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

if by "plant"

[drewsup]

they mean crashing a probe with a flag on it into the moon, well then ,yes, it may be possible!
I look forward to the flyby photos of the site later :)

Re:if by "plant"

[Opportunist]

No. Not even that.

We're still talking about building a rocket that can reach escape velocity. That's FAR away from their current ability of "getting stuff somehow somewhere near the edge of the atmosphere before it disintegrates".

Re:if by "plant"

[dbIII]

They can buy stuff from the Russians just like we do.

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"

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Super interesting. I didn't realize GPS and communication satellites are so far away. In fact, if I had guessed, I would have assumed that the ISS is "so far" away to avoid the orbit of satellites.

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

Re:if by "plant"

[dwywit]

I'm out of mod points, but that was very informative, thanks. Some of it I knew, e.g. multiple stages, but your last sentence says it all. It doesn't matter how badly you want something, if nature/physics says no, then all you can do is stamp your foot and execute some generals.

They seem to think that getting to the moon just takes a bigger version of what they've already got, i.e. barely functioning missiles.

BTW did anyone see the recent bonhams "space history" auction? It included a shuttle guidance computer! It was stamped "ground only" but what a buzz to own one of those!

http://www.bonhams.com/auction...

Re:if by "plant"

[Opportunist]

Well, yes, but in the end, you needn't get both legs up in a moonshot, so to speak. It's enough to raise your apogee to hit the moon, no need to do the same for your perigee (which is of course mandatory for having a satellite in an orbit). But generally you're of course correct.

And, well, saying that just 'cause you can't even get something reliably into a LEO means you can't put something on the moon in 10 years is a bit much considering that the US did just that. Of course, we're talking about a global superpower that had the world's biggest economy backing it vs. an insignificant backwards nation with a tinpot dictator that can't even feed his people, but it IS possible!

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....

Re:if by "plant"

[CrimsonAvenger]

Of course, we're talking about a global superpower that had the world's biggest economy backing it vs. an insignificant backwards nation with a tinpot dictator that can't even feed his people, but it IS possible!

Easier for them than for us. They know it can be done, and they know what the easy/hard parts of the process require. And the computers they're using are several orders of magnitude more powerful than we used to do Apollo (remember, your smartphone is several orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers aboard Apollo, as well as being several orders of magnitude smaller). For that matter, materials science has improved vastly, and they can take advantage of that extra knowledge as well.

And, as an aside, remember when "computer" was a job description, not a piece of hardware (hence the old phrase "electronic computer" to distinguish between the machine and the person it replaced)? Nuclear weapons and the first real rockets were developed with computers (the job), not computers (the machine) - NK won't have to go through that hassle....

Re:if by "plant"

[AmiMoJo]

They could do it with help. Buy some space on a Chinese or Russian mission. Or just buy a whole rocket. Or the tech they need to build their own. Or just the expertise. There are lots of options to make it easier, but of course they have to deal with everyone else not wanting them to have ICBMs.

Re:if by "plant"

[Opportunist]

But on the down side it does set your program back a bit if you routinely execute everyone who fucks up or doesn't praise Dear Leader enough. Then there's the constant shortage of pretty much everything, the fact that no sensible country wants to touch you with a ten foot pole and the lack of people with relevant education.

Re:if by "plant"

[silentcoder]

>> 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.

You're right, I put that clumsily. What I meant was you need more acceleration than you need to just get into orbit. Which would be better put as "you need to increase your orbit from there".

>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.

True, but this is rarely done because it is extremely expensive on fuel as you can't take advantage of the Oberth effect.

>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.
True but that's not an unreasonable assumption as nearly all space exploration does use circularized orbits. The only time you would generally have an eliptical orbit is as a transfer orbit, i.e. to get from LEO to moon intersect you would only raise AP to intersect and then go do a capture burn on the other end, there's no sensible reason to circularise that.

>That said, if should be noted that deltaV required to reach LEO is more than half that required to reach the Moon.
Also correct. You need about 7400m/s^2 of deltaV to get to LEO (like I said) but lunar intersect is only about 9K. Lunar intersect is only half the battle though, you would just flyby (or crash into) with that. To actually do a lunar landing you need to do a flyby intersect, then do a slowdown burn close-by to get into an lunar orbit. How much you need depends on how close you can get your flyby - the closer to the moon, the more it's gravity helps you capture and the cheaper the capture becomes. You're talking at least 2000m/s^2 though. At this stage your orbit is extremely eliptical however, which means your orbital speed at the lowest point is massive - no way you can safely land like that (at least, not with any technology we've developed yet). So now you have to circularize at a low height first, which is another 1000m/s^2 or so (depending how high your AP was, how low your PE is etc. etc.). But you may want to hold off on that, you want to choose a good landing spot so you need an orbit that fly's over that (your capacity to steer a landing is limited)... changing inclination is expensive but it's cheaper the higher your orbit is, so it's good to adjust it while you still have that very high AP - a 100m/s^2 burn will give you the same inclination change there that would take several thousand from low lunar orbit.
Finally you're in a lunar orbit that fly's over your LZ at a lowish altitude (moon landings typically went from between 50 and 100 km). You can now land, but if you want to return - you add complexity, a good lunar landing rocket is probably not a good return rocket -this is why the apollo's left a module in orbit with a good space-travel rocket and sent a small lander down. So you send your lander down, having to burn away speed. There are a few approaches - the easiest is a suicide burn. You burn hard horizontally until you bring your horizontal velocity down to zero, and then you just brake against gravity until you land. That one is risky though - despite being easy and cheap it's got a high risk of killing your pilots so the NASA landings used an approach that burned at an angle to gradually slow down both horizontal and vertical velocity in one long burn. Much trickier, much harder to steer - but much safer (if you have to abort the landing you just flip over and burn in the exist opposite direction to regain orbit - can't do that from a suicide burn).

