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North Korea's Satellite Is Out of Control
Koreantoast writes "After failing on numerous occasions, North Korea has finally put a satellite in orbit. But according to US officials, it is now 'tumbling out of control.' This is bad news, and more bad news, covered in a double layer of extra bad news. From the article: 'According to US officials, it appears that North Korea's new satellite has failed to achieve a stable orbit and is now "tumbling out of control." The greatest danger is the threat of it colliding with another satellite, adding to the growing debris field around the earth.' A separate Gizmodo article provides links for tracking the current location of the satellite."
Its unclear if the new min-shuttle has offensive capabilities.
...it can cover multiple orbital trajectories while imperialist pig Yankee capitalist satellites are only capable of a single orbit.
US launches secret space drone... NK satellite suddenly goes into an uncontrolled descent.
1 + 1 = ...
China uses "clumsy" and "amateurish" North Korea to wage a proxy war in space?
why won't my GPS work?
If you're in orbit, you're in orbit. If your orbit is too low then it's a decaying orbit but "tumbling out of control" is a bit of hyperbole from the press. It might be harder to predict the re-entry if the satellite is spinning and has no attitude control; maybe that's what they mean. I suppose it's possible that it could strike that atmosphere and bounce before re-entering, but will it bounce high enough to impact something in LEO? Details please. I bet this is a tempest in a teapot; not that I condone NK's actions or think they're particularly smart.
Seems like it's time for another anti-sat test.... you know, for our safety.
It may not be flat out stupidity. Perhaps it is a matter of not having the data required to make the appropriate calculations. We know everything in orbit, gravitational tug well beyond 20 decimal places on all faces of the earth. Just a couple of those missing variables could really make physics not work how you predict
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
And they wonder why the world doesn't want them to have nuclear weapons.
Looks like it is headed for S. Korea in about 10 minutes - this should be fun. Of course, it might have done that already and I just missed it; the orbit track only goes back about 1 orbit (~90 min).
Maybe it's time for the nations of the world to pony up the cash and send a "hoover vacuum" satellite to clean up the loose debris. They should also send a cat satellite that would be terrified of the other satellite. Of course, some know it all would point out that space is already a vacuum.
The tracker just says "Connecting..."
That can't be good.
There, fixed that for you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
For helping them with space exploration.
If it does end up damaging another satellite, what can anyone do about it? It's not like North Korea is going to nicely exchange insurance info with the aggrieved party or pay for damages. Hell, if it's a US company I doubt they'd even be allowed to accept funds from there legally if they were amenable. I could see several scenarios in which this leads to war with North Korea, and frankly I'm not really caring who takes them out at this point. - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Not sure if there would be time to deploy the military shuttle thing... especially if this satellite starts dragging on the upper atmosphere.
The betting pool is now open as to where it'll re-enter. At 100kg or so, I'm not certain it'll survive the trip back down, but bits of it might.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
As in "North Korea is a Chinese satellite" that goes "out of control", often when it seems to suit Chinese interests.
I don't even know why the US bothers negotiating with North Korea. About the only two things the US can do to North Korea is
1. Bribe 'em - which really is a counterproductive way to prevent misbehavior, as it just encourages more misbehavior
2. Bomb 'em - just plain counterproductive
Serious.
Let Japan, South Korea, and to a lesser extent Taiwan and Russia work to make North Korea behave. Japan and Taiwan in particular can make the Chinese jerk North Korea to heel pretty quickly - just threaten to openly field nuclear weapons. You'd better believe the threat of a nuclear Taiwan would get Beijing knickers in a huge knot in about half a millisecond. Japan, not so much, but even so a nuclear Japan would do a lot to knock back Chinese influence in east Asia.
One has to wonder if the Air-Force's X-37B kinda gave it a nudge.
We can't shoot it down or destroy it without risking an international incident.
The NKorea Satellite is not out of control - they are just testing maneuver in space....yeah, that's it :)
On 12/12/12, the wheels were set in motion for the 12/21/12 Apocalypse.
A chain reaction of low-orbit and geostationary satellite collisions cause flaming satellite debris to rain down from the sky in a cataclysmic event. Now that Twinkies have been phased out, not even cockroaches have survived.
do() || do_not();
they might Need Another Seven Astronauts.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I checked. It doesn't look like it's tumbling now. False alarm, nothing to see here, move along ---
----aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!! What's that thing hurtling towards m
"Rejoice, for the Supreme Leader's weaponized satellite is close to striking a blow against western oppression."
