'Satan' Missile Now Launches Satellites 538
colonist writes "The Russian intercontinental ballistic missile known to NATO as SS-18 Satan was converted to a launch vehicle (called Dnepr) and is now launching American communications satellites for profit. 'The giant rocket boasted up to 10 Multiple Independently-Targeted Reentry Vehicles, or MIRVs, each of which would have a carried a hydrogen bomb thermonuclear warhead to incinerate a different North American or Western European city. Even more terrifying, some of them were believed to have been fitted with aerosol warheads to spray smallpox virus over their U.S. targets.' However: 'With the Space Shuttle still grounded, the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world, the prospect of having a huge already-constructed supply of giant boosters built by the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth has been embraced around the world.'"
Careful! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Careful! (Score:4, Funny)
UP is not what worries me
Korea (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the conservative think-tanks here are generally opposed to Korean reunification (as they fear that it could lead to a standoff between China and Japan) but it will happen, and when it does, I hope that we in the US have helped the process along rather than stalled it (stalling it would alienate us and make a China/Japan standoff scenario more likely IMHO).
Re:Korea (Score:3, Informative)
? 3 Kingdoms: Silla, Goguryeo, and Baekje. China's little b1tches
660 Silla hooks up with China and puts the beat down on Baekje
668 Goguryeo falls also, leaving a united Silla
918 Warlords knockdown Silla founding Goryeo
1256 Mongols make Goryeo their b1tch
1392 With China's help Mongol supported dynasty overthrown
1592 Japanese invade
1627 Manchus Invade
1876 Japanese force trade agreements on Korea
1897 Korea tries to shake Japanese influence
1904 During Russo-Jap
Not the first post (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the first post (Score:4, Funny)
To paraphrase grandparent post:
While you're chewing on an H-bomb, I'll try to manage coping with the smallpox vaccine.
Re:Not the first post (Score:3, Interesting)
I was born in West Germany in 1977 and I've got a vaccination certificate by the WHO.
(On the other hand, it made sense for the East Germans to vaccinate
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Insightful)
S: Missiles (the Sapwood is still used today as the basis for the Soyuz and Progress rockets that still launch manned spacecraft and unmanned payloads, including Progress freighters)
F: Fighter (Flanker, Flogger, Foxhound, Foxbat, Fishbed, etc)
B: Bomber (the Tu-95 Bear is probably most famous).
And so on. I would guess that "Satan" was easy to say and sounds distinctive, though as always it's possible it's a NATO "the Soviets are bad" 'propaganda' thing.
Re:Not the first post (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Informative)
Survival of the Species (Score:3, Interesting)
Note: I don't AGREE with the Slashdot crowd, I think that we would survive a Smallpox attack, and I also think that the bio-engineered smallpox would never launch... it's not a USEFUL weapon (the goal of a weapon is to defeat the otherside), it's a doomsday weapon... i.e. If a US First Strike annihilates EVERYTHING (cities, military bases, missile silos,
Re:Not the first post (Score:3, Funny)
If it was a pain in the ass, then the doctor administered the vaccine to the wrong part of the body.
Re:Not the first post (Score:2, Informative)
Speaking of which, is anyone over the age of 30 just amazed at what a different world this is from the 80's? Sure, communist menace is substituted by 'terrorist menace' but at least MAD is less l
Re:Not the first post (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you think Reagan's funeral got such reverent coverage? I was against him at the time, but I was wrong, and he was right. He truly changed the world for the better. Personally, I believe that in 20 years, we'll look back and say the same for W.
Re:Not the first post (Score:2, Insightful)
that i truely doubt... I pray that my children will learn in their history class what a horrible beast he really is...
If they dont learn that, odds are they will learn that the "party" invented the airplane, and that oceania is always at war with terrorism...