So you land, you take off, you orbit again - now you need to dock with your transfer stage... that's not so easy. NASA's analogy was 'it's like throwing two tennisballs over a roof from opposite ends and having them hit each other at the halfway point). Lots of minor steering, lots of fuel needed, lots of v

Re:if by "plant"

[Opportunist]

Yup. Space is not the final frontier, it's mostly a big amount of nothing with a few tiny, insignificant rocks in between.

Re:if by "plant"

[CrimsonAvenger]

What I meant was you need more acceleration than you need to just get into orbit.

Umm, no. Acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) is pretty much irrelevant except to overcome Earth's gravity.

What you need is more deltaV (which is NOT acceleration, though I've seen scifi where the author made that mistake). Starting from LEO, an acceleration of 1 mm/s^2 will get you to GEO if you do it long enough. Just as an acceleration of 1km/s^2 will if you want a very short burn.

Once you're in LEO, acceleration rate is pretty much irrelevant (caveat: there's one place you want a relatively high acceleration - pushing a manned vehicle through the Van Allen Belts - spending a lot of time in the radiation belts is bad), and deltaV is the important factor.

Re:if by "plant"

[Pseudonymous Powers]

"It doesn't matter how badly you want something, if nature/physics says no, then all you can do is stamp your foot and execute some generals."

...or become a Space Nutter and cry about the Species and This Rock and how important it is to colonize Mars...

Lies and slander! Nothing is beyond our Dear Leader! He will crush the necks of these vile imperialist oppressors, so-called "Nature" and "Physics", by launching the nuclear missiles that he has personally and lovingly assembled out of the People's natural and inviolable plutonium reserves.

On the other hand, the brave intelligent correct man who points out how foolish it is to wish for the People to escape Earth and colonize Mars is brave and intelligent and correct. Why would anyone want to leave Earth? If the People leave Earth, how will they bask in the glorious light of our Dear Leader's Thousand-Year Summer, after he righteously annihilates the Western pigs?

Re:if by "plant"

[fnj]

Now you're just arguing for its own sake. We all know the difference between acceleration and velocity. Since V is the time integral of A, the way you get V is by applying A for a period of time. "More acceleration" to get into a higher orbit is not an incorrect concept.

Re:if by "plant"

[Flavianoep]

The Cubans couldn't understand when the North Koreans said it was for NADA.

Re:if by "plant"

[Khashishi]

Well, yes, but in the end, you needn't get both legs up in a moonshot, so to speak.

I just imagined some poor lucky North Korean astronaut having both legs amputated to save on weight for the moon trip.

Re:if by "plant"

[dj245]

They can buy stuff from the Russians just like we do.

This sort of thing isn't hard anymore. The key technologies (advanced materials, computer-aided design and manufacturing, computer guidance systems) are so widely available, and cheap now that even the idea of an embargo or blockade is ridiculous. I just searched for "inconel 718" (a key superalloy used for many aerospace parts) on Alibaba and 19,658 results came back. I wouldn't put chinese materials in my rocket engine, but for the DPRK they will probably work fine. The only obstacle in designing and building a rocket is money, and the cost gets lower every day. CNC hot glue guns (aka 3D printers) are incredibly cheap. The same technology (4-axis of motion, PID temperature control of multiple heaters) was used for many "advanced manufacturing" processes that were cutting edge in the 1960s and required for aerospace development. Back then it cost a fortune, but today some of the Prusa machines are approaching impulse-buy price points. Designing complex assemblies with the CAD packages today is a breeze compared to the nightmare it was 50 years ago. There is very little stopping the DPRK from developing everything they need by themselves.

Re:if by "plant"

[Squiffy]

"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."

What rocket do we have that can pull 740 gees?

Re:if by "plant"

[chihowa]

...7400m/s^2 of deltaV...

You keep mixing up velocity and acceleration. Delta V is literally a "change in velocity" and has units of m/s. It is calculated as (final velocity, m/s) - (initial velocity, m/s).

The only time in space travel (using orbital mechanics) that acceleration is important is when timing is critical because you are directly counteracting a decelerating force, as with gravity in a vertical burn or drag in an atmosphere. Timing may also be important when your desired burn time is longer than your burn window, but that situation doesn't make a maneuver impossible, it just makes it more complicated/time-consuming.

