North Korea Hopes To Plant Flag On The Moon Within 10 Years (ap.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: In an interview with The Associated Press, a senior official at North Korea's version of NASA said international sanctions won't stop the country from launching more satellites by 2020, and that he hopes to see the North Korean flag on the moon within the next 10 years. "Even though the U.S. and its allies try to block our space development, our aerospace scientists will conquer space and definitely plant the flag of the DPRK on the moon," said Hyon Kwang Il, director of the scientific research department of North Korea's National Aerospace Development Administration. An unmanned, no-frills North Korean moon mission in the not-too-distant future isn't as far-fetched as it might seem. Outside experts say it's ambitious, but conceivable. While the U.S. is the only country to have conducted manned lunar missions, other nations have sent unmanned spacecraft there and have in that sense planted their flags. Hyon said the current five-year plan, at the order of leader Kim Jong Un, focuses on launching more Earth observation satellites and what would be its first geostationary communications satellite -- which, technologically, would be a major step forward. He said universities are also expanding programs to train rocket scientists. "We are planning to develop the Earth observation satellites and to solve communications problems by developing geostationary satellites. All of this work will be the basis for the flight to the moon," Hyon said on July 28, adding that he personally would like to see that happen "within 10 years' time." Meanwhile, North Korea's southern neighbors are planning a similar mission to place a probe in orbit around the moon and a small lander and rover on the surface of the moon by 2020.

Comments

Its an excuse

[Chrisq]

Its an excuse to test lots of long range missiles capable of carrying large and heavy warheads

Re: Its an excuse

[CrimsonAvenger]

Well,no.

Mercury and Gemini flew atop the Redstone, Atlas, and Titan missiles. Which we'd already tested more than enough before they were accepted into service as ICBMs (IRBM for Redstone), well before they were ever used as space launchers.

Saturn, the booster for Apollo, was a purely civilian vehicle - it was never used as an ICBM, and by the time it was in use, ICBM warheads were small enough that we didn't need something capable of putting 100T+ into LEO as an ICBM.

Realistically, it would be more accurate to say our ICBM programs were used as testbeds for our space programs, not the other way around....

Re:if by "plant"

[NotInHere]

They've tried to get some russian rocket stuff from their brother country in cuba. They failed.

Re:if by "plant"

[TheRaven64]

Most people don't realise quite how much further the Moon is from where most artificial satellites live. The BBC has a nice demonstration. The edge of space is generally regarded as about 100km, ISS is at 420km. Hubble at 570km. LEO ends at about 2000km and Earth is still exerting a gravitational pull on you there that's about half as strong as on the ground, so you still need half as much energy to go 1m higher than you did on the ground and you need to have lifted all of the fuel to that height already. GPS satellites are at around 20,200km. Communication satellites are at 35,800km - geosync orbit. Getting satellites up there is really expensive (at least $50k/kg) and there are very few organisations that have the capacity to do it. The Moon is up at 384,000km, over 10 times the distance to geosynchronous orbit. Now, the pull of gravity follows an inverse square law and so falls off quite quickly above geosync, and you get a bit of help from the Moon (you do a transfer orbit and get captured by the Moon), but it's still very hard. There's a reason that only a tiny number of people have ever been to the Moon.

Even getting something to the point where it could launch a harpoon that would unfurl a flag on the Moon is insanely hard. I'd be very surprised if a company that has about a 50% chance of its short-range missiles exploding on the launchpad and has only just managed to put something vaguely in LEO (and not in its intended orbit) would be able to get there in 10 years.

Re:if by "plant"

[silentcoder]

You have to remember that about 99% of the rocket burn you do to get into any orbit is SIDEWAYS.

To just get out of the atmosphere, straight up, is quite cheap - you can do it with a simple sounding rocket - even a balloon assisted one. It takes about 2000 m/s^2 of acceleration from 0 to get above the atmosphere. Then you fall straight back down.

To actually orbit you need to move sideways - fast enough that at the height you're aiming for you are basically falling off the edge of the earth constantly. The 100km figure is the Karman line, that's the point where the air is too thin to use an aircraft, the rocket power you would need to get enough speed to get lift out of wings is high enough that you would have flown without wings. The actual atmosphere however extends to about 140km - anywhere below that air drag will bring your craft down in days or hours. To orbit at 150km you need to accelarate by about 7400m/s^2 - that's a lot more, and nearly all of it is horizontal acceleration.

To get into a higher orbit you have to increase your acceleration. Typically this is done in two burns - you start at the lowest point in your orbit and burn - which raises the highest point (this manner minimizes energy and fuel needs). Then orbit to the new high point and do another burn there to raise the low point until you are circularized.
And all that is without considering timing, you can't just aim at the moon and burn, you are trying to get an orbit that intersect it's orbit and time it so you arrive at the intersecting point at the same time the moon does (nobody wants to spend weeks in orbit waiting for a close encounter).

And those numbers are based on an equatorial launch into an equatorial orbit - but the moon isn't in an equatorial orbit, it's inclined by almost 30 degrees - and launching into an inclined orbit costs MORE fuel.

Now on top of all this - nearly all rockets can only be ignited once. It is only the most advanced rockets that can be fired more than once, and then often only 3 or 4 times and real rockets usually have no throttle control. So with anything but the most cutting edge rockets you need a new rocket (which you have to carry along) for every orbital adjustment. A lunar intersect (not even landing) is at least 3 major orbital manoeuvres.

Now these days we have some more advanced technologies. For orbital adjustment we usually use rockets that are pressure-fed with infinite ignitions - using very cheap and light fuel - they can't get you into space but can steer you once you're there. They are also very hard to build and very weak - so your burns are slow. They often use the same fuel as the mono-propellant steering thrusters you use just to adjust your orientation before burning.

Then consider there are many dozens of different rocket fuels - all with their pros and cons. Some are self-igniting (which you need for infinite burns rockets) but generally extremely toxic and quite hazardous if not expertly handled (which is what you get from things that ignite themselves), for launching you need high-thrust fuels like kerolox (Russian rockets mostly use kerolox first stages) or Ethanol (US first stages were mostly ethanol based) but those are heavy and takes ridiculous engineering to get the best bang for buck. Then you have your most efficient fuels which are the ultra low-density stuff like hydrogen but those are cryogenic and that means that even with heat-shielded tanks they bleed off once out of the freezer, so you have to use them quickly or they evaporate.

And through all this there is the tyranny of the rocket equation. Without going into too much detail - the simple answer is that the acceleration you can get out of a given mass of fuel goes down exponentially as the mass goes up. So to lift you need fuel, to lift further you need more fuel but to lift that fuel you need even more fuel - and you get less and less out of each kilogram you add. This is why space exploration uses multiple stages - you burn a bunch of fuel and drop the empty tank and r