Silent Nork satellite tumbling in orbit North Korean "Earth observation" satellite Kwangmyongsong-4 is "tumbling in orbit", according to US officials, suggesting a second failure by Pyongyang to get a functioning satellite aloft. Kwangmyongsong-4 launched on Saturday, to widespread international condemnation. The satellite has remained silent - as did its …
I think we may see any future launches taken down, possibly even by the Chinese. But they are stuck between a rock and a hard place: crackdown on Kim Jong Eun and the country might collapse, leading either to war with South Korea and America or straight to US troops on the border. Of course, if they do nothing then it's increasingly likely that South Korea or Japan will take a pop shot at any future launch leading to war…
The best thing might be to pursue some kind of rapprochement with South Korea leading either to full unification, with a huge demilitarised zone, or a Hong Kong: one country, to systems solution. Strategically Korea isn't that important to China any more: it's far more concerned with the nine-dash line in the South China Sea.
That's the thing about nukes - if you have them then you might as well use them. Now I think we all agree that would be a dick move, but at least they didn't have this cash resource doing nothing. Nukes are expensive ornaments. Upon detecting the North Korean nuke the bigger dick move would be to retaliate. As retaliation means everyone is fucked.
"[...]if you have them and you don't use them then they are of no use. Better to get rid and save a truck load of cash."
Ah, the Jeremy Corbyn school of reasoning. The point about them is that they have been there, ever since it was necessary to bring the nastiest war in history to an end. [1] It was inevitable that others would appear, Soviet spying or not. This being the case unilateral disarmament is about as wise as letting the school bully kick you in the balls.
They will not go away, but it makes sense to prevent proliferation (thank you AQ Kahn for your silliness) and thus to reduce the odds of war. That they have not been used indicates something is working; to (for example) argue that they did not prevent the WTC catastrophe is non sequitur reasoning, inasmuch that they were not intended to do this; for decades after the war they prevented the two superpowers from waging open war. With the rightful decay and collapse of one of them, the USSR, the problem did not go away because the Russians, now led by an increasingly bold kleptocrat, still have them, as do the Chinese and so on.
Preventing proliferation is the key, not disarmament. Else we will be at the mercy of someone with a bigger dick, to use your childish language.
[1] It should be noted that firebombing caused more deaths in WWII Japan, not atomic bombs. The latter merely made the point very loudly and saved many, many allied lives, in a war which cost well over 55 million lives, some say 61 million.
Surely they must know they would be obliterated out of existence if they started throwing nukes about
The North Korean playbook hasn't changed in decades. This is entirely an internal control thing.
1. NK waves a weapon about - doesn't matter if it's functional or not
2. The US obligingly steams in making a fuss about how much they're going to punish any military action
3. NK leadership shows its population how they're being threatened by the US, and it's only the Kim and his cronies protecting them from the enemy
Any real conflict is not in NK's interest - but being regularly threatened by the US is essential to their power structure. And so we get the same pantomime on a regular basis...
Vic.
I'm surprised they didn't want to transmit even the most rudimentary data. At a basic level this is really cheap to implement nowadays. They could even have been sending fake data just to make it at least look like it had some more capability. In any case, no data at all makes me think that they don't actually have any plans to develop this much further.
I am confused by the qualification that it is silent, how are people so sure that it isn't transmitting anything? Is it just because it isn't transmitting on Ku-Band, C-Band, L-Band or UHF? Have people checked the entire EM spectrum and found nothing? I would expect the NSA/GCHQ to have done that but it isn't easy if they aren't using standard mechanisms. It could even be using some exotic UWB communications are are very hard to spot and are easily mistaken for noise.
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Not transmitting - yet. Just tumbling around in space, waiting for orders.
Radar operator: No. Log Com Bird Twelve says its metalurg recon analysis is a standard alloy, not stealthy, not carbon-composite. (pause) It does have an odd shape, sir.
Commander Gilmour: What are you saying, son?
Radar operator: It appears to be in the shape of Bob's Big Boy, sir.
I am confused by the qualification that it is silent, how are people so sure that it isn't transmitting anything? ... I would expect the NSA/GCHQ to have done that but it isn't easy if they aren't using standard mechanisms. It could even be using some exotic UWB communications are are very hard to spot and are easily mistaken for noise.