Re:if by "plant"

[Kjella]

I skimmed most of what you wrote, but if Kim Jong-un just want to "plant" a flag with an impactor the Russians did this in 1959, with a rocket far more primitive and 1/10th the size of Saturn V. Their latest rocket test is roughly the equivalent of a Falcon 1 from 2008, even North Korea can get a rocket in orbit these days so rocket science isn't quite living up to its reputation. Two years later in 2010 the Falcon 9 launched which would actually be overkill for the task, so can North Korea do in ten years what SpaceX did in two? It's not entirely unlikely, they just need to make a bigger rocket with more engines.

Re:if by "plant"

[CrimsonAvenger]

"More acceleration" to get into a higher orbit is not an incorrect concept.

Yes, actually it is. DeltaV is NOT acceleration. What you need to get into a higher orbit is "more deltaV", NOT "more acceleration". Yes, you need to accelerate. But the magnitude (and "higher acceleration" certainly suggests the magnitude of the acceleration, not the duration of same) isn't terribly important beyond a few special cases.

Note that you seem to be making the same error of usage that that scifi writer I mentioned earlier did. It's wrong when he/she/it (author could be using a pen name, though I don't think so) did it, it's wrong when you do it. Especially since you're trying (mostly successfully) to teach people who know little about the subject - don't leave them with a notion that a rocket scientist would look at them askance for using.....

Re: if by "plant"

[silentcoder]

None. Thats multiple stages. Most launches did that with three rockets just to get into orbit.

Re:if by "plant"

[SuricouRaven]

None of which stopped the Soviet Union. They got most of the space firsts. First object in orbit, first animal in orbit, first man in orbit, first lunar impactor, first lunar rover.

There's a reason America loves to celebrate that they got the first man on the moon: It's the only milestone that the Soviets didn't beat them to.

Re:if by "plant"

[TangoMargarine]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw

Those bastards and their trying to do things. They're all a bunch of poseurs.

Re: if by "plant"

[Squiffy]

I think you're confusing m/s and m/s^2. You use multiple stages to reach a given speed, and the units of speed are m/s. Acceleration increases your speed over time, and the units of acceleration are m/s^2. You can accelerate by 7400 m/s, which means you'll end up going 7400 m/s faster than before. If you accelerate at 7400 m/s^2, it means your speed is increasing by 7400 m/s every second, which after a minute would have you going 60*7400 m/s = 444000 m/s.

Re: if by "plant"

[silentcoder]

Rocketry - that's a delta-V measurement, so it's none of the things you thought it was.

Re: if by "plant"

[Squiffy]

From the Wikipedia article on delta-v: "It is a scalar that has the units of speed." That's distance per unit time; m/s for example. It's delta-v, meaning |v1 - v0|. That's different from dv/dt.

Re: if by "plant"

[Opportunist]

delta-V is still given in m/s, not m/(s^2). It's a measurement how much you have to change the speed of an object, not how fast you have to do that.

Re:if by "plant"

[stoatwblr]

It's worth nothing that SMART-1 went to the moon with ion thrusters. It just took a while to get there.

As long as your cargo isn't perishable (meatbags), you don't need top use inefficient chemical thrusters once you've established LEO. From there all you need to do is steadily add kinetic energy.

Re:if by "plant"

[stoatwblr]

"It's probably physically impossible to ever build a rocket that could reach the moon on a single fuel tank."

You could with Orion, but nuclear detonations within the atmosphere are frowned upon.

Re:if by "plant"

[dbIII]

I just searched for "inconel 718"

FFS dj245 your local fertilizer plant would be full of that stuff even if it was built in the 1950s.

Re:if by "plant"

[silentcoder]

Not to mention it's debatable whether Orion even qualifies as a "rocket" engine. Rockets gain thrust from burning in the opposite direction, Orion causes explosions and then rides the shockwaves.

Makes sense

[hcs_$reboot]

In a few years, after NK shoots Tokyo (by mistake), the great great leader may well be orbiting Earth and even reach the Moon after the harsh retaliation from the West.

Re:Makes sense

[flex941]

Maybe we could do a Kickstarter campaign to get the eternal leader to Moon. With Flag. Should be easier that with astronauts - no need to bring back anything. One multi-stage rocket + fuel + space suit + flag. Maybe a video camera and an antenna to send the fame back to NK. Cheaper cetainly than current affairs with NK.

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

[lucm]

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

Re:Its an excuse

[EzInKy]

Perhaps, but since the U.S. has shown no interest in the moon it would be only logical for someone else to step up.

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:Its an excuse

[Chrisq]

... it would be only logical for someone else to step up.

After all its only one small step for a man

Re: Its an excuse

[LWATCDR]

The USSR did toy with the idea of using the N-1 to carry the Tsar-bomb 100 megaton device. It could have also been used as a way to deploy orbital weapons platforms to drop nukes from orbit. But the USSR and the US have signed a treaty to prevent that.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com...

I do not know if many people are old enough to remember Johnny Carson's or Karnak routine but it comes to mind seeing this post.

"Food, indoor plumbing, and sanity"
"Name three things that North Korea needs more than landing men on the moon."

Re: Its an excuse

[cyberchondriac]

So Russia were the good guys then? Their state run media is even less trustworthy.

Re:HA!

[hcs_$reboot]

NK's leader has been doing what he wants for many years before an appalled international community. NK is currently building a powerful nuclear arsenal. The West waiting peacefully that something big happens is probably where the ridiculousness resides.