Re:I vehemently disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I disagree about the part about him changing the world for the better. Rest of the world really doesnt care when he was alive, far less now that he is dead. The only time that I ever heard of him was his name associated with the infamous "Starwars" and Reagan-omics. Both really bad ideas (ofcourse can be disputed). But the fact of the matter is Gorbachev had more to do about putting things in order than Reagan purely because (1) Russia was already crumbling (2) Gorbachev was more far sighted than all the Russian presidents before him and (3) Gorbachev realized the world was changing and he had to lead his country to change with it.
The only smart thing Reagan did was he realized what Russia was up to and instead of thwarting their efforts (and making sure Cold war stayed the same), he realized his legacy would be remembered for ending it, and helped Gorbachev speed things up. Also like how Clinton is remembered for not screwing things up when the economy was in an upswing, Reagan will be remembered for not screwing things up. You cant measure a president and his legacy especially when he passed away recently, especially when his memories are fresh and emotions supercede reason and logic, but for definite, years from today, he will be known as a president who was sensible and farsighted enough to let Russia and Communism die a slow death and not for being a visionary neither a statesman.
Now your thoughts about W just plain out scares me. W is neither a statesman nor a visionary. He spoke of bipartisanship and pledged compassionate conservatism but showed neither. The country is more divided than ever and we are at war with different enemies and the army is stretched thinner than butter on whitebread. What were to happen if a new adversary emerges, taking advantage of this situation? How would the world respond? No Sir, these are troubled times and instead of being fortunate enough to be led by a president who were a true leader, a free thinker, an optimist and a realist, what we have here is a fragile humanbeing who is being manipulated by his cohorts, by the religious right, by the same people who should keep his course straight, but instead choose to lead him astray. No Sir, W will be known as a president who could have achieved far more, but fell far short of his goals and led the country through a path of gloom, down a road littered with the corpses of its own soldiers and its shattered dreams.
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, we don't do history very well, do we. Please RTFHB. Just 35 years before the Gipper was elected, Soviets suffered 19 million civilian deaths out of a population of 194 million and lost 9 million killed and missing in an army of 27 million. So yeah, they were pussies who rolled over when faced with a little adversity from a B-list actor.
Re:Not the first post (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the argument was that Reagan built so damn much military harware that the Soviet union didn't have the economy to keep up, even with all the percents of GNP they put into the military.
Re:Not the first post (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell pal, I *voted* for Reagan. I was *there* when the USSR came crashing down. I agree with you (partially), the russians weren't scared, not of Reagan, their fall was multi-faceted.
Reagan was the best damn president this country has had in a *long* time. At the same time, it's nice that the russians, if not exactly our friends, are at least no longer our enemies.
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that in 20 years, we'll look back and say the same for W.
The difference between Reagan and Bush junior, is that Reagan's anti-Soviet rhetoric was mostly for public consumption. Behind the scenes, there was a great deal of diplomacy going on which ultimately lead to the arms limitation treaties. The Reagan and Bush senior regimes were much more pragmatic than the Rumsfeld / Cheney / Bush junior regime. We'll look back on the Bush junior regime in 20 years time with as much disgust as most people look at it now.
The belligerent attitude of the current regime comes as no surprise to those of us who kept up with what the various neo-con think tanks that influenced the current regime were saying in the mid-1990's. Cheif amongst their suggestions was that Saddam Hussein should be given a whipping for going against the wishes of the last Republican regime. Saddam had been the pet Middle-East strongman of the US throughout the 1980's, but he overstepped the mark by invading Kuwait. Having glossed over his previous gassing of Kurds, the Bush senior regime was thrown into turmoil by the Kuwait invasion. This is why there was a lack of firm comment on the situation from the Whitehouse in the immediate aftermath.
Re:Not the first post (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm. To me it seems a bit of revisionist history to credit Reagan with ending the cold war. It was Gorby who made all the peace overtures and changed things in the Soviet Union. Remember "Perestroika"?
Reagan, reluctantly, went along for the ride.