This is just another one of those times where the rest of the world pats North Korea on the head, and says, "Nice try, champ. You'll get 'em next time."
Is anyone taking them seriously?
Problem solved.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
Taiwan = China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT
Mostly random stuff.
doesn't insure debris from North Korean satellites... <[:'(-|-<
The G
I'm kind of wondering whey we don't use one of the NSA space shuttles ... pardon me, "test" vehicles that don't exist ... to capture it and bring it safely down to Earth.
Or would I be breaking Super Secret Double Probation by admitting the vehicles we launched do exist?
Cause if the death satellite crashes on Seattle or Vancouver or NYC there's going to be a lot of fired NSA people.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
from the article after someone makes a prediction of it crashing somewhere.
One of the follow-ups: " I predict it will crash into a Mayan temple in 9 days "
You guys have a tough bar to reach in comments this time :)
...is why poor countries shouldn't have rocket technology.
Figures, Best Korea would launch a satellite with a bad attitude.
Pity, Japan's having pitching a fit over NK's poor angle of attack, but y'all just need to get over it - NK clearly has no inclination to just roll over and take it!
I read in the thread about the launch how development of tech like the launch rocket are the only way for the Norks to keep the US from fucking with them.
Commenter never specified whether it was through fear or from being doubled over in laughter.
This was all planned by NK to disrupt other countries satellite, while feigning innocence.
Maybe it will land in China and inspire them to do something a little more drastic about North Korea.
In the original space race, when the Soviets launched a satellite, it was seen in the west as a proxy for an ICBM - the (correct) theory being, that a nation firing a sub-orbital rocket was "interesting", while a nation launching an orbital craft meant they could, potentially, hit "anywhere" (subject to orbital inclination and other similar factors)
Now that the Soviet Union has fallen, to be replaced by "friendly" (yeah, right) Russia, other nations can launch satellites with impunity (China, India etc). Most of them are, if not "friendly" to the west, are at least "not complete and utter fruitbats" (that's a technical term BTW).
North Korea (DPRK), though, is still transitioning from the "complete and utter fruitbat" of Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Un, so that, at this stage, it is hard to say whether the new Dear Leader's plans for satellites are peaceful or not.
Assumption 1: it is peaceful, so an out of control satellite is, as USA, Russia and several others have found out, merely an expensive mistake
Assumption 2: it is deliberately provocative, (we launch a satellite, so an ICBM is easier), so an out of control satellite is... well what, exactly?
Let's not forget that part of DPRK's posturing is directed inwards - their recent "nuclear accident" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanggang_explosion) - to quote wiki "No neighboring nations have claimed any detection of radioactive isotopes characteristic of a nuclear explosion.", even though their news media hinted it as such, means that even an unsuccessful satellite will still be seen as a "we are a major power" - when broadcast to those in DPRK
So... where from here? DPRK joins the space race. That is still a concern. Does it matter that the satellite failed? Only if it was intended to be "just a satellite" If it was a "proof of concept" for an ICBM, then a wonky orbit is still an orbit
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Of this fully unarmed and out-of-control battle... Satellite?
All right, calling the rocket launch a "weapon test" was not totally uncalled for, because we all know that space rocket technology is dual use by nature, and can result in the development of ballistic missiles.
But this...
The satellite is just a small spacecraft on a polar low earth orbit. It seems its attitude control system has failed, this is why it tumbles around. It's not the first example of a failed satellite on low earth orbit... and it's not because it is tumbling that its trajectory has become unpredictable. It will just decay in the atmosphere and burn before reaching the ground, as most low earth orbit satellites do at the end of their life. Controlled re-entries are rare, except for massive objects such as the Mir space station.
Wrong
The satellite must have been manufactured by LG or Samsung.
What are the chances of accidentally hitting another satellite? According to the article, there's only one such case recorded, in 2009, when an American satellite launched in 1997 hit a decomissioned Russian satellite launched in 1993. That'd indicate the chances of a collision might not be astronomically low, even when the satellites are working as expected; anyone with a better space background than me care to make an educated guess of the odds?
What if we had a reuseable spacecraft with a large enough cargo area and crew capacity to go up there and grab the thing before it causes havoc, stick it in its cargo bay and fly it back and see what it actually is...
Wouldn't something like that be dead handy?
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
I love how the yellow line on the satellite-tracker here crosses within a few yards of my house on full zoom.