Not just a flag, surely!

[SimonInOz]

I propose planting Kim Jong-un on the moon.

Re:Not just a flag, surely!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I propose planting Kim Jong-un on the moon.

I propose planting the flag up Kim Jong-un's moon.

There are probably some jokes hidden in this topic about the "Moonies" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), but nobody here is old enough to remember them.

Re:Not just a flag, surely!

[silentcoder]

Kim Yong Un has no moon.

Haven't you heard ? His body is evolved to extract 100% of the energy from food and since there is no waste, he does not have a butthole.

Re:Not just a flag, surely!

[Opportunist]

Old GDR joke:

Worker1: Comrade! The Russians are on the moon!
Worker2: All of them?
Worker1: Erh... no.
Worker2: Then why the hell do you wake me up before it's quitting time?

Re:Not just a flag, surely!

[Opportunist]

He also doesn't shit. He explodes when he reaches 40.

Re:Not just a flag, surely!

[nanospook]

Hopefully on the far side!

Re:Not just a flag, surely!

[Tablizer]

I propose planting the flag up Kim Jong-un's moon.

Naw, he'd enjoy it too much.

Sure, the moon is okay...

[93 Escort Wagon]

But it's kind of a let-down after they put a man on the sun.

Re:Sure, the moon is okay...

[TheRaven64]

Actually, their plan is to make planting the flag easier by bringing the Moon to North Korea.

Re:Sure, the moon is okay...

[Opportunist]

Can't we just moon North Korea? I mean, that would at least be doable within 10 years.

Wow

[golgotha007]

It's like the Soviet Union, back from the dead!

Not because it's easy,

[Black Parrot]

but because our Great Leader has no clue how hard it is.

That's a translation error

[Opportunist]

They were commenting on Dear Leader's fantastic weight, were saying the he would moon the world and stick the flag where the sun doesn't shine.

Eh, why bother

[wonkey_monkey]

Just don't, but say you did.

The real reason for the announcement

[DrXym]

Kim Jong Un has been playing Kerbal Space Program a little too much recently.

Re:The real reason for the announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

The South Korean probe will construct a proxy pylon with which to warp in zealots and stalkers for a four warpgate rush.

Re:The real reason for the announcement

[pslytely psycho]

Yes, and I'm sure he has people working on creating the miraculous Kraken Drive as we speak!
At which point they will instead decide to colonize Jupiter, so dear leader will have plenty of room for his ever expanding waistline!

Re:The real reason for the announcement

[Coren22]

I just assumed it was a mistranslation and the person was really saying they hoped the dear leader would get good enough at Kerbal to land on the Mun and plant a flag by 2020.

Re:HA!

[SpaghettiPattern]

... resides.

For us mortals: Resides is a fancy word for "is chillin' at"

Re:And...

[Travis Mansbridge]

Now we know what Kennedy meant by "the other things."

Re:HA!

[AK Marc]

It's be more ridiculous if they indicated their geostationary satellite would hover over Pyongyang at an altitude of 200 km to reduce latency. That'd be ridiculous. But it's not so hard to get payload in orbit, even high orbit.

They'll be lucky

[fozzy1015]

if they manage to build a rocket that can cross the Pacific in 10 years. They're never leaving orbit.

Re:Trolling

[dbIII]

NK - will troll for food.
It's been a major earner there for many years.

Re:And...

[Z80a]

You never know when you can end getting some weirdass fetishist after you.

Remedial Astronomy 101: The moon, a liberal myth

[Anonymous Coward]

It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

What would it take...

[zmooc]

Dear amateur rocket scientists, I have a mission for you.

Please calculate: what would it take to fire a ballistic flag of, say, 2 kilos, from a cannon or railgun on earth, in order to land it on the moon? Would it be technically feasible to beat the North-Koreans to this with a Kickstarter project? ;)

Re:What would it take...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Required muzzle velocity would be about 11100 m/s. Which is rather more than twice as high as any cannon/railgun ever made.

And really, why bother. Design a rocket that can go from LEO to Lunar impact, then pay SpaceX to put it on top of one of their "previously used" Falcon 9 first stages (for the big discount. and did everyone notice that they testfired one of those previously used first stages with a full-power burn as long as the normal launch burn? And are planning on reusing one of the other four previously used first stages later this year (assuming they can find a customer willing to risk it in exchange for a big discount)?)

Re:What would it take...

[zmooc]

Isn't that actual escape velocity? Our flag doesn't need to escape Earth's gravity; it only needs to get far enough for the Moon's gravity to take over and the Moon is well within Earth's gravity well.

Re:What would it take...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Two things:

1) I rounded a bit. On purpose.

2) Escape speed from the ground: 11175 m/s.

Actual horizontal speed required from the ground to reach Luna's orbit (which is 384400 km, about): 10992 m/s. Ignoring atmosphere, of course.

Note that that second number is only 183 m/s slower than the first.

As to "getting far enough for the Moon's gravity to take over". You can design a path that does that. It requires a midcourse burn, which doesn't fit within the definition of a "cannon". And it saves you maybe 100 m/s deltaV.

Seriously, the Moon may look like it's "well within Earth's gravity well", but in terms of velocities, it really is pretty close to the outer edge of same.

