Going in to space doesn't seem so special now every pissant despot has their own rocket ship. We need to hurry up and get to Mars to bring some of the mystique back.
Iran develops working ICBM: Intercontinental Ballistic Monkey
Iran’s first monkey astronaut successfully completed its debut mission into space on Monday in what the Islamic republic said is a prelude to manned expeditions within the next few years. The courageous simian travelled in a bio-capsule aboard the Pishgam (Pioneer) explorer rocket and orbited the planet at an altitude of 120km …
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 18:32 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: AC Re: I [don't] spy...
"I think you'll find that putting a rocket into orbit requires a fair amount of infrastructure...." I think you'll find, if you bothered to do any research, that the Iranian launcher is a basically a souped-up Scud on a mobile trailer, and the launchsite is just a dustbowl (pic halfway down this BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21230691).
Iran has hundreds of Scuds and launchers, and often paints them up and drapes them with patriotic slogans, flags, banners and other junk, so spotting one with a hidden monkey is not that easy. Iran periodically launches such missiles as part of their military development program, so it is hard to verify if the event even took place or was just a face-saving bit of theatre seeing as Ahm-mad-in-a-dinnerjacket had sworn he would make the launch happen.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 20:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: AC I [don't] spy...
"the Iranian launcher is a basically a souped-up Scud on a mobile trailer,"
If the Iranians can put something into orbit purely off the back of a truck, and the US aren't able to track or spot that, then hats off to Iran.
If find it strange that Google + world and dog can see me in my garden, viewed from space for the sheer hell of it, but the world leading technology power hasn't got the capability to keep track of a handful of rocket launchers in one of the world's most volatile regions? A seventy to ninety foot rocket on a huge trailer plus support vehicles isn't the sort of thing that looks like a forty foot container full of Chinese made furniture, so all the pifffle about "disguising" them doesn't sound very impressive. More so when you remember that at the end of the Cold War twenty years ago the US were busy working out how to track Russian mobile rocket launchers. You are old enough to remember the Cold War, aren't you?
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 21:18 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Ledswinger Re: AC I [don't] spy...
"If the Iranians can put something into orbit purely off the back of a truck...." The Iranian ICB Monkey only went sub-orbital, i.e. a basic ballistic shot, not too much unlike what an ordinary Scud shot looks like.
".....but the world leading technology power hasn't got the capability to keep track of a handful of rocket launchers in one of the world's most volatile regions?...." Dear clueless, go look at a map of Iran, it's a rather big place. There are also thought to be up to 300 of the longer-range Scud derivatives alone in Iran, plus another unknown number of ordinary Scuds (estimates range from 100 to 4000, many having been fired or destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war). They all use identical and interchangeable launch trailers or trucks. From the air they all look the same and, as I mentioned, are often draped in flags, banners and patriotic slogans, so identifying one out of all those as special and different is quite a task. Iran did not announce the launch in advance so there was no way to tell the rocket with a monkeynaut from all the other Scuds.
Even if you just looked at the Iranian Space Agency sites they have three major launch sites and a fourth under construction, each covering dozens of miles of desert. Since it takes less than 30 minutes to fuel and launch a liquid-fueled version of a Scud, and since you can keep it out of sight in a simple hangar or tent right up until you need to elevate for launch, unless you have a 24x7x365 stream from a geostationary satellite over each site you'd miss it, and even then how would you know it was a monkeynaut flight and not just one of the regular missile tests?
".... A seventy to ninety foot rocket on a huge trailer plus support vehicles...." Here is an article with a pic of the actual rocket on a Scud trailer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21230691
Here is a pic of a whole lot of Scuds, some Iranian, for comparison:
http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_1/Diverse/Scud/index.htm
If they launched from the Iranian Space Agency sites they have control buildings, as do the Revolutionary Guard bases where they launch Shahabs from and have previously launched "satelite" shots from, so no big caravan of control vehicles to spot either.
".....More so when you remember that at the end of the Cold War twenty years ago the US were busy working out how to track Russian mobile rocket launchers...." Yet the US had such troubles tracking Saddam's Scuds in 1991 and 2003, even though you insist it should have been child's play.... duh! That's beside the fact that no-one knew it was a special Scud up until AFTER the event, and even then looked just like an ordinary Scud launch - kind of hard to watch for something that you don't even know is going to happen!
What did you expect the US to use, ESP?
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Wednesday 30th January 2013 09:42 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Ledswinger Re: AC I [don't] spy...
