A project worth mentioning is the Nampo Dam. It's an impressive feat of engineering and shows what they can do when they don't spend everything on the military.
Missed opportunity to talk about North Korea's hackers. North Korea is a small, poor country and yet they are believed to have some of the best state sponsored cybersecurity specialists on the planet. This is with a populace that by and large does not have access to computers. It'd be like if Michael Phelps was Nepalese. All of the ones mentioned here are just a part of nuclear weapons development. The difference between spacecraft and ICBM is where it lands.
People like to make jokes, but it's easy for them to forget that they are still the same people as South Koreans, just under a very different and oppressive political regime. The people are just as willful, resourceful, smart, and hardworking. For this reason, if the North Korean government problem were to be resolved in whatever way it might in the future, foreign investment into the country would probably be massive.
@@saulghim2661 Not to be rude, but that is incredibly naive. North Korea becoming the recipient of global recognition and investment is about as likely as Papua New Guinea becoming a superpower. They made a few rockets, that's it. That is literally it. In every other sector, the North Koreans are decades behind.
@@Big_Caesar1 They are decades behind because of crushing sanctions that are financially choking the country, and limits their access to any technology and materials. This isn't due to a lack of capability. As I already mentioned before, if the NK regime problem were to be solved by internal collapse, invasion, or whatever else, you'd see that the country (unified immediately or not) would flourish very quickly, after a generation or two. A tiny country of 25 million people doing what they've done under the constraints they've been subject to is indeed a testament to that fact.
@@saulghim2661 If their government "crisis" was solved it would not be North Korea any longer. South Korea still wants reunification, the only factor preventing that is the Juche government in charge in North Korea, if that falls, then efforts will be underway to incorporate the territory into South Korea, finally forming one Korea. In that scenario, of course Korea would receive investment, South Korea is already profoundly successful. There is no path for the current NK regime to achieve any sort of international recognition or investment. Military technology is where the North spends all of its money, its really not impressive when you are starving your populace and stagnating in every single other area like Science, Engineering, Human development, just so you can posture to much more successful countries with rockets and nuclear weapons. North Korea is a pariah state, and they survive on international aid (even the USA has bailed out North Korea many times with food aid, financial aid despite these "crushing sanctions")
@@Big_Caesar1 yeah but that’s why people would expand into it. It’s one of the only places capitalism isn’t allowed left. Like what new markets are there even. Everywhere else has already established in market. This would be the only new market we are going to get for a while
Considering that the country was completely destroyed in the 50s and has been blocked and embargoed for its entire existence, just make this achievements more impressive.
The North Korean economy did quite well during the Cold War for a simple reason - blackmail. After the Sino/Soviet split, North Korea refused to take a side, which prompted both countries to pour in aid to try and court them. (A bit like a bratty kid playing his divorced parents off against one another.) When the Soviet Union fell, North Korea's economy was toast
Nah, they should have way more. You have millions of people who's lives you dictate under your control, and you can't do more? They still had the Soviet Union looking out for them economically, and then direct trade with China. Now they have access information to the internet, and all that free knowledge. If I was a dictator? I think I could do more. Yet I guess it isn't easy staying a dictator. Gotta keep the people stupid and poor. Not even using somewhat modern agriculture to feed the populace alone is just... Stupid.
TBF, a submarine with diesel-electric engine can be even stealthier than a nuclear one for a simple reason: you can turn off the engine and just stand still completely silent. I'm not saying that the NK sub would be quieter, it would not, but the stealthier subs on the planet are NOT the nuclear one, but the type 212.
North Korea always has ironically been a fascinating country in terms of achievements wether it be space programs military programs or just how it hasn’t collapsed yet with their politics
Actually the SU and Russians have always been cautious. Even when selling their allies weapons, they were severely downgraded export versions which were a good decade or two behind their own latest. This is unlike the US, which would sell its allies near latest (obviously not THE latest) tech, especially to Britain and Israel. So calling out the SU or Russia as some mad country just proliferating weapons tech is just plain wrong. That title would actually go to a country like China (sold nuclear weapons designs and materials and parts to Pakistan) and Pakistan (which sold rocket tech they got from China to NK).