Modern signal intelligence (and measurement and signature intelligence) doesn't just crack and decrypt conversations, it also performs traffic analysis: watching quantities, locations, frequencies, etc.. Having an indecipherable, wide band, frequency hopping "radio noise" signal moving at the same altitude, speed, and location of a tumbling satellite is useful information by itself. At a minimum, you learn, "Hey, the North Koreans can put an exotic UWB communications system satellites, they're coming up in the world."
UWB is also a short range technology, fine for IOT type applications but not for satellite communications.
Satellite communications technology is well understood by countries that have had active space programs for the last fifty years, so it's unlikely that North Korea has leapfrogged everyone within a couple of launches.
Dead parrot icon?
Check all the normal CB channels...
("CB" for those not in the know or not children of the 70's and 80's, was "Citizen's Band" mobile radio in the USA for consumers to use to talk to each other, bother commercial truckers and generally act like twats whilst driving. Kind of like old skool cell phones)
"Unless the conclusion we've drawn ("we're not in it for satellite launches") was the exact message they specifically wanted to send."
Whatever they're into, collecting data in order to learn and improve is prudent. To not do that is a foolish way to develop something. If they're advanced enough to send a rocket into space they will know that.
"Which itself was based on a version of the V1 engine"
Shame you should say that! V2 is a complete rewrite - modern technologies, enhanced user experience, advanced communication capabilities, better socialization features, compliant with every modern buzzword out there. You name it & we've got it.
"It depends whether you were the supplier or the client I suspect."
In the case of the V2 you'll maybe want to rethink that - it's probably the one weapon in history that killed less people when deployed than people who were killed while building it. Sources vary, conservative estimates suggest a ratio of 5,000 / 20,000 lives.
The economics of the V2 were such that if they'd been deployed sooner and in greater numbers they would have bankrupted Germany long before winning the war for them.
However, the comparatively simpler V1 achieved more damage for their money than either conventional bombing planes or the smarter V2.
"It depends whether you were the supplier or the client I suspect."
As is always the case, if you aren't paying for it, you're the product. Targeted ads or targeted missiles, the end result is broadly similar: a lot of people very briefly get mad.
Strangely enough that puts things in weird sort of perspective. Make ads, not war!
When a meeting of the British interplanetary society was interrupted by the explosion of a V2 they cheered, realising that they had just heard the beginning of the space age.
http://www.tor.com/2009/06/01/francis-spuffords-backroom-boys-the-secret-return-of-the-british-boffin/
Itself based on a version of the V2 engine.
I'm not sure about that. The V2 used liquid oxygen and ethanol. The S2.253 engine of the R-11 Zemlya (first production Scud) burned different propellants, kerosene and nitric acid, which is a non-trivial switch owing to different cooling and coking behaviors. Further, the injectors are completely different. The S2.253 used a common injection manifold across the head of the combustion chamber, while the V2's engine used ~18 different separate burners/injectors on the head. Finally, the V2's engine used a separate hydrogen peroxide-driven turbopump (essentially a steam turbine), while the S2.253 burned the main propellants in a gas turbine.
I mean, the heritage could be there, but major features of rocket engines (propellants, cooling method, injectors, pumping technique) differ between the S2.253 and V2.
It's often said Germans were a huge source of knowledge for both US and USSR rocket programs, which is true, but it's worth noting the engineers in both nations immediately tossed out a lot of German design features. I've heard the first US engineers to lay eyes on the V-2 engines were underwhelmed at the crudity of its injector set up. That didn't find its way into any American rocket engine design I'm familiar with. The V2 liquid cooling jacket was also crude and quickly replaced by tubular or channel wall cooling designs, depending on the nation.
I feel sorry for the North Koreans. In Europe - similarly partititioned by the allied powers at the end of WW2 - they've long since shaken off the suffocating effects of the state controlling the means of production. North Korea's post war communist allies have also deserted this broken model.
North Koreans find themselves in the dark crack (literally, if you search for 'North Korea at night') between two flavours of capitalism - the new communist type to the north, and the old-fashioned original type to the south.
And if it weren't bad enough that much of the country is freezing and starving from time to time (occasionally to death, as happened to hundreds of thousands in the 1990s), the only entertainment is a chubby nutter shown to be attacked with love on a daily basis. I bet that stops being funny after a while though.
It's clear - the launch was one hour late due to a mix-up in the timezones! That dear short ingenious leader just wanted his own independent aerial view of the final Superbowl moments. Give the man a break, those constant supervillain comparisons must be getting on his nerves.