Here's an interesting article by Gorby in The International Herald Tribune [iht.com]. It's very generous to Reagan, but even in saying nice things about the late president, you can read between the lines that Reagan's attitude to the Soviets changed fundamentally between his first and second term. It was Gorby's reforms that forced the U.S. to acknowledge that the Soviets really wanted peace.
Re:Not the first post (moving OT) (Score:5, Insightful)
That statement alone explains how it is you can have such a distorted view of history and of the United States. Your beliefs are nothing at all except reactionary. You define yourself as the political negative of those that are religious.
In short, you're not thinking for yourself.
So many religious skeptics (I'm an atheist, in fact) believe that they need to be on the political team opposite those that are religious. It's a mistake. There are plenty of fvcked up ideas on the political left as well as the right and plenty of stupid ahistorical hate-america-firsters. Don't get taken in. Take a more balanced view.
As far as Reagan goes, he was a genuinely good man. There was no smallness in him. Blowing him off because of his religious views is terribly unfair. He was a better man than most. Again, I'm an atheist, but after learning about him and his life, I would say he mostly represented what is best in men.
Re:Not the first post (Score:3, Insightful)
Reagan was a big reason for the collapse, but not because there was a race to see who could spend the most on weapons without destroying the economy.
What Reagan did was convince those on the Soviet side that they were philosophically wrong and that the US system was right. He did this with his optimism and tough talk, backed up with the threat of military force. His confid
Re:Not the first post (Score:2)
Re:Not the first post (Score:2, Funny)
It'd be like living in florida, everywhere. I'd personally take the H-bomb.
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Interesting)
> threat than an H-bomb?
Well, if a vaccine exists you'd be right. There was an article in some magazine I read - Discover, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, or possibly Newsweek, a few years back about the USSR's now-defunct bioweapons program. There were some US scientists who visited one of the main labs where the work had taken place. They were looking at some large apparatus where they would test biological agents on various animals and the US scientist asked if he could take samples from inside of this thing. The Russian scientist giving the tour said something like "I would let you but your vaccinations would be no good on some of the strains of smallpox tested in there." The article also talked about how much of this stuff they had manufactured - I recall the measurement being in tons...
Re:Not the first post (Score:2)
Tons of virus material according to the article I read. Now how much of what you hear from those former Soviet bad dudes you can believe is another question.
sPh
Re:Horrible, but still (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not the first post (Score:2)
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Informative)
The smallpox strain the Soviets put in ICBMS was called India1. It's an extrodinarily "hot" strain of pox gathered in India shortly before eradication was complete.
The Soviets then "heated" the India1 Strain up, probably by introducing the human IL4 gene to it. IL4 acts as a jammer against the human immune system, as the pox replicates it generates a huge volume of human immune signal chemicals.
A independent tests have shown IL4 mousepox to blow through vaccinations that in mice as well as natural immunity to the virus. The only mice that survived an IL4 mousepox were naturaly immune mice that had been infected with a less dangerous strain of the pox within a week or two.
Because mice and mousepox are reasonable models for humans and smallpox, this is terrifying.
Furthermore, WHO stocks about 1 dose of smallpox vaccine for every 17,000 people on earth. Since smallpox has a multiplication rate of somewhere between 10 and 30 (i.e. each patient infects between 10 and 30 other people) a massive infection such as an ICBM delivery of the disease would be completely uncontainable using the ring vaccination methodology employed by the WHO eradicators.
For more information on smallpox check out Richard Presonton's "The Demon in the Freezer."
India 1 is still out there by the way, and the Russians have told us they know that Iran and North Korea have it as well as a few other countries.
Re:Not the first post (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Informative)
No, a vaccination against small pox is simply a matter of being infected with the vaccinia virus. This virus has a similar makeup to smallpox, but is not nearly as deadly or infectious. A "heated up" strain of India-1 (which is already extremely virulent) would blow through any vaccination that is out there.
