The details are murky and, considering the source, unlikely to become much clearer. But word is the much vaunted North Korean launch of a Unha-3 rocket from a newly completed Tangachai-ri space center, believed to consist of three stages with at least one heavy liquid fuel stage, failed just after liftoff for reasons unknown.
(ABC News) — The 90-ton rocket launched with a larger than anticipated flare. But U.S. officials said that the missile is believed to have crashed into the sea. It was launched from the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in the northern part of the country, near North Korea’s border with China. Anticipation of the missile launch began when the Communist nation had announced a five-day window for launching a satellite, which began on Thursday.
There are a lot of things that can wrong on such a device. Some leading possibilities are combustion chamber instability, breaches in the ultra high-pressure pumps and pipes that feed fuel by the mega-liter to the engine, pre-sonic or sonic shock damaging the casing and/or infrastructure, or stage separation malfunction. Instability in particular is a tough nut to crack. Back in the mid sixties that same problem held back the development of the F-1 rocketdyne engine used on the Saturn V Apollo program for months.
What’s sad is the only reason they tried was so they could go for another world shake-down; nobody wants the North Koreans to have ballistic missiles, let alone nukes, and some nations are willing to fork over humanitarian aid for their starving population and long collapsed economy just to keep them from trying. Sheesh, if any nation’s masses need an Arab Spring moment, it has to be these poor, misled, hungry Korean souls and the tiny circle of vicious ignorant shitheads exploiting them.
Given the past shenanigans of these authoritarian freaks, a new 29 year-old heir apparent notwithstanding, they could issue a press release anytime whining that we shot it down or a western capitalist pig saboteur was at fault. Assuming they bother to inform the world or their own populace about it at all. But I doubt anyone knows what actually went wrong, and right now that probably includes the North Koreans.
They’ll do what they did last time: Tell everyone it worked.
What AR said. Though if the intent is to impress the citizenry I don’t see why they have to bother with the launch at all, just say it was a stealth rocket designed to evade the imperialist radars.
The North Koreans are certainly not impressing anyone else. Heck even Iran is doing better.
Considering the dramatic buildup to the launch, I was sort of expecting an embarrassing failure. Do we have any way of knowing just how out-of-date their technology is? I’m assuming it’s pretty old.
If you really want to understand the regime:
http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334287635&sr=8-1
Nothing to Envy is a heart-wrenching first hand account of life in North Korea.
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Loving-Care-Fatherly-Leader/dp/0312323220/ref=pd_sim_b_4
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is a more research-based book about the history of the regime.
sunsangnim @ 3
‘ we have any way of knowing just how out-of-date their technology is? I’m assuming it’s pretty old.’
Yes I read a while ago that most hardware is circa late 70’s from China and Russian software from before the ISS missions with a few glitch patches to tailor it to the hardware.
Seems they might have a mismatch in fuel delivery to the combustion chamber…getting far more flow then the fabric of the nozzle can handle!
The heat build up just raptured the lower fuel pod…
But that is only scuttlebutt on a few sites…seems to fit with what was observed…but no doubt the ‘sabre rattling’ was the ultimate goal, with a little domestic fear of military might to keep the home legions quiescent.
But making utter pompous fools of themselves is the real prize here!
Expect one or two engineers are going to a vacation gulag somewhere cold!
Why am I suddenly imagining Nelson on The Simpsons laughing?
“The heat build up just raptured the lower fuel pod” – now if one of our christianist red states had their own space program, that might just be true!