Having a satellite crash into my home would not make my day. Having a North Korean satellite crash into my home would not make the North Koreans' day, once Washington got involved. Hopefully it'll just splash down into the ocean or burn up on reentry.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Team America or the Film Actors Guild.
Don't you mean: Wong?
Why don't we just nudge it into a stable orbit, then use it as political capital to help foster 'peaceful' relations with NK, so that Murdoch will be able to legally use NK labor to produce entertainment for his umbrella of media endeavors? :)
"Tumbling" means they lack attitude control. It is still in a predictable polar orbit. And while any addition to the amount of junk in orbit is undesireable it is not "very dangerous".
Though North Korea is governed by scumbags, I congratulate the engineers who did this on the achievement of orbiting a satellite with such limited resources and commiserate with them over the loss of attitude control. They have as much right to put things in orbit as anyone else. Fuck the UN.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why don't we just nudge it into a stable orbit, then use it as political capital to help foster 'peaceful' relations with NK, so that Murdoch will be able to legally use NK labor to produce entertainment for his umbrella of media endeavors? :)
Nah, let's just nudge it so it crashes on Murdoch instead.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
i want a million er billion dollars....
and was funny here is the domino affect be damn hilarious if this caused world wide outages by pinball like actions ROFL
all ihave to say is suckers !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you look at the map, it's losing a mile of altitude in roughly 45 seconds...
So Current altitude 346 Miles, times 45 seconds gives you 15,570 max seconds of life. Converts into 4.325 Hours of life on a straight line basis. I'm betting on half that.
No Taiwan = Taiwan, China = mainland China, hope this helps straighten you out.
your washington is broke .... the 80's called it wanted star wars back
North Korea first strike = loser North Korea
Not the world's nicest people? What is that, a clever example of litotes? The 200,000 imprisoned North Koreans are in hell. Too bad for them NK isn't well supplied with oil or we, the US -- who have the will and means when it suits us -- would have taken their little piss ass country over by now, which'd be the best thing possible for those poor bastards. One can only hope this is the opening we need. This has nothing to do with religion, just the basic human rights denied all NK citizens. So yeah, take 'em out, which translates to: let them eat and have opinions and live without the fear of torture.
And may god help you if that carried the Spice Channel.
You mean that the isolated nation of North Korea doesn't have a network of tracking stations that can keep the contact with the satellite over its orbital path? I am shocked...
By the way, I dislike NK as much as anyone here, maybe a bit more as I have relatives in Japan, but nothing would ne more dangerous than underestimating them. Their second attempt at a 3 stage rocket put a satellite into orbit. If I am not mistaken, this is one of the cleanest record of any space power. Losing just one rocket is incredible.
Building satellites is hard and the objective of this launch is unknown (unless you are willing to believe the weather-satellite-on-a-perfect-spy-orbit fable). The lack of details makes it hard to know how much of a failure this really is. If they fear it becomes a durable debris, it means it is not currently on an unstable orbit.
NK has about 50 nukes and satellite launching abilities. It is not a laughing stock. It is a major problem for the world. Just laughing is silly. This kind of news seems to say "Haha, what clowns, we can't do anything about them so let's just mock them"
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
North Korean succeeds again, our new satellite is able to spin faster than any imperialist satellites and is expected to make a triumphant return any second now.
So if this crashes into my house, would that be an act of war?
I have to point out that:
1. No one in US has any way to determine if that satellite is or is not on intended orbit, unless orbit deteriorates (and then no one would care).
2. The source is mentioned as unnamed "US officials", what can just as well mean "CIA propaganda writers" (well, they are US officials... formally).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
reflects the personality of N.K. leadership
Table-ized A.I.
Most countries' early launches are to the east since you get free energy from the Earth's rotation if you launch in that direction.
You've just given the enemy key technical information that will allow them to succeed the next time.
Have gnu, will travel.
Check the physics people.
The 'Debris Field' can be a very effective Shield !
No need of a new 20 Trillion US Dollars (in 2012 valuation) NASA project to protect the Earth.
We already have protection ! :)
This is good news.
It looks like it will stay up just long enough to fall on .....
Pyonyang.
Have gnu, will travel.
Their entire country is out of control.
They missed this -
If this thing takes out Santa, my kid's gonna be pissed!
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Those koreans with their slanty eyes are probablly lucky enough they can see to build a car let alone anything else.
