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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.
Its an excuse to test lots of long range missiles capable of carrying large and heavy warheads
I propose planting Kim Jong-un on the moon.
"Cats like plain crisps"
But it's kind of a let-down after they put a man on the sun.
#DeleteChrome
Kim Jong Un has been playing Kerbal Space Program a little too much recently.
They can buy stuff from the Russians just like we do.
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.
They've tried to get some russian rocket stuff from their brother country in cuba. They failed.
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.
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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.
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
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
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....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.