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

Re:if by "plant"

[CrimsonAvenger]

To get into a higher orbit you have to increase your acceleration.

Umm, no. You have to increase your SPEED (not velocity, just the magnitude of velocity) relative to the ground.

Assuming a horizontal burn, of course. If you change the direction of the velocity vector to nearly vertical without change the magnitude of the velocity vector, you'll also reach a higher orbit.

Assuming, of course, in both cases, a second burn to make your new orbit circular when you get as high as you want to get.

That said, if should be noted that deltaV required to reach LEO is more than half that required to reach the Moon. Or Mars, for that matter. It only takes a few hundred extra m/s to reach Mars than Luna....

As a well-known scifi writer once said, LEO is halfway to anywhere....