Slashdot Mirror
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 = ...
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.
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
One has to wonder if the Air-Force's X-37B kinda gave it a nudge.
I could see several scenarios in which this leads to war with North Korea
Tom Clancy... is that you?
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*
is the taco bell target still in the pacific? Mir didn't hit it but I still want that free burrito!
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
I hope it lands back in North Korea so its citizens can get some return on their investment.
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 :)
Not sure if there would be time to deploy the military shuttle thing...
By amazing coincidence, they just launched the "military shuttle thing" -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2246629/U-S-military-sends-mystery-space-drone-orbit---STILL-wont-tell-mission-be.html
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Just hold on a moment.
Okay, look. North Korea are not the world's nicest people from what we know, either to their southern neighbour or (far more commonly) their own people. Let's just get that out of the way right now.
But seriously. Seriously. "Takes them out"? A Korea War II would be extremely costly for the western world and over what? A satellite that, worst case, smashes into one of the US Military's satellites (say a GPS one, not one so secret they'd just go "WHAT SATELLITE, IT WAS A TRAINING EXERCISE"). Then the debris takes out a few other satellites, and the GPS network takes a hit, being down for a week or so.
That's in my mind the absolute worst case scenario, and it would be pretty bad. We use GPS for everything; the airlines would take a hit, the road toll would go up, some smart missiles and bombs would stop working.
And you want to fucking bomb them for this? It's clearly just an accident. Sure, criminal ineptitude possibly, but that's what sanctions are for.
There's no reason anyone should die over this even in the absolute worst case. Stop crying for war as your country plummets over the fiscal cliff of economic crisis. And, of course, you sound so confident you can win (protip: You didn't win last time).
Are you fucking insane? Or one of those hardcore American evangelical Christians whose line of thought goes:
God blesses America to do whatever the fuck we want. Skirmishes? Bah, bomb those Athe-commies back to nothing. It escalates to total war? It's Christians vs Atheistic Commies! God will bless us with victory. It escalates to nuclear war? Praise God, the end times are upon us! The rapture is here!
So I repeat my question. Are you fucking insane?
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
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!
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"
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.
Probably more in the line of this
Oh noes.. the UN might write us a letter telling us how angry they are..
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! --
And, of course, you sound so confident you can win (protip: You didn't win last time).
We didn't have Chuck Norris last time.
Can't smash into a GPS satellite, because they're in a much higher orbit.
The war would be short, yep. Over in a few days, a week or so tops.
Okay, so now you have an impoverished third world country where the single biggest employer, the military, has been utterly destroyed, full of fanatically loyal people who hate you and will do everything to kill you even at the expense of their own lives.
"Troops home by Christmas" was the talk during WW I, "a shadow of the Great War" was the talk during WW II, "a bunch of fishermen in mud huts" was Korea (familiar?) and Vietnam. "Kill Osama, get out" was Afghanistan and "Get Sadam, freedom will rise" was Iraq.
If you think a conflict with North Korea would be "short" you're not looking beyond the big picture.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
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.
I feel bad for those poor people, lets focus on precisely crash on Kim Jung Un.
Tomorrow is another day...
This is basically what was expected in Japan after WW2 based on what was happening in the final weeks of the war. In reality, it was one of the most peaceful occupations the world has ever seen. I don't think you can predict that easily how an oppressed and starving population will react to occupation.
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.
Besides, if anything, the US govt should apologize because after all they DID use the rocket to send a satellite into orbit. That kind of mission takes years of planning. Sure, North Korea is not hip or gingham, and their economy is a reflection of centralized planning, but as a whole, very few countries in the world can manage to pull stuff like this. So in my mind, those Koreans, either from the South or the North, are kick-ass. Best Warcraft and Starcraft players, extremely good capitalists in the south and extremely devoted communists in the north.
To be honest, I'm sick and tired of all the bullshit and finger pointing other countries. The US should take care of its internal issues first and forget about being the freaking world police. That only favors people from the military-industrial complex.
The GPS satellites have altitude well in excess of 20.000km, so for a North Korean ballistic missile launched satellite with an orbit at just around 500km to hit them would make for some big news indeed. That problem aside, you should probably know the GPS satellites are not something you go pick up at a nearby hardware store - they have a lead-time of years, decades if you count slipping them in to the budget somewhere and generally mucking around.
While at any given time there are a few irds hold on spare, should a significant number (enough for GS network to take a hit) of them be lost due to a runaway Kessler syndrome or repeat Carrington event, it would be far longer than few weeks to recover the situation. Indeed, the big worry people are hinting at is a Kessler syndrome, where our satellites decide to play a big game of billiards at orbital velocity in the sky. Not only would in theory ALL currently orbiting satellites be lost, but the debris would prevent ANY space-launches for centuries to come.
The ISS, by the way, is below 410km so quite far below the North Korean satellite for now, though the satellite's orbit is sure to decay in the future. Luckily ISS presents fairly small footprint for collissions, in the big scheme, but countless other satellites and debris lay below the satellite's current orbit. It's not good, but it's probably not catastrohic considering how frequently some satellite or other malfunctions. Our near orbit has grown so crowded however that satellites have for long been de-orbited or moved to safe orbits when taken out of service (Like that Russian satellite that was simply de-orbited rather than re-purposed because it might've received more than its alloted dose of radiation in the Van Allen belts and was therefore a risk).
Not counting the usual border "exchanges", a war with North Korea is extremely unlikely unless NK accidentally or deliberately launches an actual nuclear warhead. China and Russia wouldn't want a war so close to home because conflict leads to chaos, what with refugees, disruption of supply routes, and even the possibility of local dissidents taking advantage of the situation.
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
The war would be short, yep. Over in a few days, a week or so tops.
Okay, so now you have an impoverished third world country where the single biggest employer, the military, has been utterly destroyed, full of fanatically loyal people who hate you and will do everything to kill you even at the expense of their own lives.
Sure you'll end up with a huge mess.
However, I wonder how loyal the North Koreans really are to their leaders. They are forced to be loyal: people that didn't cry hard enough over the late leader's death were punished, harshly. Not being loyal is not an option. And they don't know better with the total lack of any access to independent information, all information is controlled by the state.
Saddam Hussein had a huge standing army, loyal to him. However when the US invaded Iraq, that army disappeared almost overnight - soldiers dropping their uniforms and going back to farming or whatever. After the invasion there were little to no Saddam-loyalist insurgents.
Germany in the 1930s was seriously loyal to Adolf Hitler, yet when Hitler was defeated, this loyalty very quickly disappeared with it.
And so there are many more examples. Likely the people from North Korea will feel liberated - yet you end up with a land in tatters, with people totally unable to take care of themselves, no attitude to work hard to improve their lives. That was part of the problem Germany had after the reunion, and North Korea is likely to be far worse in that respect.
The reconstruction and modernisation of the country is going to be a huge issue - and in that way the sooner Kim's regime falls, the better, as the longer it lasts, the worse the problem is going to be. Unless he manages to modernise the country himself in a way China has managed without going through a revolution, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
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
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.