Smallpox comes in several "colors". You have your Variola minor (chicken pox style 1-3% fatality), your Variola major (pustule style 30-50% fatality), Hemorrhagic (shudder, just hope you don't get it), and Flat (another deadly strain). The occurrence of the last two in individuals with Variola major is about 7% combined. This is the average run of the mill smallpox. A heated up strain of India-1 would have a much higher fatality rate and a much higher occurrence of Hemorrhagic smallpox. And as TGK mentioned, it probably has been modified to carry the IL-4 gene, which would cause your body to go into a cytokine storm before your internal organs liquefy.
It is a slow and painful death that you are conscious through for the greater extent. I never understood how hateful it was to wish a pox upon someone until I learned about how horrible smallpox can be.
Demon in the Freezer (Score:3, Insightful)
Since smallpox is so dangerous, so contagious, and has been erraticated from the earth, anyone who generates stockpiles of the virus outside of a stongly supervised international research study is committing a crime against humanity. They should be standing trial in The Hague, regardless of their national or religious justification.
The difference between ato
Re:Targeting Civilians? (Score:3, Informative)
The US had more nukes aimed at Russia than they had aimed at us. And these weren't tactical nukes for the field. These were 'take out Moscow and Leningrad' nukes.
Re:Not the first post (Score:2)
Re:Not the first post (Score:2)
Any bug of that nature can only kill so many and then it has run its course. There will always be some segment of the population that is immune to the virus. Let's assume that 99% if wiped out (way too high of a number). We currently have something like 6 billion on this planet. If only 1% remains, then you still have 6 million. Basically, the population continues. Most importantly, the virus is then pretty done. This assumes that it is not sticking around due to shifts.
Besides, one of
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Insightful)
More quickly than a vaccination against proximity to a thermonuclear explosion.
Smallpox is scary, yes, but nuclear weapons are scarier.
Dan.
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that well before the virus kills, you can travel anywhere in the world, the possibility for a global pandemic is real.
Smallpox killed roughly a billion people over its burn through human civilization. That was a naturaly occuring strain of the virus. What the Russians have is a bio engineered plauge that has been specificly designed to circumvent every known route for treatment and kill with the greatest possible efficiency.
Soviet pox was created by the ton. It was loaded into ballistic missiles. It was pointed at the United States. A nuclear weapon kills everyone in the city you drop it on. Smallpox has the very real possibility of killing everyone on the planet (or at least a really sizeable portion of the population).
Re:Not the first post (Score:5, Insightful)
Smallpox can't wipe out all life on the planet - if that was possible don't you think it would have happened already? Smallpox has been around at least as long as the cow has been domesticated (it's a mutant of cow pox). The reason viruses can be used as weapons isn't that they 'kill everything', but that they create enough patients to overwhelm a country's infra structure; just look at the effect of SARS, a virus that was a lot less dangerous than smallpox - it wasn't that a lot of people died, but a lot of effort went into containing it.
smallpox is that bad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:smallpox is that bad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone else already posted about any ICBM being interpreted as a nuclear launch and being responded to immediately. Bioweapons aren't 100%, they take time - time for your enemy to launch a massive response. If you want to hit them with anything, you want to disable their ability to retaliate.
One of the most infectious vi
Re:...most experienced..? (Score:2, Insightful)
shouldn't this have the tag <sarcasm></sarcasm> around it?
(gotta learn to preview)
Re:...most experienced..? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the Russians do have the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth. That's why NASA are working with them. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of Russian rocket engineers carried on perfecting the designs for extremely stable and powerfull rocket motors. This work has now been commercialised, and is used in both the Russian and American space industries. I'm sure a quick Google will turn up some suitable references.
I am okay with this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I am okay with this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I am okay with this (Score:4, Informative)
Solid fuel rockets were invented in China a very long time ago.
Liquid fuel rockets were developed by Robert Goddard, who's work Von Braun studied.