Gee, that secret mission military space plane was well timed wasn't it? Our guys got up there, got the satellite, studied it, and then knocked it out of orbit.
North Korea isn't allowed to have orbiting satellites because we say so.
There was a time when /. was full of technical discussions. Arguments about Linux kernel features. Huge fights over the math behind the Alcubierre drive.
Now /. is posting crap from Gizmodo. Who made up a story about the danger from a failed satellite. Between the US, USSR (back then), Russia (now), EU, and who ever I'm forgetting there have been more tumbling satellites than I can easily count. And yet this one is the end of the world.
NK isn't a nice country. They are dangerous and trying to be more dangerous. But a 100 kg satellite isn't going to destroy the world. Or even many other satellites.
I miss old /.. Back when the posts actually had science in them instead of hype. I miss Cmdr. T. Never thought I'd say that.
Not only that but this is probably the only instance where Canada was better armed than the US.
"As part of its mission goals, the X-37 was designed to rendezvous with friendly satellites to refuel them, or to replace failed solar arrays using a robotic arm. Its payload could also support Space Control (Defensive Counter-Space, Offensive Counter-Space), Force Enhancement and Force Application systems.[10] An early requirement for the spacecraft called for a delta-v of 7,000 mph (3.1 km/s) to change its orbit.[11]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
....Gangnam Style!
New Economic Perspectives
If it's not rotating about one of its stable principle axes, then its angular velocity vector is going change (in a very uncontrolled way) relative to its principle axis. So it won't be rotating about just one axis.
Check out the following video to see what that means:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XALe27bnUm8
You can do a similar thing with a hardcover book held shut with a rubber band. Toss the book up -- spinning it around either its longest or shortest axis, and it will continue to spin around that axis in a very controlled way. However, if you toss the book up while spinning it about its middle sized axis, then it's going to tumble out of control. Good luck catching it...
I do not see anything that would make this satellite different from the thousands of other defunct satellites - there is far worse stuff up there, such as satellites containing nuclear reactors (!) or plutonium RTGs. Furthermore, TFA, especially the Gizmo article, contains statements or implications which are simply wrong. The /. summary picks them up, as well as most of the commenters. And they should be technically adept people...
However, a failure (or complete lack?) of attitude control does in no way mean the satellite's orbit is 'unstable', 'unpredictable' or 'changing'. The satellite is and stays where it was placed by its rocket, and if it was placed in LEO, declines (as every other object in LEO, such as the ISS) within a fairly predictable timeframe until it disintegrates in the atmosphere.
(Hopefully) nobody would be as stupid to give their satellite active propulsion and program it to 'fire its engines randomly when tumbling out of control'. Anyway, I highly doubt the satellite has any attitude control or even propulsion built-in at all - just take a look at the Sputnik and Explorer missions, which did not even have an energy source; they just started 'tumbling out of control by design', and transmitted data until their batteries ran out.
However, of course the statement that the satellite was thought for earth monitoring, which is basically confirmed by the fact it was launched into (and will stay in) sun-synchronous orbit would imply it has some sort of attitude control, since it would require some sort of CCD chip to be earth-faced.
The tracking app linked from the Gizmodo site isn't responding at the moment. Perhaps the NK satellite landed on their data center.
Have gnu, will travel.
I would like to express my condolences to the recent execution of certain disloyal rocket scientists in the glorious people's republic. Rest assured that the next three generations of their families will be taken care of in Camp 14.
yup.
There is a big dose of FUD here. There are thousands of defunct satellites, and pieces thereof, up there. The chances of something out of control hitting something is very small. Now, it would be bad if it blew up, turning into thousands of pieces, but just by itself it is no big deal.
Based on my calculations, it'll start coming down North East off Greenland at around 8:20am Eastern Standard Time this morning... It should be at about 50km altitude at which point the atmosphere will cause it to start burning up, so it'll probably fall in the Greenland sea.
I don't understand what the problem is? Shooting satellites into space and keeping them in orbit has been a solved problem for decades.
North Korea should be able to do this. Rocket and satellite tech isn't that secret anymore. It's only a matter of engineering and money. They surely have the engineers and they have shown they can scrape together the money at the expense of their own people.
20 minutes into the future
If it was still losing altitude, which it isn't anymore. Been stable at around 500km for the best part of 10 minutes.
What if North Korea is openly trying to attack Japan with rockets, but simply suck at it?
Depends on who you ask. Taiwan happily will not provoke China in any further way. What this could lead to would make Tibet look like a Sunday afternoon picknick.
