Iran's New Space Program 243
eldavojohn writes "Coinciding with the 32nd anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Iran opened a center to receive satellite images built 'entirely by Iranian engineers.' Iran promised that by the end of their year (March of 2011) they would launch two observational satellites: Fajr (Dawn) and Rasad-1 (Observation-1). You might recall two years ago when they launched Omid, which completed about 700 orbits in two weeks. There are reports that new launch rockets will be revealed in February to launch the new satellites — all equipment is claimed to be entirely Iranian made. Iranian media is reporting that one of the satellites 'carries remote measuring equipment that would be used in meteorology and identifying sea borders.' The Iranian Student News Agency says Explorer 4 (Kavoshgar 4) is meant to transport humans and other living organisms into space, and that the sensory on the satellites 'is able to find gas and oil resources, identify coal mines, jungles and agricultural products as well as salty-marsh and contaminated environments.' These rapid fire achievements are not the only bragging Iran has done as of late; they also claim 'new gamma radiation units for medical treatments and a supercomputer billed as among the top 500 most powerful in the world. But, fact or fiction aside, the satellites have old enemies speculating."
Re:Why all the hate? (Score:5, Informative)
Stable? At the last election, government forces killed some 36 people demonstrating against vote fraud.
That's not the mark of a stable government; that's a mark of a totalitarian regime that will kill to stay in power.
That's why it's bad when they get nukes.
I for one believe that trade is the best binder; sooner or later we won't be able to go to war against China because we simply won't have the industrial base to support ourselves (and I'm not talking weapons but shoes. How long would a US president last if the voters couldn't buy shoes? )
Let's bind Iran in a web of trade so they can't go to war with us. The problem is that we really don't have anything they want....
Re:Russian Parts, Chinese Parts... (Score:2, Informative)
The first Iranian astronaut was Anousheh Ansari, a female
Re:Yes, Russia better worry the most (Score:3, Informative)
In the last 20 years there have been significantly more successful attacks on US soil by Christian extremists (primarily in the form of attacks on abortion clinics) then their have been by Islamic extremists.
What's the body count? Last I checked, the Islamist extremists killed over two orders of magnitude more people than the anti-abortion people. The second biggest known terrorist attack (the Oklahoma City bombing) was anti-government not Christian. EgyptAir 990 [wikipedia.org] might qualify as a terrorist attack. After that, you're into nuts with guns territory.
If we look overseas we see a number of high casualty bombings in Europe and a ridiculous amount of bloodletting throughout the Middle East. You can talk about how scary the Christians are, but where's the countries with high death rates from Christian extremists? The Islamists have killed lots of people in Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Nothing in the Christian world compares to that.
in orbit, to face Mecca's direction, face Earth (Score:2, Informative)
There's been no Iranian Islamonauts, female or otherwise.
In my book, that's score 1 for the Americans, err Russians. Damn this outsourcing is confusing.
Re:Yes, Russia better worry the most (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC couple months ago, an american christian preacher went to Uganda and preached about the righteousness of killing homosexuals, dozens have been hanged and stoned and laws have been drafted with the death penalty for homosexuality in response.