Re:What would it take...

[dwillden]

How about to fire a ballistic Flag from the US, around the moon and back to earth to plant the US Flag in Kimmy boy's front driveway (and share pictures of the lunar fly-by)? The lunar trip would both be in your face and eliminate any risk of it being identified before impact as coming from us.

Re:What would it take...

[fnj]

Seriously, the Moon may look like it's "well within Earth's gravity well", but in terms of velocities, it really is pretty close to the outer edge of same.

I assume you're well aware that a gravity well is asymptotic and has no "outer edge" at all.

Re:What would it take...

[CrimsonAvenger]

You assume correctly. But since I was responding to someone who used the phrase "well within Earth's gravity well", I felt it necessary to use terms similar to his.

Note, by the by, that when you're in free fall (most of the time in space unless you're using an ion drive or something similar), the only thing that really matters when defining "the outer edge" or "well within" a gravity well is how close you are to escape speed (note that "escape velocity" is misleading in some ways - the only way the direction of the velocity matters is if you're going to hit something solid - otherwise, if you are faster than the magnitude of the velocity vector, you're headed out and not coming back. Hence my preference for the term "escape speed"). And when you're headed out toward Luna, you're running in excess of 99% of escape speed as you leave LEO...

Re:Remedial Astronomy 101: The moon, a liberal myt

[NotInHere]

I really like your theory but what do those spy satellites do when the sky is clouded? Can I then exercise my second amendment rights without being spied upon?

Also, there are 41 bible verses about the moon. What about those? Were they fabricated?

Why not?

[econnor]

Why not? They have more advanced technology than America had in 1969, a reasonably high appetite for risk, and a belief that space can and ought to be conquered..

Re:Why not?

[Opportunist]

First, just because there is technology that is more advanced than what the US had in 69 doesn't mean that they have it. Second, even having it doesn't mean they have any kind of idea how to use it.

Rocket science is pretty hard. No, not the theory, that's easy, but actually building that stuff. These things don't grow on trees... not that this would aid NK, admittedly, but you get the idea. There is a LOT of try and error involved. Just look at how many tries it took to get something into orbit. The theory behind it has been available for decades earlier than that, but actually building the rocket is the hard part. And when nobody wants to tell you how to do it, that information can as well not exist.

Re:Why not?

[econnor]

True. There have been plenty other countries gung ho enough to give it a go if they could. (I'm not proud of some of the "what-if country x had conquered space" scenarios that just flashed through my head.)

Re:Why not?

[Enigma2175]

Rocket science is pretty hard. No, not the theory, that's easy, but actually building that stuff.

Wouldn't that be rocket engineering, not rocket science?

You can laugh

[AC-x]

You can laugh, but their space program is already testing advanced boosters.

Outrageous claims made by NK

[DatbeDank]

What other crazy claims have we heard from North Korea? Let's list a few of them here:

1. Kim Jong-Un Climbed An Active Volcano

2. NK invented waterproof liquid.

3. Discovery of a unicorn lair.

4. China is the happiest place on earth.

5. Kim Jong broke a world golf record.

As they say elsewhere, don't feed the troll.

Re:Outrageous claims made by NK

[poofmeisterp]

What other crazy claims have we heard from North Korea? Let's list a few of them here:...

Sorry to ask, but which one of those does the showing of huge banquet rooms _that are completely empty of people_, with the staff of about 5 women moving foods and drinks from one table to another like it's a happenin' place, reference? If none, please consider adding something to the tune of "Live puppet shows masked as real-life events to take part in", or something to that ilk. :)

BTW, when I saw video documentaries on that all it really got from me was, *blink*, *pause......*, *long blink*, *eyebrow raise, snort, jaw drop simultaneously*.

Re:Me too

[jandersen]

Well, even if it seems ludicrous now, we shouldn't be blind to the fact that even these things are getting easier. In the early 60es, who would have thought it remotely likely that even China or India would have a space program? Progress works that way, often; when I was at high school, owning a computer was an impossible dream, yet now you can't get away from them - they are everywhere and they seem trivial. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, people strive for decades to conquer a mountain, but a few years after it's been done, you'll have grannies strolling up there for a picnic. No doubt North Korea will manage to plant their flag on the moon; in today's context it is no longer an immodest proposition for a country.

Re:And...

[silentcoder]

I think North Korea has better odds than you. But in both cases, the odds would only improve if you throw a tonne of money at the problem.

Re:Use an ICBM?

[silentcoder]

Not a chance. No ICBM could reach the moon, let alone land without causing a massive explosive crash. There is simply no way you can get to the moon from earth with a single stage rocket.

Maybe some non-rocket based technology, but if it's a rocket it will have to be multi-stage - and need steering abilities to do orbital manuevers. You can't just aim a rocket at the moon and fire, the moon orbits, it won't BE there by the time your rocket gets there and your rocket will simply run out of fuel eventually and crash back down on earth.

Re:Dream big

[silentcoder]

Why would anybody VOLUNTEER to be Tailor's next album ?

Re:Use an ICBM?

[Blaskowicz]

A good thing that ICBMs actually use multiple stages, then.

Re:Use an ICBM?

[CrimsonAvenger]

It should, perhaps, be noted that not all ICBMs are single-stage....

