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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| NKorks Load Boosters On Pad | |
| 2006-06-17 | |
| SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea loaded booster rockets onto a launch pad in preparation to test-fire a long-range missile that could reach as far as the U.S. mainland, with the launch expected as early as Sunday, South Korean and Japanese media reports said. The reports follows warnings by the U.S. government that the communist state is accelerating preparations for testing a Taepodong-2 missile. A U.S. government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said Friday that a test may be imminent. South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities had made an assessment based on recent satellite images that the North had loaded booster rockets onto a launch pad and moved about 10 large tanks of liquid fuel close by. The Taepodong-2 is a three-stage missile, but the warhead section hasn't been loaded yet, the paper said, quoting an unnamed high-level South Korean government official. It wasn't clear if the fuel had been unloaded, it said. South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho couldn't confirm the report. Japan's mainstream conservative Sankei Shimbun, also citing unnamed government sources, said the North could test the missile as early as Sunday. Japan has dispatched two Aegis destroyers to the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean, the paper said. Hidetsugu Iwamasa, a Japanese naval official, said he could not comment on the reported Aegis deployment.
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #47 http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/prepare-for-launch-north-koreans-asked-to-raise-flags/2006/06/18/1150569199556.html Well the Australians are carrying it as well as the japanese. Should be an interesting night |
| Posted by: J Hood 2006-06-17 23:43 |
| #46 Now would be a good time for whatever it is to blow up. I can hear NorK Radio now: "Uh, never mind." |
| Posted by: grb 2006-06-17 23:33 |
| #45 Are they sending Kimmy into juche orbit? |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2006-06-17 23:23 |
| #44 NORTH KOREAN RADIO IS BROADCASTING A COMMAND TO ALL NORTH KOREANS TO PLACE NORTH KOREAN FLAGS OUTSIDE THEIR HOMES AND TUNE IN TO RADIO/TV FOR AN 'IMPORTANT' ANNOUNCEMENT AT 2:00 P.M. LOCAL TIME, SUNDAY 18 JUNE (1:00 A.M. Eastern Sunday / 11:00 p.m. Eastern Tonight (17 June) |
| Posted by: J Hood 2006-06-17 23:13 |
| #43 Well I guess we will know in about three hours, I am not sure why else North Korea would be telling people to put their flags out and sit by the radio at 2 pm their time |
| Posted by: J Hood 2006-06-17 23:12 |
| #42 The NK launch complex at Musudan is located at Latitude: 40°51' N. Longitude: 129°40' E |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-06-17 20:00 |
| #41 Correction - IRFNA (inhibited red fuming nitric acid) is storable. IIRC the Russians had some nasty accidents with this stuff. |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 19:39 |
| #40 Not LOX. They don't have that kind of technology. If they can handle LOX, they would be using LOX + Kerosene. Either UDMH + N2O4 (nitrogen tetraoxide) this is the stuff used in SS-18 missiles and civilian space launch vehicles. The Titan ICBM uses N2O4 + "Aerozine" - a 50-50 mixture of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) or UDMH + RFNA (red fuming nitric acid) This isn't storable and is particularly nasty. Hopefully they are using this. It may blow up on them. |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 19:21 |
| #39 It would be a wonderful sight for all of Kim's people to see. The rocket lifts off and at 5,000 feet the lazer trained on it cooks thru to the fuel and it explodes removing the sucker from the sky! |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-06-17 19:18 |
| #38 no remedial "self esteem classes™" needed, 6, just math and sciences |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-06-17 18:45 |
| #37 Just checking, but y'all said they were using UDMH and Liquid Oxygen? That doesn't make sense to me, but I'll have to check with the real experts. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-06-17 18:29 |
| #36 I haven't heard anyone whining about the idea of a missile shield lately. That's true. As soon as the US educational system is fixed we'll be able to afford to plug the so-called Marin County Gap. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-06-17 18:29 |
| #35 You know, come to think about it, I haven't heard anyone whining about the idea of a missile shield lately. The silence speaks volumes. |