"If the Iranians can put something into orbit purely off the back of a truck....." Oops, forgot to add that the amateur World record for a rocket is 116km (100km is the marker for space, not for getting into orbit) which didn't even require a launcher/trailer and was built by 25 part-timers quite literally in their garages, all way back in 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Space_eXploration_Team). That's 116km verified as opposed to an Iranian claim of 120km.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 07:52 GMT Bent Outta Shape
Resolution 1929
"That concern may arise because the launch probably violated UN Security Council Resolution 1929, which bans “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology""
So only *good people* are allowed to join the space race? Or is this a tacit acknowledgement that every other country that lobbed someone into space did so in conjunction with anywhere-on-the-planet range missiles?
Cynical minds need to know :-)
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 13:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Resolution 1929
Effectively yes.
The original security council, USA, Russia, China, UK and France had the tech others were not supposed to develop nuclear missiles and in return the big 5 would slowly disarm (which they have in part done).
Since then though we have had Pakistan and India join the club and Israel got given theirs by the USA, which never admits to it.
Other nations were allowed to develop nuclear power though.
Hence the confusion as in many cases there is not much difference between enriching fuel for missiles or power generation. Thinking about the fast breeder reactors.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 08:03 GMT ratfox
Never mind the nuke angle, there are more important questions:
How are their space-faring people going to be called??
As everyone knows, Russians are called cosmonauts, Americans are called astronauts, French are called spationauts, and Chinese are called taikonauts. Now we need a word for the Iranians.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 08:06 GMT Destroy All Monsters
"nuclear fears grow"
You mean as warmongering by lobbys connected to Israeli crazies and possibly X-tian end-timers grow. Not to mention attempts to get rid of Chuck Hagel who seems to be not immediately ready to go for another war. Luckily spineless ooze John Kerry has been removed from the freezer to provide much-needed pliability
I hope to $DEITY they all get throat cancer from the yelling.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 12:11 GMT John Smith 19
Re: "nuclear fears grow"
"You mean as warmongering by lobbys connected to Israeli crazies and possibly X-tian end-timers grow. Not to mention attempts to get rid of Chuck Hagel who seems to be not immediately ready to go for another war. Luckily spineless ooze John Kerry has been removed from the freezer to provide much-needed pliability"
And that's what makes America the best damm democracy money can buy.*
*I like to think what that line lacks in originality it makes up for with truth.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 09:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Orbit
Did it really 'orbit' the earth? If it did and then re-entered it means they have solved the re-entry heat shield problem and can make ICBMs. If on the other hand this was a sub orbital lob (like first US manned missions) then this is less significant. On the other hands I doubt the Israelis would be delighted at a shower of monkeys landing outside tel Aviv. Anon because they are watching me.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 09:15 GMT Duncan Macdonald
Re: Orbit
Heat shield technology is old. Anyone can get details of the Apollo and earlier spacecraft with their ablative heat shields. It is also not difficult to test a heat shield - put one in front of a suitably sized rocket exhaust. Reusable heat shields (as on the shuttle) are more difficult but are not needed for a missile.
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Wednesday 30th January 2013 01:53 GMT MajorTom
" at an altitude of 120kms" -- Huh?
Yes, right. Assuming they did orbit at that altitude, that's hardly a stable orbit. Not sure it would even complete one full orbit at that altitude. A proper LEO needs to be 150km or higher, preferably 200km+
And even for a suborbital flight, an adequate heat shield would be needed for the very sharp and intense decel, maybe up to 12 g's?
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 10:44 GMT fawlty
2 Things
a) X37B probably handed the hirsuite hero a yellow crescent shaped source of potassium while it was up there, pretty sure the US would as a minimum have clocked the i/r signal from the launch (or was that COD4? ;-))
b) Intercontinental Ballistic Monkey: cracking tagline, that cheered me up on day where the tea and day nurse are being deployed liberally. you have my thanks.
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 11:04 GMT Simon Harris
A bigger problem...
It fired its first satellite, Omid, into the heavens in 2009 and a year later launched a capsule carried by the Kavoshgar-3 rocket containing a rat, turtles and worms, said Fars.
That's easy, but I'd like to see them try launching a fox, chicken and corn into space and returning them all safely!
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Tuesday 29th January 2013 13:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A bigger problem...
"I suspect the president has already penciled in a few dissidents glorious martyrs for that role. It may be a while before they have any seats free."
Alright, offer them a trade. We'll have their dissidents, they take our MPs. Unless the sanctions prohibit such trade, of course.
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