Re:I am okay with this (Score:5, Informative)
Tciolkovski was before him. His designs date from the turn of the century while Goddard's designs are from 30-es. In the 30-es Tciolkovski and his students including Korolev already had a number successful launches. IIRC their first launch is as early as 20-es.
Okay but not okay (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I am okay with this (Score:2)
.
Its good to see.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes even this harden cynic smile a bit.
Another Bit of Trekism in Real Life (Score:2)
At least this good equipment isn't going to waste. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:At least this good equipment isn't going to was (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, for Pete's sake.. (Score:5, Funny)
--LordPixie
Re:Oh, for Pete's sake.. (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:3, Insightful)
Demon in the Freezer (Score:5, Informative)
Very good book.
If ya can't beat 'em... take their money (Score:5, Interesting)
Thankfully husbands can hide very well (Score:2, Funny)
Amateur Satellites launched by SS-18 (Score:5, Informative)
(Oribiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) was launched June 29 by SS-18 (also the Italian Amateur UniSat-3) as secondary payloads.
http://www.amsat.org
73 de w0uhf
The USA does the same thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Michael Moore featured this plant in his movie, calling it a weapons factory that makes weapons of mass destruction. When someone challenged him about this, he said that such a rocket could launch a spy satellite that could be the one that starts a war, so he still thinks it's justified to call satellite-launching rockets "weapons of mass destruction".
what's your point? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, yes, Russia converts weapons into civilian launch capacity because they desparately need money and because they know that they simply aren't the superpower they once were.
What does that have to do with the US? The US isn't giving up on being a superpower. I don't know why the US converts Titan missiles for satellite purposes, but it clearly isn't because of any serious attempt to reduce US military dominance.
The US cont
Shelf life (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's just common sense to use them while they still are in working order, and make some hard needed cash in the process. I suppose Russia will them build some new ones for they still remaining WMD with the cash they earned this way, or have a completely different delivery system altogether.
Isn't this the same reason the USA are/were using redstone's as launch vehicules?
MIRV (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MIRV (Score:2)
Re:MIRV (Score:4, Informative)
SS-18 Satan (Score:3, Funny)
Re:SS-18 Satan (Score:4, Funny)
Please, please, please God I don't care which fundie says it but please let the world have that soundbyte to cherish foever.
NATO codenames (Score:2, Interesting)
Did the old guys get fired for not taking it seriously enough?
Poisonous fuel (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Poisonous fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poisonous fuel (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Poisonous fuel (Score:3, Informative)
converted soviet ICBMs - old news (Score:5, Informative)
The russians have been launching small payloads on their submarine-launched Volna and Shtil [fas.org] for years.
More info on the R36 family of rockets is available here [astronautix.com]
MX (Score:5, Informative)
The military went away from liquid fuel for logistical reasons and the Minuteman missle series, using solid boosters, were deployed. The Minuteman 3 evolved into the MX Missile aka Peacekeeper, which required only a small crew and was portable making it a "mobile missle" in some deployments.
This logistical advantage was the basis of was the basis of E'Prime Aerospace's proposed launch vehicle series [eprimeaerospace.com] in the late 1980s. Through an effort with the Reagan Administration they acquired rights to acquire the existing assembly lines, 2 of which were still packed up in crates, and managed to cut preliminary deals with the contractors for the parts. The design mods included stripping off the radiation hardening, saving substantial weight, and replacing the kevlar fiber with graphite fiber in the tankage windings, something the Air Force had already funded at about the time the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty [state.gov] put an end to their further development. The launch site preferred was Ascention Island due to its location near the equator, ease of access from Florida (where the production lines were to exist) and a landing strip there that could receive the stages of the rockets in separate shipping containers via DC-3 transport, and launch from a cliff to the east. There was also a problem with the upper stage of the MX containing nitroglycerine, and that stage was eliminated or modified in E'Prime's designs.
