Norks' parade rocket fails to fly, again Japan and South Korea have had another live training exercise turn to disappointment, with another North Korean missile launch failing. Both countries had put their militaries on alert after they detected preparations for a launch, according to Reuters. That included Japan deploying Patriot anti-missile batteries and telling …
Having ballistic missiles fail at launch has a strong "shoot yourself in the foot" feeling to it, although the effects may not be restricted to a single foot.
Any suggestions for the programming language(s) they use?
Fortunately, in case there was evidently more of a damp squib effect, so the icon is not entirely appropriate.
Ah, that would be a "Broken Arrow" incident. We've had enough experience with them on this side of the pond:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow_incidents
As for programming language, that would presuppose the use of a computer on board the rocket. Is there any evidence that the rocket has such a computer? Or, is it the ultimate in "fire and forget" type of a rocket (as in, once you fire it, you can forget about it, because you're not going to have any control over it anyway!). ;-)
Dave
P.S. My father-in-law was very close to the impact point for that first Broken Arrow. And, I have a friend who was quite close to the Goldsboro incident (close as in "would have been in the blast radius"). And, that one came perilously close to going off. For that matter, the Damacus incident was a little too close for comfort, although, really, all of them have been.
To be fair I doubt anyone thinks it's a good idea to wheel a fully armed warhead through the streets. And as for showing off a weapons system that's not really operational, well, pretty much every arms company ever has done that (the F-35 has been being pimped out as a photo op since 2007 at least and it's not operational yet).
> To be fair I doubt anyone thinks it's a good idea to wheel a fully armed warhead through the streets.
No, it's a much better idea to load them on accident prone aircraft and fly them overhead. ;-)
Dave
P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the Potassium Iodide tablets in the pocket.
The price of success may be a more certain version of the price of failure. With failure, you have a chance of blaming it on something or somebody other than yourself. With success, you absolutely are in posession of information which you have absolutely no need to know for any longer, and a bullet in your head fixes that security problem.
I've just remembered: there is a scene in Billy Wilder's brilliant 'One Two Three' where the recently defected commissar Peripetchikoff explains that in the American space programme launch control has one button on their console to blow up a faulty rocket, whereas in the soviet space programme launch control has two buttons - one to blow up the rocket and one to blow up its designer.
Couldn't find the exact quote, sorry. Just watch the movie, it's really good.
"I wonder if they'll get a successful test before all the techs who might conceivably pull it off are banged up or executed "
no worries, Kim Jong "fatass" aka "Cartman" will save the day, because "Dearest Leader" is the wisest, most brilliant example of human achievement on the planet...
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