Iran Announces Manned Space Mission Plans 559
Lucas123 writes "After Iran's first attempt to launch a satellite on Sunday fell noticeably short of the Earth's atmosphere (though Iran claimed it made it into orbit), government officials stated they intend to put a man into space within 10 years. The long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into space can also be used for launching weapons. Iran says it has no intention to use the technology for launching nuclear warheads."
Reuters and singlepage (Score:3, Informative)
Greasemonkey script to do that automatically. [userscripts.org]
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:uh huh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:but will they get him back down? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:5, Informative)
You must really be crazy to call the proven conspiracy of Bush's team members to arm Iran something worthy of a "tinfoil hat".
Especially when you yourself link Rumsfeld and Cheney with Ford. But then, you don't bother to point out that Rumsfeld and Cheney met while working together for Nixon. All of which is consistent with working with America's enemies.
You've got your tinfoil hat on backwards. It's frying your brain.
Re:but will they get him back down? (Score:1, Informative)
"Poetic justice" puts too much of a friendly face on it. "Bad." Nuclear strikes are bad. Nuclear weapons proliferation is bad.
It's simple. Forget the amusement for a moment and say this with me: It would be a Bad Thing.
Re:Space X (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the Iranian education system for the sciences is one of the best in the world.
Note that this is for the upper/middle classes only.
Iranian doctors have long been, or at least were until the whole post 9/11 thing started, considered to be among the finest in the world.
My point is Iran doesn't only contain religious nutbags, that's a little thing called propaganda.
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:3, Informative)
The Bush dynasty has been working closely with Iran, arming it, even protecting AQ Khan (the Pakistani whose stolen nuke secrets started the Iranian, N Korean and Libyan nuke projects). That's why the "Iran" in "Iran/Contra" was always the worst part of that traitorous operation out of Oliver North's White House basement office. And why the resumes of the Bush Jr "brain trust" are full of "Iran/Contra" experience.
AQ Khan wasn't selling 'stolen' secrets, he was selling the nuclear plans he used to build Pakistan's nuclear weapons. He is a hero in Pakistan for giving them the bomb to rival India. He was also selling much more than just plans for nuclear weapons, he was selling the equipment needed to implement the plans as well.
AQ Khan didn't start the Iranian program either, he just jump started it with better technology. He also sold them the plans for machining enriched Uranium into spheres(unless of course you believe the Iranians story in which case he just gave it to them for free, without even being asked). The slashdot crowd is probably aware that weapons are the ONLY use for Uranium spheres.
Of course, it gets better. AQ Khan is such a hero in Pakistan that when Musharraf made him apologize for selling nuclear technology there was a public backlash for embarassing a national hero. AQ Khan is now on loose house arrest in Pakistan and the US/CIA have been refused access to question him.
Now here's the greatest parts:
1. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces that were chased out of Afghanistan are now based in the Northern tribal region of Pakistan, where they enjoy tremendous public support.
2. After Musharraf and the Pakistan military co-operated with the US to crack down on Islamic extremism, there is a virtual civil war going on in Pakistan. On one side is the corrupt military that controls most of the country by force. Scarily, those are the 'good' guys. The other side are the religous mullahs. They aren't the moderate muslim leaders we have over here. They are pro-bin laden jihadists who we really wouldn't like to see in control of the nuclear weapons that AQ Khan built for Pakistan. The Best part is they control the region the Taliban and Al-Qaeda retreated so completely the military is scared to go there and it would be suicide for the police to enter it.
Frankly, that all scares the willies out of me.
but ignore the real world, lets worry about the Bush Dynasty and it's heinous attempts at holding a free election in Iraq.
Re:Should provide entertainment. (Score:5, Informative)
I know you're making a joke here, but the joke is less funny the more you know about Iran. Iran and Iraq differ by a lot more than one consonant. For one thing, the way their government works is much more complicated than the old Baghdad Bob's Baathist regime.
First of all, charming Mr. Ahmadinejad, although he is quite capable of saying some pretty outrageous things, doesn't wield supreme power, or even anything close to it. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khameni, is much more powerful. But even his power is arguably the ultimate one, it is by design much more awkward for him to wield than, say, Saddam's version of ultimate power.
There are even relative moderates in the government like Akbar Rafsanjani, former president and current chairman of both the Expendiency Council and Assembly of Experts. The Assembly theoretically has the power to dismiss the Supreme Leader, although no actions in that direction have ever, so far as we know, been taken.
The point here is that the Iranian government isn't even close to being the kind of dictatorship where everybody has to parrot the President's fantasies. To tell you the truth, it isn't quite like any other form of government I can think of, it's more like a hybrid of a democratic Republic and a theocracy, with the theocracy acting primarily in a judicial role but with certain executive powers theoretically in their direct or indirect control. Ack, that's a really bad summary, but the best I can do.
The important thing that everybody should understand about Iran is that the Iranian government is not anything monolithic entity driven by the ego or ideology of any single person, not even the Supreme Leader.
The way we deal with such a country isn't quite the same as you would deal with a dictatorship. Perhaps one might approach Iran in the way we dealt with the old totalitarian states, although Iran isn't really very much like them. There is a power structure there which, through its various organs, might be dealt with pragmatically. Such dealings might even, in some cases, tip the balance of power between factions.
The Iranians take seriously the idea of being an "Islamic Republic". It seems almost incomprehensible to the Western mind that this could be anything but a sham, but it's not. There's a thousand years of Shiite historical and religious thought which limits the ability of even senior religious leaders to wield absolute power.
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:5, Informative)
I believe parent was talking about the prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 in 1953. I suggest you google "Operation Ajax".
Re:but will they get him back down? (Score:3, Informative)
Did we forget that establishing this "small piece of land where they could feel safe" involved forcefully removing the people who were living there?