It was a good idea. Something not quite as radical was, later, picked up by Orbital Sciences Corporation in their Taurus launcher, which used some surplus MX segments. E'Prime didn't want to do that due to quality control problems on stages that had been stored -- and indeed I was told that when O.S. procured their first MX stage, it had already been rejected by E'Prime due to a huge occlusion in the X-Ray image. They obviously could never have flown stage in any mission and it is unclear why they procured it.
The company had management as well as funding problems, and when I came on board in late 1991 as VP for Public Affairs, it was a few weeks from closing its doors. I really thought the idea of putting the MX into commercial production for satellite launches was a good one and hated to see it die, especially since I had just testified before Congress regarding commercialization of space technology on the day SALT was put into action [slashdot.org]. I was already broke due to the grassroots lobbying efforts but decided to go on my credit cards and take an unpaid job at E'Prime to help save the company. While there we managed to get the first Ka band license put through the FCC for one of E'Primes potential customers (Norris Communications' NORSTAR satellite [lta.com]), and as a result the stock, by then it was a pink sheet penny stock, had a rebound, going from a low of fractional cents per share to 30 cents a share. I had to leave E'Prime when after a few months they still were unable to pay a salary and I was at the end of my rope. The IRS had a lot of fun with me during a subsequent audit, and they're after me again subsequent to another effort of mine [geocities.com], but that's another story to be written. still being written. Suffice to say I'm getting really sick of the way the US government acts toward inventors and technologists -- most of whom need to be tax lawyers these days in order to avoid prisoner gang rape these days due to the incomprehensible statutes written by tax lawyers for the rest of us to follow.
PS: For more information you may be able to get the article I wrote for "Space Technology International" annual edition in 1992, from interlibrary loan.
Re:MX (Score:3, Informative)
The early SS-18 was not accurate enough to use in a counterforce role. It had to be used against cities (or very soft military targets). It was also sometimes fitted with a very large single warhead - again for use against population: hence the name. Later MIRV'd versions improved accuracy considerably and were suitable for use against ICBM's... but by then the thing was already named.
Peacekeeper on the otherhand was a counterforce weapon
Even more terrifying... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, I've got to ask this question. What exactly do you Americans think the rest of the world thinks when you announce a new form of destruction?
Seems you guys think it's ok if you have big guns, but it's not ok if others do. Here's a clue for you: this is why you're a terrorist target.
Here is a clue for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is a terrorist target because our way of life threatens their way of life. In other words, we seek freedom for ourselves and believe others should have the same choice. Most of these terrorist are from oppresive regimes that require terror and force to remain in power, hence we are a threat to them and they are using the only means they know how to react.
For your information all coutries are terrorist targets. The US just happens to have the highest profile because other that Israel and Russia very few countries are actively trying to combat terrorism.
What will your claim be when Terrorist bomb the summer olympics? You know its a target, I don't think athletes have guns.
no, here's a clue for YOU (Score:4, Insightful)
European nations have been the target of modern-day terrorism for decades. It's just that many Americans (you are an example) have been living in such ignorance that they never noticed that, either domestic or elsewhere. Only when terrorists struck a bunch of iconic buildings did the general US population finally notice, and the reaction has been paranoid and ineffective so far. It's been paranoid because, despite all the fear mongering by politicians, terrorism remains a negligible cause of death in the US.
As for why the US is the target of Islamic terrorism, that shouldn't be a mystery to anybody: it's because of US middle-east policies, foremost support of Israel. Those policies may or may not be justified, but whether they are doesn't change the fact that they are the cause of terrorism.
If other nations had done to the US what the US has done to a country like Iran, Americans like you would be literally up in arms: you'd be the terrorists. Those people are pretty much of the same mindset as you.
The US is a terrorist target because our way of life threatens their way of life.
That is true, but not in the way you intended. The US way of life threatens "their" way of life because of the voracious American appetite for natural resources and military influence. If the US stopped engaging in the Middle East, there would be no Middle Eastern terrorism against the US. Oh, sure, those people would still not like the US, but they wouldn't bother coming here to bomb us.