@@liamcg2521 What are you talking about? NASA had infinite funding and Nazi scientists to get it spaceborn. The North Koreans are under severe limitations yet they managed to put satellites in orbit. It's a massive achievement given the limitations, and they didn't blow up as many rockets as NASA.
Note that it potentially doesn't matter that the missile submarine sucks and can't hide forever. They can still survive a first strike simply by operating near North Korean shores where they can be protected by North Korean land based and surface assets, or hide near Russian/Chinese waters where those countries wouldn't be particularly enthusiastic about a huge SK/US led ASW effort.
It is reasonably impressive. The USA had German scientists and engineers to drive success in NASA via operation paperclip post WW2. What we see from NASA today, if we remove SpaceX from that consideration, is pretty average at best in terms of launches and crazy wasteful in terms of budget. Contrast this with what other nations such as India are achieving and it becomes more stark for NASA's achievement in recent decades.
"North Koreas non existing economy" speaks volumes about the ignorance toward this country, North Korea does in fact have a substantial heavy industry for a country of its size
That's about it, though. In my humble opinion, a heavy industry alone isn't a whole economy if the state itself is the only real customer. That just means it's an industrialized regime. When all you do is for the government and its goals, that's not a full grown economy but I do agree, NK is seriously underestimated on the world stage in its capabilities
@@YeeSoest I moved to Bulgaria 15 years ago. I was genuinely shocked to find out that literally everything I thought I knew about communism was 1) wrong 2) propaganda and 3 worst of all LAZY propaganda, that really annoyed me. cos its not just that it was better than we were told [it was] its that the stuff the people actually disliked we never got told about. And the stuff we did get tols about was mostly entirely made up.
@@piccalillipit9211 i have extensive family ties to the former DDR or East Germany and I had more than one ultra leftist teacher for most of my teenage years so I know communism wasn't what most of us westerners were told and people inside of it had an entirely different experience. That doesn't change the fact that most people - even today where societal changes fuel their confidence in it further - would not choose to go back to a plan economy etc and there's good reasons for that. Not the reasons they told us in school but still. I'm just so jealous to not have experienced the direct comparison between the "have it all" west and the "all we need" east and honestly I couldn't tell you where I'd end up... To be clear: If the West was at its core true to and honest about its ideals, goals and values? Easy. Since most of it is not...
@@YeeSoest - Well the big thing we didn't get taught in the wes t was how varied it was. Here in Bulgaria, they seem to have had a very good time, most people miss it and would like to go back [yes i know nostalgia will play a part]. Next door in Romania it was horrible. My friend there - her treat at Christmas was a pigs ear to chew on...!!! As I say the bit that annoys me the most is how lazy the propaganda was.
@@piccalillipit9211 true, our parents heard about the pig ears and said "that's what we're telling our kid's" Wasn't even a lie but was used like one! Things are never black and white or red and blue for that matter
@@topogigio7031 lmao nailed it. But it does kinda make you think about the situation, toddler with a toolbox and told to get after it, and a small block on the engine stand......meh we kinda just have to wait and see if she'll crank and start and not just blow up!
At 14:53 "....Yugo class...." I didn't know Serbia made submarines!! Seriously, a submarine with that name....I I just don't think I could step into it!! I would be afraid to have the same reputation as the car....
Actually the us a while back did a test to see how difficult it would be for a small country to manufacture a nuclear bomb without any knowledge and the people (who had 0 knowledge of nuclear bomb making) had a working prototype within a very short time, like few months. Its kinda shocking it took them this long to make them as us/ussr had them 60/50 years previously. The ussr gave them the direction but it took a long time to figure out how to make it work
I'm thinking a video on the things discovered separately the most times would be interesting. Like rocket engines and jet engines. How many separate times in history have wheels been 'invented' or beer or sails.
FYI, the orbits for the space program is about right. The average LEO sat can do 16 orbits a day and the sat was up for ~130 days. that is around the number of orbits reported
Thank you for bring this tough information to those of us who do not see comparable news stories in the major press releases. Not pleasant to learn but necessary to stay somewhat informed about is going on in the big world that most of us never see.
