gambit
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Here is a good article that is instructive on what happened without getting too technical...
There's A Reason It's Called Rocket Science : NPR
Here is why...
Your mockery is a sign of your ignorance.
In testing, the most important thing is variables control, meaning you make INCREMENTAL introduction of variables, such as weather or people and under people it would include proficiency and stupidity. From a bicycle to an F-1 racer to an ICBM, EVERY test is a rigged test. Your radar is not yet ready for weather? Then test it on sunny days until your development made it ready for rainy days. You think your aircraft is ready for the field? Let us introduce a klutz, a freshly trained mechanic, an experienced mechanic, and the master technician and see how ready is your aircraft. Next we will introduce salt laden air instead of dry desert air. Now we will see how 'ready' is your aircraft for presentation.
For the rocket scientist in the article, what he meant is that for his nuclear oriented colleague, EVERY variable is under the nuclear scientist's control. Uranium enrichment problem? That is your fault, not Mother Nature. Centrifuge too fragile under high rpm? That is your fault for not finding sufficiently good steel.
But for this rocket scientist, the moment his rocket is off the ground, its fate is out of his hands. He must design it to deal with everything short of tornadoes and hurricanes thrown at his rocket. It is not as if the President in a moment of national security crisis order a launch and the reply goes: 'Sorry, sir. But the wind is 10 mph so we cannot retaliate. Then for tomorrow we have rain in the forecast. So we cannot retaliate tomorrow either.'
Launching a cargo into orbit and leave it there is doubly less complicated than launching the same cargo into orbit, leave it there for a while, no matter how long is that 'while', then returning it safely back to Earth. And yes, the nuclear warhead's safety in orbit is paramount. Whatever you do with it after orbit is your business and a different issue, but until that point where you discard it, its safety from launch to orbit to descent is the most important thing in the program.
Now is the best time to pressure North Korea, both militarily and diplomatically. The military stick will be big and spiked but the diplomatic carrot will be stale, not fresh.
There's A Reason It's Called Rocket Science : NPR
Now that is quite interesting...A portable nuclear explosive device is easier to develop and produce than a multi-stage rocket.North Korea this week quite literally demonstrated an old truism, with the world as an anxious witness. It turns out that reaching space is, as the saying goes, as tough as rocket science.
Failure Is Always An Option
"A rocket is an extremely complex device. There are millions of pieces and therefore millions of opportunities to make errors — to make errors in calculations, to make errors in construction," Walsh says.
And in rocket science, failure is always an option, says Walsh. He points out that while the capability to launch either a spacecraft or a warhead is substantially the same, producing a nuclear bomb such as the one North Korea successfully tested in 2006 "turns out to be far easier to do than to develop a three-stage rocket that can carry it halfway around the world."
Here is why...
For those of you who mocked US for out ABM program that we had 'rigged' tests, I will repeat what is well known in testing: EVERY test, and that may include the last type up to deployment, is a 'rigged' test."Testing is everything in a rocket program, and you can't control the variables that way," Thielmann says. "The more you change things around, the less likely you are to get usable results."
Your mockery is a sign of your ignorance.
In testing, the most important thing is variables control, meaning you make INCREMENTAL introduction of variables, such as weather or people and under people it would include proficiency and stupidity. From a bicycle to an F-1 racer to an ICBM, EVERY test is a rigged test. Your radar is not yet ready for weather? Then test it on sunny days until your development made it ready for rainy days. You think your aircraft is ready for the field? Let us introduce a klutz, a freshly trained mechanic, an experienced mechanic, and the master technician and see how ready is your aircraft. Next we will introduce salt laden air instead of dry desert air. Now we will see how 'ready' is your aircraft for presentation.
For the rocket scientist in the article, what he meant is that for his nuclear oriented colleague, EVERY variable is under the nuclear scientist's control. Uranium enrichment problem? That is your fault, not Mother Nature. Centrifuge too fragile under high rpm? That is your fault for not finding sufficiently good steel.
But for this rocket scientist, the moment his rocket is off the ground, its fate is out of his hands. He must design it to deal with everything short of tornadoes and hurricanes thrown at his rocket. It is not as if the President in a moment of national security crisis order a launch and the reply goes: 'Sorry, sir. But the wind is 10 mph so we cannot retaliate. Then for tomorrow we have rain in the forecast. So we cannot retaliate tomorrow either.'
Launching a cargo into orbit and leave it there is doubly less complicated than launching the same cargo into orbit, leave it there for a while, no matter how long is that 'while', then returning it safely back to Earth. And yes, the nuclear warhead's safety in orbit is paramount. Whatever you do with it after orbit is your business and a different issue, but until that point where you discard it, its safety from launch to orbit to descent is the most important thing in the program.
The South Koreans have started salvage operations and there is NOTHING the North Koreans can do about it except to kiss the remains goodbye. The South Koreans and the Americans will have a field day with the forensics. We are one hundred times the experts at this than the North Koreans. We will find clues about their rocket technology in details they are too stupid to realize we could."We can see evidence that they are digressing from a well-managed program," he says.
Now is the best time to pressure North Korea, both militarily and diplomatically. The military stick will be big and spiked but the diplomatic carrot will be stale, not fresh.