[Carl Vehse]

"It does appear that at a minimum this missile may go up to 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), but it may go as far as 11,000 kilometers (6,800 miles)," Melissa Hanham, senior research associate with the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute, tells NPR's Robert Siegel.

The missile only went 620 miles, without a payload It will be a while before the Norks have a missile that can go 6200 miles with a payload.

Why the Chicken Little hype?!?

[Spktyr]

The distance it went downrange (620 miles) is a lot less important than the altitude it went to. The Japanese are saying it hit 3000km altitude.

The International Space Station orbits, repeat *orbits* at just 330-430km. If you can achieve orbital insertion, you can bring down your warheads anywhere on the planet. If not, you can trade altitude for distance, which is where the 10-11K km number is coming from.

[gaijin]

I think maybe you didn’t read your own post closely.

[octex]

It’s been reported that the altitude was higher than the space station. ...Given the right trajectory from a very high altitude in space, gravity takes over when fuel is gone.

I think the tests have been to determine if the nose cones will survive re-entry through the atmosphere and deliver the package.

[Tallguy]

Throw a baseball straight up in the air. Now throw it for distance. The higher you can throw it in the first instance means that you can throw it much, much further in the second.

Essentially, the Norks are shooting almost straight up. It’s a relatively simple calculation to figure out how much velocity & total thrust they are generating.

And while these tests do not carry a warhead they are almost certainly carrying a dummy payload matching the design weight of their projected (or current) warhead design. That is what the underground tests are moving toward.