South Korea is already a powerhouse my friend. Strong economy, high quality life of people, strong army, strong allies 😃 in today's world Economy is your nuclear power. People of north Korea living in hell.
Eventually, quite possibly, but it would take *decades* after reunification, even if that reunification is entirely peaceful. Just look at Germany in the 1990s; the country is still in various ways suffering inequality, political tension, unemployment, and infrastructure challenges, 35 years later. -- And that despite the fact that the social and economic gap between the two Germanies was *nothing* like the Koreas is now. Moreover, at the time of reunification, West Germany had more than double the population of East Germany (while South Korea only just has double that of the North), and had the 4th largest economy in the world. In a word: maybe, but it will be an extremely rocky ride.
I don’t know much about how missles/rockets work, but could it be that it’s easier to launch it high (without aiming at anything really) but much harder to launch it at an actual target, even if it is closer at “only” 900 km
Because of gravity and aerodynamics it's harder to fire 'up' than 'out', so tests are completed vertically which once the math is done give the expected range, payload and speed etc. Really interesting subject tbh :)
People make fun of their military, and most of their military is horrifically undertrained and undersupplied. But they do however have some commandos that have a decent amount of combat experience as the Kims like to loan them out to other adversarial states. Combat experience makes all the difference in war, and these guys take their experience with them to the main North Korean military. Their SF community is also very good at snatch and grab missions, which they've carried out to kidnap people from South Korea on numerous occasions.
You're right! It WOULD be legitimately difficult for ANY nation to develop this tech from scratch! Which is why I expect the Chinese and/ or Russians provided help to the N. Koreans in this endeavour (ICBMs + MIRVs). After all, China has always shown a vested interest in supporting N. Korea, going so far as to directly go to war against the USA in the 50s, in defence of Korea (ostensibly to prevent the USA from having control of the Korean peninsula, so close to the Chinese mainland).
China only sees NK as a buffer against a possible land invasion. They would prefer if NK did what China did and improve their economy and stop destabilizing the world. But China has to make do with what they have as a neighbour.
This reminds me of an anecdote that a sergeant in the GDR army told me in the 1980s. At the time, the NVA was considered one of the best armies in the Warsaw Pact. "My captain said that one of the tankers must have a broken valve. I went there with a heavy hammer and found a broken valve. We were then able to refuel our vehicles with the leaking fuel." How many tanks and troop carriers has North Korea decommissioned for a single submarine?
I find it hard to believe that picture of Kim Il-Jung on the Moon is AI generated, it looks soooo realistic 🤣🤣🤣 But seriously their rockets look pretty darned cool
In 2009, North Korea announced more ambitious future space projects, including its own crewed space flights and the development of a partially reusable crewed shuttle launch vehicle mockup, which was displayed at Mangyongdae Children's Palace.
Imagine the security needed for these weapons. Now imagine your tech is so old that no one has the tech any more to interface with it. You now have secure hardware. Additionally, this was purpose built hardware when these were new in the 70s, they do the job and do it well. We have no reason to change a functional, well understood system just because it's old. Need drives obsolescence, not age. It doesn't need to do any more then make sure object A intersects object B.
I believe the US started switching to solid state some years back. At least I do recall some press around that, no idea what happened from there but I guess details of modern, current solutions aren't really supposed to be public knowledge so not knowing would be the norm.
@@dzonikg I belive the point here is, despite romaticized nostalgia, really old rarely actually mean "reliable and effective". Especially when it comes to utility tools, means and tech. 8" floppies weren't even particularly reliable back when they were our primary data storage. They were never made for long term storage (neither physically or in terms of data integrity), and even the freshest ones out there are knocking on 30 years old at least.
