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It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

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North Korea’s new plan to develop and launch satellites

North Korea announced yesterday a new program to accelerate the development of home-built space satellites and orbital rockets.

North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun published a commentary laying out the country’s plans to send more satellites into space over the next five years. The program “can contribute to improving the economy and people’s lives,” the article reads. “It is a global trend to seek economic development through space programs,” the October 31 piece said. “According to our five-year plan for space development, we will launch more working satellites, such as geostationary ones.” Geostationary satellites orbit the Earth about 38,500 kilometers (22,000 miles) over a fixed position over the equator and revolve from west to east like the Earth.

It is hard to know how realistic this program is, and how much of it is actually a cover for North Korea’s ICBM development efforts.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • LocalFluff

    Delta B launched the first GEO-satellite in 1963, but I don’t have figures to compare it with North Korea’s satellite launcher. Minotaur V of today weighs only 90 tons on the pad and can put half a ton in GEO.

    I think that Kim is very serious about his space program. Space is essential for cyber warfare and cyber crime. They can get a completely own global communication system. They can eavesdrop on almost any communication in the world. And they could wipe out US military satellites.

    And Kim Jong-Un is, after all, the first man who walked on the Moon:
    https://www.theonion.com/north-korea-celebrates-as-kim-jong-un-becomes-first-man-1819574458

  • Steve C

    How does one tell the difference between anLteveO satalite and an EMP bomb?

  • Steve C

    How does one tell the difference between an LEO satellite and an EMP bomb?

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