Diplomacy with NK only works via China. Best pick diplomats who can actually negotiate with them.
20 minutes into the future
Yeah when I was watching it, it was in a steady decline over 10 mins, then it started going up when reaching 500.. I suppose I shouldn't be so quick to trust western media, haha.
The satellite appears to be in a stable, nearly circular orbit. Perigee 505.3 km, apogee: 588.3 km. That's higher than the ISS. It's not going to re-enter any time soon. Good launch. Some idiot seems to have looked at a tracking site, saw that the altitude was decreasing, which happens for about half of each orbit, and made a big deal out of this.
It's not clear that the satellite is out of control. Many satellites tumble during their early orbits, until attitude stabilization is commanded and achieved. Since North Korea doesn't have a worldwide network of tracking stations, they can only send commands when the satellite passes over their country. They may choose to let it orbit for a while and collect some telemetry data before trying to stabilize it. Assuming it's equipped for attitude stabilization. Early US and USSR satellites were not stabilized.
You have been successfully fed the Propaganda Spam by CIA and the Military Industrial Complex ! The Norks are a nasty, irrational threat who will nuke Los Angeles any time from now ! America is helpless against this threat and only some very expensive technology from Lockheed-Martin and Boeing is going to counter this. Of course, that must be augmented by some powerful and mega-expensive intel gathering technology from L3 and Raytheon. Let's remote analyze the piss of Mr Kim-o-dictator from 200 km height !
More seriously, this little shit-country just shot a sat into space and they have every moral right to do that, just as much as India, Russia, China, Europe, Israel have.
When they blow up a SK frigate you Merkins should blow up a NK frigate as retaliation. But this has NOTHING to do with their space efforts. NK has exactly the same right to do this as your American Nazi scientists had back then.
Familiarity breeds contempt.
So you are Canadian?
Anti-Canadian Canadian?
Eh? *sarcasm
Lighten up, dude.
It was an appropriately On-topic comment in reply to the shuttle being armed.
It was humour, really.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Our Starcraft's Glorious Interstellar Hyperdrive, powered by millions of eager and patriotic gerbils hand-raised by Our Dear Leader, was working perfectly until you jealously beamed the decadent cacophony of Lady Gaga at them. Look at the mess you've created. Shame on you.
With the current rate of decay and solar flux, the A & B object will decay about 2-3 months from now.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
They've repeatedly demonstrated just this ability to do so.
The OTP ought to cut severely in the hyperbole. There is very little (read: no) "bad news" in all of this. Most of what is brought up is FUD aimed at fooling people to think the North Koreans "failed" again (as crazy commies should). Truth is: this time they didn't.
1) Tumbling does not increase the changes of a collision at all. It is completely irrelevant for the collision danger whether a satellite tumbles or not;
2) Tumbling does not really influence the orbit (only in the final stages of decay it does). Indeed, it is completely unclear what is meant by a "stable orbit" here. ALL satellite orbits decay over time, so NONE of them is "stable". Probably, it is meant to imply that the Korean satellite has no reboosting capability. That is probably part of the design (many simpler satellites have no reboosting capability).
Yes, maybe the Koreans have no control over the attitude of the object. But that doesn't matter much: nothwithstanding Korean claims of it being a "weather satellite" this was probably never meant to be a truely functioning satellite.
The fact is that the North Koreans managed to successfully bring an object into earth orbit this time, and that in itself is an achievement. Whether you like them or not (and I don't like the North Koreans), those are the facts. No amount of spin and hyperbole about "danger" and "bad news" can take away that fact. This is all simply FUD.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
It has been projected that one more exploding debris field of a destroyed satellite will cause a cascading effect that will wipe out all satellites as juk casues more and more collisions
..not to regurgitate the Official Line Of The American Reich ?
America is by definition making the rules of who can shoot satellites into orbit and they have decided they can do this and they have decided NK does not have that right ? Can't you simply accept the divine rightfulness of Washington and Langley ?
I assume you are one of these Information-Terrorists who Write Without License !
Could this be part of North Korea's strategy? To put a satellite into an orbit, tumbling/apparently out of control, and conveniently in the path of something they want to destroy? It'd be difficult to calculate an orbit that would intersect with something (especially since North Korea probably still uses TRS-80's) but it'd be genius.
In any case, I bet it's just tumbling in a FUBARed orbit due to lack of skills with launching and deploying stuff.