| Posted by: grb 2006-06-17 17:55 |
| #34 long and lat? Google for Linux is wonderful. Kill this in it's boost phase, a message to China and the Norks. You need not wonder where the Technology came from. China seeks to destablise The US of A and Japan. OIt clinet the NORKS are glad to oblige |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-06-17 17:45 |
| #33 Uhh, how exactly do we know that this is a test? |
| Posted by: Matt 2006-06-17 17:12 |
| #32 OP: use GoogleEarth if you have a broadband connection. It's a freebee. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-06-17 16:23 |
| #31 Russian space launches used strap-on boosters to gain extra thrust for launch. North Korea may be trying to launch their own space satellite. That would be a huge coup for them, politically. I just went through GeoStrategy's imagery. I wish I could get about 20 different shots of the entire area that I could blow up and manipulate. There are several military-looking compounds around the area that they ignore. I think they also fail to take into consideration the amount of burrowing the Norks do. I hope the folks and NGA are doing a much better job. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-06-17 15:41 |
| #30 All: Now that it is a very real threat, does anyone have a listing of those congressmen and senators who were adamant against the US having missile defenses? I think that now is the perfect time to remind America of who, exactly, is responsible for allowing our nation to be threatened in this way. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-06-17 14:20 |
| #29 right there close to the sea, a low-flying object could be damn near undetectable before it....um.... rammed into the boosters, eh? A guided munition during fuelling would cause a hell of a bang. They would never know what hit them.. witnesses would die in the fire. Problem would be bomb debris. The NoKos would probably have a few thousand "volunteers" walk over every square inch picking up fragments. |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 12:28 |
#28 Here's the Encyclopedia Astronautica articles on the Nodong IRBM and Taepodong-1 ICBM/booster. The article on the Taepodong says in pertinent part:North Korea announced the launch of its first satellite on 31 August 1998. Despite these claims no foreign observer ever detected the satellite visually, by radar, or picked up its radio signals. . . . What seems to have happened is that the third stage either failed and fell into the Pacific or misfired and put the satellite into a low orbit where it decayed very quickly before it could be detected by foreign observers. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-06-17 12:25 |
| #27 The strap-on boosters indicate they can't yet make large first stage engines. They're forced to cobble together stuff. So they may have gotten the design of an early Chinese engine? |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 12:20 |
| #26 If you have GoogleEarth, the launch pad and the assocated facilities are really easy to spot. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-06-17 12:17 |
| #25 Or French and German. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-06-17 12:10 |
| #24 right there close to the sea, a low-flying object could be damn near undetectable before it....um.... rammed into the boosters, eh? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-06-17 12:07 |
| #23 So the Norks might have made the technological leap to being able to build large liquid fuel engines that could be used on a silo based, heavy ICBM. Somebody has been teaching them... either Chinese or Russian engineers.. |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 11:43 |
| #22 Using UDMH + N2O4 would indicate their liquid fuel technology has advanced significantly from the Scud type engines third world ntions play around with. These fuels are storable and quite efficient. The French Arianne vehicles use it for their Viking engine stages. The Indian PSLV vehicle uses a variant of the Viking engine (France needed a lot of aerospace engineers to design the Viking and India had a surplus of engineers.. the French got their engine and the Indians got the technology as payment and designed their own versions). More ominously, the Soviet SS-18 uses UDMH+ N2O4 engines. |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 11:36 |
| #21 I must be thinking of hydrazine. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-06-17 11:30 |
| #20 Oh, liquid oxygen (LOX) is used as the oxidiser. Ummmm.... ? |
| Posted by: 6 2006-06-17 11:29 |