@@pr0xZen Some things were more reliable some not.I used 8 inch floppies on my first computer Commodore 64. But some things now are just more complicated then they need to be.Like i still use Office 2013 or many older programs instead off new versions
The graph at 7:44 states the distance from LA to DC is 1.5k km. Am I just interpreting this wrong, or are they woefully inaccurate on that one, as it's over double that distance 🤔
In the Korean war the Pentagon had a game plan of nuking North Korea .. With US pointing Nukes at North Korea ( and heavily Sanctioning them ) then pointing some Nukes back is a logical defensive step .. Criticizing North Korea is well and good, but the Pentagon is not so perfect either .. holding biases when reporting diminishes your report .. 🤔
It’s crazy how every nation that defies the whims of the most powerful nation to have ever existed all just so happen to be despotic, insane, inept etc.
The success story we DON'T want to see. However, its important to note things like this so we're never deluded into thinking sanctions or non-violent actions work.
so you do not have a problems with wars your elite wage, but the lack of wars? 😂😂😂 oh my, your grandpa must have been a completely nnocent German that came to US to get away from communist threat... 😂😅
Simon, please, I love your content and your channels, but the AI images are JARRINGLY bad. I have to agree with the others voicing this here. You can do better
Echoing, please do not use AI images, I understand how it can help aid in storytelling to fill in the gaps - but one of my favorite things about your channel is looking at each of the sourced historical images
noisier than a diesel electric when the diesel electric is running on electric only. But the nukes are *much* quieter than the diesel electric when they have the diesels running which they have to do every few days even if sitting still.
They have great sound insulation. If you watch WW2 submarine movies, they have to freeze and not make any sound. Nowdays scream if you want too nobody gonna hear you
Yea, regarding the space program, there is people all over with home made rockets that is almost capable reaching space, and with CCP as their sponsor, I´m not that impressed.
AFAIK N. Korea has a defense agreement with China; so declaring war on one means war with the other as well. And NATO still wants a few years before it takes on China.
2002 I was assigned to be convoy security for SFB1 on a mission into N.Korea to confirm their success and capabilities with their nuclear program. The result of that intel was on every news channel a month later “North Korea has nukes”
A lot of the NK Juche philosophy really appeals to me. Its a very can do, sweat of our brow outlook, Its a hard philosophy for hard people, and I think it has much to do with the success in projects like these; and although I like to live by the principles of self reliance and strength having to live under it as law would be frightening.
Guy in Australia built a cruise missile for pennies on the defense budget dollar and shot it over Perth just to prove the government was wasting tax dollars
The part on nukes implies that they fooled Soviets and were secretly working on nukes and the work just "happened" to produce results in 2003. This is BS. Building nukes is not that hard if you already have access to nuclear materials and do not need it to be good. Even North Korea had technology superior to what the US or the Soviets had for their first nukes for decades before 2003. The deterrent blocking them was that despite technically being at war the risk of their enemies invading despite opposition from China and the Soviets was too low to justify pissing off everyone, including China and the Soviets. They would have just been giving the US an actual reason to invade or otherwise mess with them for no real gain in security. Especially since both China and the Soviets made it clear they do not approve the idea and just might decide they prefer the US winning the Korean war to North Korea with nuclear weapons. Unlikely but too possible to risk without good reason. What changed was that the US decided to invade a country to do a regime change using weapons of mass destruction as the rationale despite said country already having been forced to give up such weapons and there being no evidence to suggest they had any that wasn't already known to be unreliable or outright proven false. This drastically changed the calculus for nuclear weapons for both North Korea and Iran. The need for deterrent against opportunistic invasions for regime change went way up after the US did one despite it being obvious the resulting instability would be bad for their interests. And the benefit of not being an international pariah for building nukes became irrelevant when the US just ignored all evidence and treated Iraq as an imminent threat close to having nukes anyway. Plus North Korea is a pariah without real friends anyway. Even Saddam was far more popular. Incidentally, this is one thing many allies were warning the US about BEFORE the invasion of Iraq. Bigger concern obviously was how removing Saddam would totally break Iraq because Saddam had spent decades removing everyone who could replace him. Which in turn would give both Iran and Islamic militants a golden opportunity to move in. Not to mention the separatists that Saddam was already brutally suppressing also obviously being a major obstacle to having a stable central government. And this was something everyone already understood because it was the reason Saddam got to keep his position in the previous war. But obviously both North Korea and Iran would have been more interested in having nukes instantly going from an expensive major liability without real purpose to something you need to prevent being invaded that doesn't really lose you anything that might not be taken away at anytime anyway. North Korea already had access to nuclear materials and basic nuclear technology so they could respond fast without there being anyway for anyone to stop other than the US doing a third major invasion while still being committed in Afghanistan and Iraq and China likely to provide significant support to already large North Korean military, which by the way, even before nukes, had the ability to destroy many South Korean cities with conventional weapons. At least potentially, nobody really knows how that would work out but South Korea doesn't really want to find out no matter what people in Washington say. So in practice even if the US president wanted to invade North Korea they probably couldn't because their local allies and possibly even the Pentagon would refuse to risk the potential number of civilian casualties in a country where they won't just be ignored by media like with Iraq or Afghanistan. Too bad the people in power in North Korea are too paranoid to trust their enemies refusing to attack them so... they got nuclear deterrent as fast as they could. Which really is just few years if you already have the materials. To be fair invading Iraq was known to be dumb in advance and the US did it anyway and even got a coalition to support it, so the paranoia was somewhat justified.