5...4...3...
Dear Leader's 100% accurate forecast for the week of December 13th, 2012:
.5 meters in South Korea
High of 200C dropping to an occasional low of -200C in the shade
Clear skies, good visibility, with an imaging resolution of
35% chance of fatal orbital collision with nearby orbital bodies, with some minor nausea, vertigo, and spatial disorientation as we move into the evening.
This has been another installment of Dear Leader's 100% Accurate Forecasts - remember, if it's not spot-on, then the round-eye imperialist Yankee pigs have sent their weather planes over our wonderful Best Korean homeland to change the skies and discredit Dear Leader!
Being in low orbit, it will definitely drift downwards quite quickly due to atmospheric drag (you need lots of fuel and manoeuvres to maintain low earth orbiting sats [LEO], contrary to the geostationary ones that OTOH "never fall").
The issue here is rather that it'll piss off other users, that sometimes will be obliged to perform collision avoidance manoeuvres based on the (well-known) orbital parameters permanently updated by NORAD et al.*
On each modern LEO sat there has been a fuel provision for this, for years, so even this isn't a great deal. It's just another burden for the ground control centres**...
The only critical thing I see is what'll happen if the NK sat contains heavy and compact elements that may reach the ground while all the rest just burns.
(*) When a dead russian sat killed a Globalstar two years ago, it was the accounting for this warning info that had misfunctioned
(**) and even, I already see the guys coming back home: 'you know what? last night I had to perform a special manoeuvre to avoid the Mad Norrrrth Korrrean Satellite! Aren't you proud of your mate!'
Herve S.
Why didn't you faggots link to http://www.n2yo.com/?s=39026 instead of linking to an even shiiter website than this one. Samzenpus is a fucking waste of life.
Let Japan, South Korea, and to a lesser extent Taiwan and Russia work to make North Korea behave. Japan and Taiwan in particular can make the Chinese jerk North Korea to heel pretty quickly - just threaten to openly field nuclear weapons. You'd better believe the threat of a nuclear Taiwan would get Beijing knickers in a huge knot in about half a millisecond. Japan, not so much, but even so a nuclear Japan would do a lot to knock back Chinese influence in east Asia.
Taiwan makes one peep about any military buildup, their name would be officially changed to "Uninhabitable Asian Wasteland #45-B" in about half a millisecond of Chinese military intervention. Japan would be asked, maybe in not quite the same words or attitude, if they, on their tiny island with horribly limited resources, had similar objections to the behavior of their trusted ally North Korea. Japan, suddenly realizing that decades of comics and cartoons directly suggesting the might a combination magical/sci-fi Japanese army of infinite strength and power granted to them by writers barely concealing a pathological desire to insert their own personal wish fulfillment fantasies in everything they write doesn't actually mean they HAVE such an army at hand and that China's army is so very very very very much bigger than theirs, has a much more difficult choice to make*. China then sends pictures of burned, disfigured Taiwanese faces — some caught in the very moment of raw terror of the realization of their own futile mortality — as well as videos of the efficiency of their "cleanup" crew sweeping through Uninhabitable Asian Wasteland #45-B fixing the various "unresolved issues" of an incomplete job. These pictures and videos are intended to hurry along Japan's choice.
*: Go on! Diagram that sentence! I DARE you! I DOUBLE-DARE YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!
My god they got also their first satellite weapon.
Talking about multiple records.
Reminds me of that game Pong!
And the odds that the tumble was caused by a malfunctioning gyro that was incorrectly created thanks to a SCADA virus infecting an illegally procured CNC machine is? I would think it would be utterly in the security interest of the United States to Stuxnet the high precision manufacturing systems of North Korea.
There's no way we could have possibly manufactured such a modern marvel as that here in the US.
Correct - while you might have the technical capacity for some reason you lacked the will to do so. For example the US could have build the Superconducting Supercollider but chose not to leaving Europe to build the LHC. Having the capability to do a thing is only half the story, you also need the will to do it as well. Other countries like Canada and the EU have both the capability and the will to do these things so don't be surprised when we take the opportunities which the US is unwilling to seize itself.
this comment is a test; please ignore
this comment is a test; please ignore
gosgog:
Seems to me that I've read back when? that there were a couple of systems to destroy some of the garbage floating around in space. Can we not get rid of it. Also next time they want to try again lets either the U.S. or the Israelis knock 'em out of the Air now we have systems to do that.