In other words, we seek freedom for ourselves and believe others should have the same choice.
Nations like Switzerland and Sweden are highly tolerant, open, and free societies, far more liberal socially and far less religious than the US. If terrorists acted because they felt threatened by political freedoms, sexuality, and godlessness, as you suggest, they'd pick Switzerland and Sweden as their primary targets. But, in reality, those countries are largely being left alone by terrorists.
re: space shuttle ground (Score:4, Insightful)
The grounding of the space shuttle has nearly no effect on the demand for space launches. It was forbidden from carring commercial payloads after the Challenger disaster. Additionally, almost any payload that the Shuttle has to carry to the International Space Station for the next few years can *only* be carried by the shuttle.
However, space station material resupply is shuffled over to Soyuz launchers.
It's all about the Benjamins (Score:5, Informative)
I say: Yeah right! The shuttle hasn't launched a satellite in years, let alone a commercial payload. And the 'new generation' of American boosters aren't 'still being developed', they exist right now: the Pegasus and Taurus (Orbital Sciences Corp) at the low end of the market, and the EELVs, i.e. Delta IV and Atlas V (Boeing and Lockheed respectively), at the high end of the market (NASA 'next-gen' launch vehicle will most likely be one of the EELVs). Yet Boeing and Lockheed both claimed they couldn't get sufficient commercial launch contracts for their EELVs, and thus jacked the price up on the DOD launches they were slated to do. Even Pegasus and Taurus launches are rare. Why? Because the cost a crapload! Launch costs can be a significant fraction (up to 50%) of the cost of a satellite. Commercial contractors are launching on Russian rockets because they can do it for 1/5 to 1/10 of the price of a US launch.
The only 'next-gen' launch vehicle likely to put a dent in that anytime soon is SpaceX [spacex.com]'s Falcon, which promises launch costs on the order of $6M. If they can actually pull it off, Falcon has the potential to be a game changer in the launch market. Until then, cheap Russian launches are the way to go.
Aerosol warheads? (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, you're probably going to get a launch at one of your cities for each of your launches before the target finds out that you aren't using nuclear warheads.
This isn't to say it's impossible--it sounds technically doable--but under what cases would it make any sense? The referenced article had as much techical detail as the Slashdot article--one sentence. A Google search for "aerosol warhead" suprisingly produces only a single reference. I didn't know there was and query that would produce a single response, unless you just copied the whole document into the search box . . . .
all in the name (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it amusing that if the missile is pointed at us we call it 'Satan [globalsecurity.org]'. If we point it at them, its called a 'Peacekeeper [globalsecurity.org]' whose role is 'Nuclear Deterence'.
Re:FP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FP (Score:2, Interesting)
Worth Demonizing (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case. an enemy's nuclear missiles are worth demonizing. I'm sure the Soviet's would have done the same had the U.S. used a similar nomenclature scheme, even if they were on the wrong side.
Demonizing was part of it, but not all... (Score:5, Informative)
Which raises a question (Score:3, Interesting)
What were the names assigned by the Soviets to our stuff, specifically the SR-71? They had to know of its existance long before the name Blackbird (or Habu) was made public.
We called our MIRV MX missle The Peacekeeper... (Score:4, Funny)
Satan's name is from the other side (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually they wouldn't.
SS-## and the "S..." names are NATO shorthand from the cold-war era (for obvious reasons, the Soviet Union would rather not offer the specsheets for download at that time).
"Russian" designations for the same systems were R-## etc.
Blast from the past... (Score:2)
But seriously, way to go, now what can we use old SCUDs for?
Re:FP (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Smallpox worse then fusion bomb? WTF! (Score:4, Funny)
They do -- you just have to be given a 'weak' version of the bomb, and you build up immunity.
At least, nobody has ever complained of _not_ building up immunity.