At least they stopped doing the nuclear tests after they got one that worked that they were happy with, I don’t particularly like how many seemingly unnecessary nuclear tests the USA and the Soviet Union and so many other countries did after the first inventing of nuclear capabilities particularly because it caused so many health problems for the people and the environment and of anyone who was anywhere near the testing areas or if the uranium wasn’t disposed of in a permanently safe way after it was finished being used and for the military veterans and uranium miners, and just seeing the Japanese people getting sick after being bombed could’ve told them that radiation is really dangerous and that they didn’t need to do any more nuclear tests when people were nearby because they already knew how much damage it causes, I really hope North Korea never use them again and they just keep a few of them around for the deterrence purposes and I hope they are being safe with their uranium miners and other people that are around the radioactive material in the meantime because I don’t want anyone getting a cancer that could’ve been avoided, I also hope that they don’t ever actually go to war with anyone and use them for real either.
I like this. I want to know more about human achievements regardless of which country did it. Remember, some of those who are making these achievements possible are just normal people wishing for a better life. Its not their fault where they live. Oh. Also, stop using those ai generated images. They cheapen all of your channels.
0:55 - Chapter 1 - Space program
5:55 - Chapter 2 - ICBMS
9:10 - Chapter 3 - Nuclear weapons
14:25 - Chapter 4 - Ballistic missile submarines
Why doesn't it surprise me that all the successful megas were military oriented?
Right?
We've got rockets for space, rockets for the land, rockets with bombs and sea rockets.
Meanwhile, The US was aiming for Mars 😆 That's how advance the Americans are.
bro maxxed out all points on rockets
👋
How did you write down all these timelines?
A project worth mentioning is the Nampo Dam. It's an impressive feat of engineering and shows what they can do when they don't spend everything on the military.
Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “if at first you don’t succeed,try and try again and again and again etc,etc”
That's pretty much the history of space travel worldwide.
You can learn from your mistakes in order to succeed
Persuasation is key !
Where there is a will, there is a way.
The irony of "Four Successful North Korean Megaprojects" being the title of a Sideprojects video is fuking hilarious.
I said the same! Tossing some shade toward Kim.
"Side Projects" refers to the many projects of Simon. Sheesh!
They may be Megaprojects, buuttt... it IS still North Korea. Hahaha
I didn't realize that was the case until you pointed it out! 🤣All of them together didn't amount to a single Megaproject!? 🤣
Brainwashed by Western regime propaganda 🤭🤭
Missed opportunity to talk about North Korea's hackers. North Korea is a small, poor country and yet they are believed to have some of the best state sponsored cybersecurity specialists on the planet. This is with a populace that by and large does not have access to computers. It'd be like if Michael Phelps was Nepalese.
All of the ones mentioned here are just a part of nuclear weapons development. The difference between spacecraft and ICBM is where it lands.
