North Korean Shuttle and Other Space Projects

[XP67_Moonbat]

Hope you guys get a laugh outta this. I couldn't find a dedicated NoKo space thread to put this in. Since their spaceflight capability is almost nonexistent, this project will probably stay unbuilt. So here we go.

http://gammagoblin.blogspot.com/2012/10/north-korean-space-shuttle.html

 

[chuck4]

Even the model seem to betray a primitive industrial fabrication capacity that doesn't like compound curves.

An "in joke" in the nuclear industry is the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in North Korea. Cooling towers in countries with decent construction industries are usually built in the efficient thin-shell hyperboloid shape. North Korean cooling tower actually consist of a inverted truncated cone sitting on top of a cylindrical shape, stacked on top of another truncated cone, evidently trying to ape the hyperboloid shape with straight walled conical sections, but done in such a way as to be as structurally heavy and inefficient as a straight smoke stack.

The primitiveness of North Korean industry shows through even when they are trying to bluff.

 

[carmelo]

WOW! What fantastic toys!

 

[Vahe Demirjian]

Norbert Brugge has posted a link regarding a North Korea SLV he calls "Unha-X":

realtime.at - Domain gecatcht

All the chatter around Trump's surprise summits with Kim Jong-un notwithstanding (first ever time sitting US president meets North Korean leader), the question is whether the Unha-X will use a Hwasong-14/15 type engine.

 

[blackstar]

They can always claim that they have landed on the Moon even if they don't. They do that kind of thing.

 

[Michel Van]

can it be that new leader of North Korea has very expansive hobby, called space flight ?

 

[chuck4]

NASA's budget for 2011 was 18 billion USD. North Korea's total economic output for that year, including the caviar and cognac for the "Dear Leader" and whatever perks was given to the soon to be "Young Marshal", was 32 billion USD.

So NASA, which has little other to do beside this kind of stuff, can't afford a lunar mission, but North Korea, still funding the world's 4th larest army, still could?

 

[Bill Walker]

I suspect that hourly rates for engineers and machinists are lower in North Korea than in the US. Plus the NK space program isn't stuck with all the pork barrel expenses that NASA carries. (No pun about starving NKs intended.)

 

[GTX]

The rocket is emblazoned with the designation Unha-9 and is reportedly intended to carry a lunar spacecraft

;D

 

[kcran567]

can it be that new leader of North Korea has very expansive hobby, called space flight ?

I guess he's bored with all the young female concubines already, and is looking for a challenge.

 

[chuck4]

NASA's budget for 2011 was 18 billion USD. North Korea's total economic output for that year, including the caviar and cognac for the "Dear Leader" and whatever perks was given to the soon to be "Young Marshal", was 32 billion USD.

So NASA, which has little other to do beside this kind of stuff, can't afford a lunar mission, but North Korea, still funding the world's 4th larest army, still could?

I know that what you want to do is bash NASA, but that's a really lousy way to do it. NASA currently has three spacecraft in lunar orbit (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and two Artemis spacecraft). That happens to be three more than the rest of the world combined. A couple of months ago NASA had two others (the pair of GRAIL spacecraft, known as Ebb and Flow). Plus, NASA has a bunch of spacecraft around or on Mars, one heading to Jupiter, one heading to an asteroid, another in standby mode out in deep space, plus one heading to Pluto. Oh, and a huge space station in orbit. Quite a lot of stuff, for that matter.

No, I am not trying to bash NASA. I am trying to bash the surreal nature of North Korean space ambitions.

 

[blackstar]

Okay, so I misread your comment entirely. Sorry.

 

[Orionblamblam]

So NASA, which has little other to do beside this kind of stuff, can't afford a lunar mission, but North Korea, still funding the world's 4th larest army, still could?

There's no reason why a lunar mission couldn't be done for a *lot* less than NASA would charge for it. Also, "lunar mission" is pretty vague... a simple Ranger-style crasher-probe could be really quite cheap, and would be technically a "lunar mission."