Re:Me too

[Applehu Akbar]

Back in that time, it seemed even less likely that private companies would start space programs because everyone knew that Wall Street only looked ahead to the next quarter and that long-term thinking was for governments only.

Wall Street yes, but not Silicon Valley.

Communication satellite?

[sabbede]

What the hell would they need that for? They aren't allowed to talk to anyone outside the very compact and contiguous borders of NK, so why bother? You don't need a satellite to talk to someone 200 miles away. Terrestrial radio is far more efficient and effective for a tiny, technologically underdeveloped, nation like NK. If they even managed to get it into orbit, what the hell would they do with it?

Re:Communication satellite?

[LWATCDR]

Simple to ruin the US economy.
1. They put a large satellite and pick up all US broadcast TV.
2. They use the satellite to rebroadcast it to the entire US.
3. Comcast and Time Warner go out of business.
4. They broadcast 24 hour a day free porn to the US and destroy all morality and productivity.
and yes I am kidding.

Re:Communication satellite?

[SuricouRaven]

You're kidding, but I've actually seen some people claim, in all seriousness, that the establishment of the pornography industry in the US was a communist plot to weaken the morals of the country.

Re:Communication satellite?

[LWATCDR]

Actually that was the basis of a story by A.C. Clarke I believe. The USSR built the first comsat as a way to broadcast propaganda and porn to the the US over TV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Communication satellite?

[SuricouRaven]

It was also brought up in the much-mocked 'Perversion for Profit' video, which you should have no trouble finding. Those are both rather old examples, but the same thing is still said occasionally by current organisations. Usually tied to a list of goals said to be from a 1958 book, 'The Naked Communist. The document is actually a well-known hoax - the book cites no source that can be checked, many of the goals are in direct conflict with the policies of communist states at the time, and a few of them are exact copies of a previous hoax document. Even so, the list circulates from blog to blog to this day. Occasionally mutating, so that the list as often read today doesn't even match what was originally published.

Short version: People will believe even the most dubious of sources if the source supports their existing beliefs.

Re:Use an ICBM?

[LWATCDR]

It should be noted that ALL ICBMs are multi stage. Some MRBMs and SRBMs are single stage. Even closest like the Atlas where considered 1 1/2 stage while the SS-6 used boosters and a core which are also considered multi stage rocket.

Re:And...

[Opportunist]

Sadly we know you will share the fate of Saljut 2 and remain unmanned.

Re:Remedial Astronomy 101: The moon, a liberal myt

[Opportunist]

Put there to test your faith. Duh.

Re:Me too

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No doubt North Korea will manage to plant their flag on the moon; in today's context it is no longer an immodest proposition for a country.

I sincerely doubt this will ever happen.

Re:step back

[Opportunist]

No, that was just an unofficial communique from a former NK army general that li'l Kim should go where the sun doesn't shine.

He was promptly fired. Out of a cannon.

It can be done

[jgfenix]

The current leader's father was a super genius acclaimed all over the world. He had photographic, a super high IQ and wrote thousands of books of multiple themes (i think someone calculated that with so many books along his life he wrote more than a book daily). And I ask you, people. Couldn't such a great being have developed technology centuries ahead of us? They are waiting for the right time to reveal it to the world.

Re:Me too

[Ol Olsoc]

Back in that time, it seemed even less likely that private companies would start space programs because everyone knew that Wall Street only looked ahead to the next quarter and that long-term thinking was for governments only.

Wall Street yes, but not Silicon Valley.

Wall street was quite a different place at that time. It wasn't until the late 70's that we became obsessed with short term profit over long term sustainability.

Which Moon

[AgNO3]

Its Korea, are we sure he doesn't have a crush on Sung myung moon, and planting flag means ......

Re:Which Moon

[poofmeisterp]

Its Korea, are we sure he doesn't have a crush on Sung myung moon, and planting flag means ......

... forcing her to ingest silver nitrate and *censored* into *REALLY, REALLY CENSORED*. ;)

P.S. Sorry, I had to. Uncontrollable.

Re:Which Moon

[poofmeisterp]

Sun-myung Moon was a guy and was the founder of the Moonies.

Can't correct original!

When it comes to rocket propulsion..

[theinfamousgeek]

North Korea has a long way to go. They barely succeeding in launching a rocket after several failures. I'd give it 25 to 30 years before they perfect something than can exit the earths atmosphere, and maintain a trajectory course to the moon with a possibility of successfully landing a flag on our lunar neighbor.

Re:When it comes to rocket propulsion..

[poofmeisterp]

North Korea has a long way to go. They barely succeeding in launching a rocket after several failures. I'd give it 25 to 30 years before they perfect something than can exit the earths atmosphere, and maintain a trajectory course to the moon with a possibility of successfully landing a flag on our lunar neighbor.

Oh, man.. Or fail to leave the atmosphere and completely accidentally redirect itself toward the U.S. for a completely coincidental heading that would bring it down on the west coast, erroneously losing all safety mechanisms and triggering its fusion bomb materials that were meant to do nothing but put a big enough hole on the surface of the moon for [their] really, really HUGE flag. Complete accident!!! Innocent!

