Experts Call North Korean Missile Launch a Failure

New York Times ^ | April 5, 2009 | William J. Broad

[reaganaut1]

North Korea failed in its highly vaunted effort to fire a satellite into orbit, military and private experts said Sunday after reviewing detailed tracking data that showed the missile and payload fell into the sea. Some said the failure undercut the North Korean campaign to come across as a fearsome adversary able to hurl deadly warheads halfway around the globe.

Defying world opinion, North Korea in recent weeks had moved steadily and fairly openly toward launching a long-range rocket that Western experts saw as a major step toward a military weapon. The launching itself on Sunday, which the North Korean government portrayed as a success — even bragging that the supposed satellite payload was now broadcasting patriotic tunes from space — outraged Japan and South Korea, led to widespread rebuke by President Obama and other leaders, and forced the United Nations Security Council to go into an emergency session.

But looking at the launching from a purely technical vantage point, space experts said the failure represented a blow that in all likelihood would seriously delay the missile’s debut.

“It’s got to be embarrassing,” said Geoffrey E. Forden, a missile expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I can image heads flying if the ‘Dear Leader’ finds out the satellite didn’t fly into orbit, ” he said, referring to the name North Koreans are obliged to use when speaking of Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s reclusive leader.

Analysts dismissed the idea that the rocket firing could represent a furtive success, calling the failure consistent with past North Korean fumbles and suggesting it may reveal a significant quality-control problem in one of the world’s most isolated nations.

[nufsed]

Thanx

[Go Gordon]

North Korea failed in its highly vaunted effort to fire a satellite into orbit, military and private experts said Sunday

Since it wasn't a satelite launch, it could not be ruled a failure. They were launching a long range missile. That's what needs to be evaluated. "If I announce a launch of a satelite, and launch a missile, what will other countries do".

[fso301]

How far away from the launch site did the missile come down?

[Publius6961]

military and private experts said Sunday after reviewing detailed tracking data that showed the missile and payload fell into the sea.

And...

What?

Is this information so critical that it must be kept secret?
I'm sure any such tracking could have been distributed immediately showing the test flight from liftoff to splashdown.

It hasn't happened because...?

[SpinnerWebb]

the missile and payload fell into the sea

Is said payload recoverable, so we could at least see what they were trying to launch?

[Moonman62]

North Korea failed in its highly vaunted effort to fire a satellite into orbit,

How dumb or deceptive does a person have to be to say this was an attempted satellite launch?