If Dear Leader had his heart set on such a thing, he has the logistical advantage of being able to simply *shoot* bureaucrats who put up roadblocks. Success would not be assured, but it'd be cheaper than NASA.

 

[OM]

NASA's budget for 2011 was 18 billion USD. North Korea's total economic output for that year, including the caviar and cognac for the "Dear Leader" and whatever perks was given to the soon to be "Young Marshal", was 32 billion USD.

So NASA, which has little other to do beside this kind of stuff, can't afford a lunar mission, but North Korea, still funding the world's 4th larest army, still could?

I know that what you want to do is bash NASA, but that's a really lousy way to do it. NASA currently has three spacecraft in lunar orbit (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and two Artemis spacecraft). That happens to be three more than the rest of the world combined. A couple of months ago NASA had two others (the pair of GRAIL spacecraft, known as Ebb and Flow). Plus, NASA has a bunch of spacecraft around or on Mars, one heading to Jupiter, one heading to an asteroid, another in standby mode out in deep space, plus one heading to Pluto. Oh, and a huge space station in orbit. Quite a lot of stuff, for that matter.

No, I am not trying to bash NASA. I am trying to bash the surreal nature of North Korean space ambitions.

...Yeah, that's kind what I thought you were trying to get across. Thanks for the clarification, eh?

 

[Jemiba]

NMk would need two rockets and several times its annual production of plastic foil, or something like that.
Then it could be a real worldwide propagande success ...
(pictures spoiled taken from http://home.arcor.de/andy__85/Sonnensystem/Website/Erde.htm,
http://www.nknews.org/2012/10/kim-jong-uns-wife-missing-nk-news-data-2/ and
http://www.fahnenversand.de/shop/id/880/nr/detailansicht.htm )

 

[Vahe Demirjian]

At the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace in Pyongyang, there is a mock-up of a reusable launch vehicle similar in design to the American Space Shuttle (see attached photo). Maybe North Korea has been tinkering with reusable launch vehicle technology for over a decade (unless the North Korean Space Shuttle mockup is yet another example of propaganda). As with development of the Unha-9 moon rocket, the possibility of the North Korean space shuttle making it off the drawing is also questionable due to North Korea's apocalyptic economic situation. Since the cost of the US Space Shuttle was estimated between 10-20 billion dollars, the cost of the North Korean space shuttle would be between 6-14 billion dollars, and that would be enough to feed all the starving people in North Korea. If North Korea spends 50 billion dollars on five space shuttle launches, then their economy and regime would go down the drain for good (that's why my parents tell me, "Don't spend all your money on books").

 

[flateric]

Oh, are you serious? We had sci-fi spaceship model hanging under ceiling in our local Young Technician's Center, but none was thinking that we here going to send real stuff to Alfa Centauri.
This piece of handmade ar... sorry, handmade crap, a badly made representation of Space Shuttle and even further from reality than our FTL ship that was made of paper.

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

I'd just as soon believe in a 1701 replica with NorK markings than that piece of crap.

 

[OM]

I'd just as soon believe in a 1701 replica with NorK markings than that piece of crap.

...It would probably look like the JJPrise, and its main weaponry would consist of lens flare generators.


...That being said, here's the question that's always bothered me: in a country that's a total dictatorship, outside of purchasing materials not available and/or manufacturable within the confines of the regime/empire, how can you apply the same pricing estimates to a nationwide slave labor camp? From what I was taught from Day One about the Soviet-era Ruble was that it could not be directly compared to the US Dollar because there were as many as two dozen valuations for the Ruble, depending on who was purchasing with them, who was selling the item being purchased, what the item was, who made the item, who *designed* the item, where the item was being purchased, etc, etc. And even then money was not supposed to matter behind the Iron Curtain as it was being run, again, as a continental gulag - you get food, water, housing and the right to exist so long as you do exactly what you're told for the Good of the State.


So, what appears to me is that some sort of lesson in North Korean economic models needs to be discussed and addressed before we sit back and laugh at these poor people whose leaders are heading them towards becoming a rather large glassed-over parking lot with Cherenkov lighting day and night... :-\