I wish I were completely joking... But I'm sure the DoD thought of it right away and is prepared for such shenanigans. Right, DoD? I know you couldn't miss that logic in 1M Earth years.

Re:When it comes to rocket propulsion..

[oobayly]

Maybe they've been reading Clancy novels - this was exactly how Japan (in Debt of Honour) tested their secretly developed missile system, by faking 1st stage separation.

Clancy & Dale Brown have a lot to answer for - after giving AQ the concept for 9/11. /s

Re:When it comes to rocket propulsion..

[poofmeisterp]

Maybe they've been reading Clancy novels - this was exactly how Japan (in Debt of Honour) tested their secretly developed missile system, by faking 1st stage separation.

Clancy & Dale Brown have a lot to answer for - after giving AQ the concept for 9/11. /s

ACK

Lesen ist verboten!!! Or is that only for the tools..er toys.. er citizens...er uh... what do they call them over there? It's not sheep or slaves. Perhaps citizens in the Matrix? Matrices/Matrizens/Meople?

PSH

Re:Me too

[Righ]

I'm fairly confident that even an underachieving, isolated, centrally planned economy of the scale of North Korea's can if sufficiently motivated manage to copy publicly available 1940s science that was implemented in the 1960s. Whether they can simultaneously manage to feed their military let alone their lower servile population during that program is another matter.

Tested and successful method

[poofmeisterp]

I think a child-like behavioral response is due if they en bother with it...

They will announce that a flag has been planted and bask in their glory. The rest of the world will not acknowledge; basically just ignore like they haven't even heard about it. If mentioned, response is, "Huh? What are you talking about?"

Let them bask in their loss of "capital" or whatever Korean monies are measured on. They should know by now that the world plays daily on a "game" to assure life. This is, please pardon example, sort of like a person huffing late into a company meeting and starting to talk about something that was already discussed, planned, tested, executed, and completely finished and saying, "So, what about this plan that's still in the works?" The body language responses of the rest in the meeting room is what N. Korea is due to receive. Unless, of course, they become dangerous. It's not hard for a team of people (the countries of the world) that play a daily "game" (business and trade), to make an annoying, hostile, and counter-productive individuals disappear. Pardon my honesty and "up-frontedness", please.

Re:Use an ICBM?

[fnj]

So in other words, Atlas, the canonical, original US ICBM, which wasn't even two stages, was "multi stage" in your mind. Never mind that all of the motors were started together at the moment of launch. And "some" MRBMs means basically all the original IRBMs, like the Jupiter and Thor. They were straight single-stage, single-motor.

Prepare Yourself

[DarthVain]

For the eventual photo of Kim Jung Un actually planting the flag personally on the moon.

He won't be wearing a spacesuit however. Being a god he doesn't require air, but he occasionally breaths so that he might feel closer to his subjects...

The launch vehicle will be named "Pegasus" because it will be an actual Pegasus that Kim Jung Un tamed using his natural charisma.

Re:Photoshop License expire?

[ColdWetDog]

It usually doesn't take 10 years to photoshop a picture

They can't afford Photoshop. They found a cracked version of GIMP, but they're having some problems running on the Commodore 128 they found in a Salvation Army dumpster.

Or at least have a photo of them doing it.

[gurps_npc]

Yeah, photoshop is probably a lot cheaper than a real manned moon shot.

Re:HA!

[macs4all]

It's be more ridiculous if they indicated their geostationary satellite would hover over Pyongyang at an altitude of 200 km to reduce latency. That'd be ridiculous. But it's not so hard to get payload in orbit, even high orbit.

But so far, they don't even seem to be able to successfully test a ballistic missile; so although you classify it as "not so hard", apparently it is too hard for the NK at this point.

Let me be the first to say...

[downright]

hahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahaha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. LOL. much love.

Yeah right.

[oobayly]

This is coming from a country that struggles to launch two missiles simutaneously without one undergoing RUD.

It's not even like the Rodong is new technology, it's basically a stretched version of the Scud B (SS-1), which itself has been in service since 1964. Not just that, North Korea has had since the mid 1980s to get it to work.

Wager:

[kheldan]

Bet you five bucks that if Best Korea, somehow, manages to properly land something on the Moon, they proceed to claim the entire Moon for North Korea.

Contingency wager: Another five bucks says once they've claimed the Moon as their property, they announce plans to build a colony (read as: military base) on the Moon.

Re:Wager:

[SuricouRaven]

Let them claim they'll build the base. Maybe it'll kick the rest of the world into finally starting some serious investment laying the grounds for colonisation. We don't have the tech or the money right now, but we can develop it and take the first steps. Future generations can finish the journey.

Re:Wager:

[kheldan]

Yeah, I've been saying for years now that we need to go back to the Moon, and we need to build a permanent presence there, growing into a self-sustaining colony -- just not the 'colony' at the beginning of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress; let's not use the Moon like Australia was originally used, please! Lots of things can be done on the Moon that are difficult or impossible on Earth, and things that would be safer done on the Moon in the first place. Also if an entire space industry/infrastructure can be built on the Moon, it'd be cheaper and easier to launch from there than from all the way down in Earth's gravity well.

I'd like to see PRNK try to claim the Moon, then the rest of us get up there and establish a Human presence; there would be much LOLs at Best Koreas' expense, and they'd be rich.

