have in his arms.