Re:Smallpox worse then fusion bomb? WTF! (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you're dead, though, what do you care how it happened?
Re:Smallpox worse then fusion bomb? WTF! (Score:2)
How quickly could you be vaccinated, and how long would it take to make you immune? If you were within the effective radius of an aerosol or downwind, would you relly be better off than if you were within the blast radius or fallout zone of a TN warhead? Radiation suits and underground shelters work much more quickly
Re:Smallpox worse then fusion bomb? WTF! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Smallpox worse then fusion bomb? WTF! (Score:2)
You don't know the half of it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) The Soviet Union did all the heavy lifting when it came to defeating the Nazis in WW2. That's not to say that the Western allies didn't contribute AT ALL, but the Soviets bore the brunt of it and did the lions share of destroying the German army. Accordingly, the Soviets got VERY good at large-scale land warfare, especially with tanks.
2) Communism had been on the US radar at least since 1917 and probably earlier. Pure-form Communism (the spontanious revolt of the working class against their opressors) had been the greatest fear of any US captain of industry since the first worker uprisings, and Soviet-style Communism was seen (by some) to be the fullest expression of the spirit of worker revolt as threat.
3) More than a few Western generals and intellectuals wanted to keep on going after the defeat of Germany and go after the USSR next. Patton in particular was a very vocal proponant of defeating the USSR NOW (in 1945) while they were weakened, and while the US Army was already there and fully equipped. After all, they were going to have to fight eventually, why not get it over with?
4) There was a certain amount of Soviet resentment over how long it took to get the Western allies into the fight, and I think (given the anti-Soviet statements that kept turning up) a lingering suspicion that the delay was purposeful, with the intent that the USSR should bleed its strength off against Germany so that the West could come in and finish the Soviets off. Certainly Stalin felt that way, at least for a little while.
So then, at the end of WW2 you've got a Soviet Union with a lot of waretime experience, that feels threatened by the West, and which paid a HORRIFIC cost in lives and is VERY much determined to never go through that experience again.
They may or may not have had expansionist goals as well. Certainly at the time we expected them to come pouring through the Fulda Gap at any second. I know *I* certainly expected them to attack first. Now I'm no longer sure.
But anyway, the Soviets know armoured warefare, right? And one of the tenets of fighting an armoured battle is the concept of "defense in depth". You cannot just line up all your soldiers along the border, WW1-style, because the enemy will mass his forces at a single point, punch through, and now he's running amok in your rear while all your soldiers are up on the border.
So instead, you put a screen on the border, and you keep massed maneouver units some distance behind the border. When the screen locates the centre of axis of the attack, you counterattack the main thrust with your own thrust.
But this caused a couple of problems for the West.
First, the Soviet army was VERY much larger and more powerful than the Western armies. Unit for unit, the West was better, but the Soviets made up for the quality gap with quantity in spades. "defense in depth" wasn't going to be enough - the West needed "force multipliers" like chemical weapons and nukes. Accordingly, it was NATO policy to "go nuclear" IMMEDIATELY.
Quick aside: In the late 80s, Canada bough CF18 fighters, which are really lovely aircraft, but it retained a couple of squadrons of CF104 Starfighters as "ground attack" planes. The F18 is a great ground attack plane, while the F104 is about the worst ground attack plane you could possibly imagine. The 104 goes really, really fast in a straight line, and not much else.
Canada is all about "do more with less", but this always struck me as being singularly unwise.
Well it turned out that the REAL mission of these planes was NUCLEAR ground attack. Load up an American nuke bomb, and then go like hell towards whatever massed formation got discovered and nuke it.
Anyway, the combination of "defense in depth" and "nuke first" did not sit too well with the West Germans, because, well, West Germany
Re:You don't know the half of it.... (Score:3, Informative)
Given the number of countries they invaded (Poland, Check-ican'tspellitwtf, Afghanistan) I'm guessing, yeah, they had expansionist goals.