Re:Wager:

[SuricouRaven]

The problem with colonisation, moon or mars, is that there's no money in it. In the long run it must be done, because eventually the big space rock is coming. But right now, a colonisation venture would be by far the single most expensive project in all of history. The cost of it would be incalculable. And for what? Prestige? You're never going to get a return on your investment. The sheer cost of it would dwarf the international space station, which itsself requires international cooperation to fund. No national leader in their right mind would commit to a prestige project that would bankrupt not only their own national economy, but half the world with it, and all you get at the end of your century-long mega-project is a colony living in a land so resource-starved that you have to scrape your boots clean when you leave a farm to make sure you don't steal their precious soil.

Didn't they already do this?

[CharlieG]

I mean, I saw last year articles that said they had done this from their news agency

Re:Use an ICBM?

[LWATCDR]

IRBMs are not ICBMs.
And If you can find me a single reference to the Atlas being a single stage rocket I would love to see it. Even the Space Shuttle is not considered a single stage or an SSTO and all of it's motors fire at once.
So no ICBM is a single stage. Martin was looking into making one but it never got past the drawing board.

Re:Me too

[AxeTheMax]

These things are not actually getting easier, the countries doing them are (usually) getting more capable. The first Soviet human flight was in a small craft less than 3 tonnes, the US one not much different, because they wanted to be first and were willing to take risks. The Chinese by contrast almost half century later had no reason to take any similar risks; they would have only looked stupid if something went wrong. Hence they used a much larger and more sophisticated craft that had been tested carefully before, and in these terms it could be considered the most successful of the 'first' space flights.

But I'm sure the North Koreans might take silly risks though.

And the Chinese space programme was started after the first Sputnik launch in the 50's and was solidly in place in the early 60's; it just didn't enter general consciousness in the west until their first satellite. The first stages of the Indian programme were also in place in the early 60s and it was established fully by the end of the 60s as the Chinese successes became clear.

Re:Me too

[LWATCDR]

True but the big issue is that building large rockets is still pretty hard. It is not like a computer where you can buy the parts cheap. CAD and simulation help but you still have to make the big and precise metal parts.

Re:Me too

[LWATCDR]

No you are wrong.
    Back in the 60s and 70s the tax laws where a lot different and really supported the idea of research. IBM, Xerox PARC, and AT&T Bell Labs are all good examples.

Re:Me too

[Gavagai80]

Given their population sizes, China and India eventually having space programs was a foregone conclusion.

Comment

[WallyL]

Are we sure they haven't told their people that they've already reached the moon?

Re:Me too

[SuricouRaven]

That depends what you mean by 'plant.' The landing is one of the hardest parts. They can make orbit already, and the delta-V requirements go down a lot of you don't need to actually match lunar orbital velocity and land cleanly. Sure, you'll be planting your flag at a little over a kilometer per second - but if you can orientate it right then, for a fraction of a second, your flagpole will indeed stand in the surface of the moon. An instant later what remains of the flagpole and flag will be standing some distance below the surface of the moon in a rapidly expanding crater.

The Soviets pulled that stunt off in 1959, and North Korea doesn't need to invent new technology - the general principles are well-understood, and they can probably get some ancient schematics from Russia. All they need to do is actually build the thing. Sixty-year-old tech should be within their capabilities.

Re:Me too

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No, what I meant is that I sincerely doubt the North Koreans would ever be able to get a spacecraft of any kind to the Moon, period.

The Soviet manned lunar programs were a series of completely unsuccessful programs that tried to land a man on the Moon, and their unmanned programs were only marginally successful at best. This page shows just how spectacularly unsuccessful they were:

http://www.russianspaceweb.com...

Out of 60+ attempts, only about a dozen made it anywhere near the Moon. Some of them were able to orbit, but only a few of them actually touched down without crashing.

It's much harder than it sounds and I would genuinely be shocked if North Korea ever managed to pull it off.

Re:HA!

[Lead Butthead]

I hope it does not involve lighting someone's fart with fire.

Re:Is Kim Jong Un a Leonard Wibberly fan?

[khelms]

I was just thinking the same thing. Wonder why you got voted down.

Re:HA!

[AK Marc]

The Germans managed to get ballistic missiles working, 70 years ago. All the plans and instructions are available. That's not too hard, if you have the money and desire.

Re:HA!

[macs4all]

The Germans managed to get ballistic missiles working, 70 years ago. All the plans and instructions are available. That's not too hard, if you have the money and desire.

And are not too weak from chronic malnutrition...

WTF

[brunnegd]

This will occur shortly after workd peace is achieved.

Capricorn

[ebvwfbw]

Maybe the Capricorn one set is available? I'm sure it would fool their dear leader, he's really stupid.

Will fall short

[von Stalhein]

Best Korea talks a good launch but on recent history the shot will end up in the Sea of Japan with the rescued occupants being subsequently executed for fraternising with Japanese fish.

Re:HA!

[Coren22]

NK is currently building a powerful nuclear arsenal

I suppose powerful is a matter of perspective. They have not had a successful fusion weapon, so their weapons are pretty weak, while being enormous, but I suppose even a weak fission bomb could be classed as powerful...