| #19 UDMH propellant? UDMH is storable. The missile can sit quietly in a silo. Lika Titan. UDHM smells like DawgFood for the 1 second you smell it. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-06-17 11:27 |
| #18 Oh, liquid oxygen (LOX) is used as the oxidiser. |
| Posted by: Fordesque 2006-06-17 11:25 |
| #17 Sounds like they scaled-up an Estes rocket. |
| Posted by: Master of Obvious 2006-06-17 11:24 |
| #16 UDMH: Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. Rocket fuel. More information: Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine ((CH3)2NNH2) became the storable liquid fuel of choice by the mid-1950's. Development of UDMH in the Soviet Union began in 1949. It is used in virtually all storable liquid rocket engines except for some orbital manoeuvring engines in the United States. |
| Posted by: Fordesque 2006-06-17 11:23 |
| #15 Now an easy liquid propellant engine to build would be one running on pure peroxide, where the peroxide is decomposed, used to run a turbine (to pump the fuel), and then the decomposed products burned with kerosene or some other fuel. This would be a sort of two-step engine, and it's what the British used on their ICBM's and launchers when they had some of their own. Combustion stability is easier once you have one of the chemical reactants in gaseous form already. I don't think you can do that with UDMH. You might be able to, though. Probably a trip to the encyclopedia astronautica is in order. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-06-17 11:15 |
| #14 I'm not sure, but I think it stands for Unsymmetrical Di-Methyl Hydrazine. Which is basically a hydrocarbon group with most of a hydrazine ion tied on. It's unstable (like hydrazine), toxic, hard to handle, and hypergolic. Like many hypergolic fuels attaining combustion stability in the rocket engine is going to be tricky, unless they're just using someone else's engine. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-06-17 11:12 |
| #13 #11 john I'm clueless, but curious. Would you explain what UDMH propellant is, and the significance of Norks using it? Thanks. |
| Posted by: Omereque Whinetch9110 2006-06-17 10:51 |
| #12 Missile? What missile? We're not launching anything. Nope, nope nope. And if we were, it wouldn't be missile, it would be a..., um... satellite!. Yup we're not launching a satellite. That's the ticket. |
| Posted by: NorthKorea 2006-06-17 10:41 |
| #11 UDMH propellant? Interesting.. someone has been teaching them to build engines... |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 10:33 |
| #10 * grrr* Illistration, Elevated View of TD-2 Launch Facility |
| Posted by: RD 2006-06-17 10:22 |
| #9 Illistration, Elevated View of TD-2 Launch Facility |
| Posted by: RD 2006-06-17 10:21 |
| #8 SAT IMMAGES Musudan-ri Missile Test Facility The reports follows warnings by the U.S. government that the communist state is accelerating preparations for testing a Taepodong-2 missile. A U.S. government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said Friday that a test may be imminent. |
| Posted by: RD 2006-06-17 10:14 |
| #7 If it does break apart, pieces will fall on Japan? |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 10:02 |
| #6 This seems awfully crude. They clearly lack the ability to build large liquid or solid motors. They're putting together various assorted stages in the hope of getting that thing into the air. It might just as well break apart after launch. Even if it works, the throw weight will be too low to be militarily useful (if they want extended range), and the configuration will leave it vulnerable. This thing can't be moved around. The Norks will have to assemble this inside a silo, and leave it unfuelled. It will take hours to launch and they don't have the technology to harden a silo against attack. A cry for attention from kimmi ? He wants more aid money or food? This is a perfect target for a standard SM3 test. |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 10:01 |
| #5 I'll be very curious to see how GWB handles them on this. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-06-17 09:52 |
| #4 I was wondering if they were gonna maybe use storable liquid propellants John, sounds like no. Green Steve may have insight here. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-06-17 09:45 |
| #3 A missile with external boosters ? |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-17 09:42 |
| #2 Wonder if the fuel smells like DawgFood, that could be a problem. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-06-17 09:35 |
| #1 it would be a shame if it "exploded" on the pad. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-06-17 09:23 |