More seriously, who'd ever want a nuke to communicate? Who with?
Chillingly, Kwangmyongsong-4 passed over Levi's Stadium in California on Sunday, just one hour after the end of Super Bowl 50.
If that is "chilling" then I don't know what adjective suitably describes the numerous nukes the rest of the world has which could deliver us Armageddon at any instant.
I suppose the demonisation is meant to keep our minds off the dangers elsewhere but "everyone's an evil bastard except the west" sure does wear thin at times. With all their sabre rattling over Russia, and seeming to be desperate for a conflict, I expect NATO will have plunged us deep into a world war before North Korea ever kicks one off.
Aside from the concentration camps, deaths of innocents and human resources strategy based on Game Of Thrones, the norks are pantomime baddies.
Nato sabre rattling? As opposed to Russia actual-rattling, Crimea black-ops takeover, shooting down passenger jets? They do have form on that, as Deutschland 83 reminded us this week.
Funnily enough,I don't think anyone is really keen on going to war, even if your day job is tooling about in a tank, sub or plane.
@Downside Well said to your whole post. Although I dislike the description "pantomime baddy", which is often applied to Kim Jong-un these days. It reminds me of Idi Amin, former president of Uganda, who was sometimes described in similar terms. He even played up to the "evil teddy bear" image, some say, in order to distract from what he really was - a psychopathic, mass-murdering dictator.
Amin, when he wasn't killing up to half a million people, awarded himself a doctorate of law as well as the Victoria Cross. There were even rumours he was a cannibal. Did he deliberately make his own evil cartoonish ? Who knows. Either way, Kim Jong-un seems like a photocopy.
" I expect NATO will have plunged us deep into a world war before North Korea ever kicks one off."
Give them time, FGS; NATO have had nuclear weapons for what, almost 70 years now, whilst the NORKs may not have fully acquired them yet. The latter started a massive conventional war, with China's help of course, after WWII. Have NATO started one yet, other than the clause 5 retaliation against the Talibs and their Al Qaeda guests?
You should not underestimate a piss poor crappy little dictatorship that can get enough out of its short resources to put a satellite into orbit.
There must be a few ex soviet satellite nations with some usable nukes that might be for sale to a loony with a rocket. Or Pakistan, they are known to collaborate with others on things nuclear.
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It's so sad. They live in a society where everything they say is monitored, there really is no true democratic process, there are secret sites where people are tortured to death and they're led by a buffoon with a cult of personality. But enough about the US, North Korea at least has clean rivers, nice trains and free health care.
The description "tumbling in orbit" suggests it is out of control but until one knows what the real intent of the launch is most everything is just hot air - and American blood pressure rising.
But if the DPRK's lump of steel could cause satellite owners a lot of money were it to collide with another satellite. Since the USA has so much expensive heavy metal flying around the heavens, they should prey they don't get hit.
Imagine the DPRK's propaganda if they did score a hit - then they would say that's what they intended.
"Since the USA has so much expensive heavy metal flying around the heavens, they should prey they don't get hit."
Any usable satellite must have RCS thrusters (essentially small engines) to maintain orientation and alitude. Considering how much space there is around Earth, how little that Best Korean "projectile" is, and how easy it is to track its orbit accurately, evading it using said RCS thrusters is trivial. And even if no evasion was ever attempted, the vastness of Earth and the space around it means that the chance of it ever hitting something valuable before its orbit decays is tiny, quite certainly under 1%.
And to all the alarmists talking about it being a nuke or inteded to demonstrate the ability to place one in its stead - the payload capability of the rocket is estimated at under 150 kgs to LEO (low-Earth orbit). Even the US would have a hard time fitting something menacing in the 150 kgs mass limit when reentry shielding, comms equipment and some rudimentary manuevering ability (without which it would be useless as a weapon-waiting-in-orbit) are taken into account. Norks? No chance. For all we know their nukes are quite possibly as crude and immobile as the original Trinity device.
There is really nothing alarming about this test if you know your spacey stuff - Sputnik remains kinda menacing even in hindsight because it was lifted by a rocket without any upper stage, meaning it had potential for much more. That ducttaped joke of a rocket that Norks use is already at the limit of what it can achieve, and well beyond the limits of what any sensible nation would attempt to achieve with a Scud knock-off.
Well, just in case someone eyeballs it after all, here's how to spot the difference between friendly and not-friendly satellites.
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