Perhaps it's better to stick to truths that far more people agree with, such as "killing is wrong", and the sovereignty of existing states and international borders.
Okay, let's talk about 1948. In 1948, there was already a large jewish population living in Palestine. The Palestinians were persecuting them for the last 40 some years, as was the custom in those times. As a result the Jewish people armed themselves and had a more or less autonomous state within Palestine. This resulted in a civil war and a UN mandate for two sovereign states of Israel and Palestine, with internationally approved borders. Israel declared it's independence and accepted these borders. The surrounding arab nations though declared war on the new state and sent their Nazi trained armies to destroy it. They so outnumbered the new state that they urged all Palestinians to leave their homes to return in a few days. Don't expect any tears from me that Israel won that war. In my opinion, that on top of the UN mandate for an Israeli state earned them the right to exist, and I could care less if that angers the nations that tried to destroy it.
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:5, Informative)
But at some point the Islamic side will wake up and see just how godless the Chinese can be, and the Chinese will wake up and see just how unsensibly non-pragmatic the Islamic fundamentalists can be, and things will become "interesting", in the Confucian sense.
It isn't reported much, but there ARE Islamic bombings in China already...
Pretty Much...Rocket Details (Score:4, Informative)
The Safir rocket is an adaptation of their Shahab-3 missile. This is a medium range ballistic missile and one of several they claimed to have test-launched en masse last month, giving Stephen Colbert an easy 10 minutes of fill material after it was found out the photos of the launch were doctored. It seems their Shahab inventory, at least flight-ready Shahab's, is not as large as they want outsiders to believe.
The Shahab itself is based on the North Korean Nodong missile, which in turn was developed from second-hand Scud missiles acquired from Egypt. Going back even further, the Scud originated in the 50's in the Soviet Union as a scaled down, improved version of the German V-2. Whew! Talk about a long lineage.
For the launch vehicle derivative, it apparently has been fitted with a different second stage, possibly derived from Soviet SA-2 surface to air missiles, and probably a small third stage with a payload fairing for the orbital version. Payload would likely be very small...the Shahab-3 only carries a 1 ton warhead on a sub-orbital trajectory. The launch weight is less than SpaceX's Falcon-1, which has a 700kg LEO capability and presumably a higher-performance engine.
Despite not having a large technical infrastructure, Iran is not entirely devoid of reasonably competent engineers. Given enough resolve and a couple more tries, they will probably succeed. It at least appears theoretically possible for that rocket to reach orbit.
However, that is still a very, very long ways from putting a man in space, even counting on existing technologies. Such a rocket will not scale well at all, meaning they will need to develop something completely new from the ground up...because North Korea isn't going to be able to supply them with a Soyuz to copy. China, for example, launched their first satellite in 1970, but it wasn't 2003 that they actually put a person in orbit. That was after drawing on Soviet experience and 3-4 generations of their own ballistic mis...err, I mean expendable launch vehicles.
Like many of their past claims, there's little reason to expect Iran to be able to follow through on the man in space claim for the foreseeable future.
Analogies suck... (Score:3, Informative)
I thought only car analogies were allowed here... OK, just kidding. The situation in Israel is more like an abused woman who moves to a new apartment to get away from her husband who beat her. Her new neighbors say "hey, we are into this sadomasochism thing too! Let's slap that bitch around!" Only to find that she has taken self-defense training and got a gun and learned to shoot.
When the old Palestine British protectorate was divided by the United Nations in the 1940s, the smaller Jewish part was named Israel and the larger part of the territory was named Jordan. "Palestine" is actually Jordan. But, different from Israel, Jordan was never a fully democratic country and in september 1970, the "Black September", a faction of the Jordanians tried to overthrow the government and failed. That faction are the people now known as "Palestinians".
When Egypt sat down to negotiate and recognized the right of Israel to exist, they got back all the territory they had lost in the wars against Israel. If Syria and Jordan wished to negotiate, they would probably get the same results Egypt did. The problem is that it's a bit hard to negotiate with someone whom you have publicly sworn to kill, unless you agree to back off a bit from that position.
You may be closer than you think (Score:2, Informative)
There will be no homosexuals in Iran because the government will send them all into orbit without means to get back down alive.
Well, the Koran does call for homosexuals to be taken to the top of the highest point available, and thrown from it to their deaths. Before that's always been a bridge or building or mountain. But now that you mention it, Iran can bring Sharia into the space age.
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm...
China's GDP in 2007 was $3.3 billion growing at 11%, US $14 billion growing at 0.9%. My back of the napkin calculation indicates that China will be at $15 billion in 15 years or so (3.3 billion * 1.11 to the 15th power), the US will be then at $16 billion. In 16 years, assuming the same growth rates, China will surpass the GDP of the USA nearly by a billion dollars or so.
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:3, Informative)
Oops.
In my previous reply replace "billions" with "trillions". The gist of the calculation remains the same.
Re:but will they get him back down? (Score:1, Informative)
No, Israel's "right to exist" means it's right to an autonomous government within it's borders.
So, Israel changing it's name to Palestine and recognizing a right of return for the Palestinians (which would make Israel predominantly Palestinian) would be entirely consistent with Israel's "right to exist" - and, therefore, a valid solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Removing that government by military force is what is meant by removing that right to exist.
So, using embargoes (as was done with apartheid South Africa) to force Israel to stop discriminating against the Palestinians (for example, with respect to immigration policy) would be totally OK?
After 4 decades of anti-semetic armies trying to destroy Israel,...
Try anti-zionist armies. And, for those that don't know, the difference between a Jew and a Zionist is similar to the difference between a white person and a white supremacist.
Re:That's Not "Ironic" (Score:3, Informative)
Right. Nobody saw that one coming before the occupation.