People like to make jokes, but it's easy for them to forget that they are still the same people as South Koreans, just under a very different and oppressive political regime. The people are just as willful, resourceful, smart, and hardworking. For this reason, if the North Korean government problem were to be resolved in whatever way it might in the future, foreign investment into the country would probably be massive.
@@saulghim2661 Not to be rude, but that is incredibly naive. North Korea becoming the recipient of global recognition and investment is about as likely as Papua New Guinea becoming a superpower. They made a few rockets, that's it. That is literally it. In every other sector, the North Koreans are decades behind.
@@Big_Caesar1 They are decades behind because of crushing sanctions that are financially choking the country, and limits their access to any technology and materials. This isn't due to a lack of capability. As I already mentioned before, if the NK regime problem were to be solved by internal collapse, invasion, or whatever else, you'd see that the country (unified immediately or not) would flourish very quickly, after a generation or two. A tiny country of 25 million people doing what they've done under the constraints they've been subject to is indeed a testament to that fact.
@@saulghim2661 If their government "crisis" was solved it would not be North Korea any longer. South Korea still wants reunification, the only factor preventing that is the Juche government in charge in North Korea, if that falls, then efforts will be underway to incorporate the territory into South Korea, finally forming one Korea. In that scenario, of course Korea would receive investment, South Korea is already profoundly successful. There is no path for the current NK regime to achieve any sort of international recognition or investment. Military technology is where the North spends all of its money, its really not impressive when you are starving your populace and stagnating in every single other area like Science, Engineering, Human development, just so you can posture to much more successful countries with rockets and nuclear weapons. North Korea is a pariah state, and they survive on international aid (even the USA has bailed out North Korea many times with food aid, financial aid despite these "crushing sanctions")
@@Big_Caesar1 yeah but that’s why people would expand into it. It’s one of the only places capitalism isn’t allowed left. Like what new markets are there even. Everywhere else has already established in market. This would be the only new market we are going to get for a while
Considering that the country was completely destroyed in the 50s and has been blocked and embargoed for its entire existence, just make this achievements more impressive.
The North Korean economy did quite well during the Cold War for a simple reason - blackmail. After the Sino/Soviet split, North Korea refused to take a side, which prompted both countries to pour in aid to try and court them. (A bit like a bratty kid playing his divorced parents off against one another.) When the Soviet Union fell, North Korea's economy was toast
Yeah, people don't realise that North Korea had a much better economy than the south until the early 80s@@laurencewinch-furness9450
Hi kim! 🤓
@@laurencewinch-furness9450NK: please send subsidies
Post Soviet Russia: belt tightening necessary
NK: please send belts
Nah, they should have way more.
You have millions of people who's lives you dictate under your control, and you can't do more?
They still had the Soviet Union looking out for them economically, and then direct trade with China.
Now they have access information to the internet, and all that free knowledge.
If I was a dictator? I think I could do more.
Yet I guess it isn't easy staying a dictator. Gotta keep the people stupid and poor. Not even using somewhat modern agriculture to feed the populace alone is just... Stupid.
TBF, a submarine with diesel-electric engine can be even stealthier than a nuclear one for a simple reason: you can turn off the engine and just stand still completely silent. I'm not saying that the NK sub would be quieter, it would not, but the stealthier subs on the planet are NOT the nuclear one, but the type 212.
North Korea always has ironically been a fascinating country in terms of achievements wether it be space programs military programs or just how it hasn’t collapsed yet with their politics
There are few as tenacious and they have proven the ability to endure pretty much anything. Special place for sure.
Yeah, that famine was insane.
@@memofromessexthe famine never ended
@@memofromessex - The US threatened to sanction any country that sent aid to NK.
It's proof that Warhammer 40k could be real life
I like the point of view, wish more journalists would have this. Neutral, objective, that kind of stuff.
"Russia flat out refused to sell North Korea a SCUD." Even Russia thought they were nutty.. That says a lot!
Actually the SU and Russians have always been cautious. Even when selling their allies weapons, they were severely downgraded export versions which were a good decade or two behind their own latest. This is unlike the US, which would sell its allies near latest (obviously not THE latest) tech, especially to Britain and Israel. So calling out the SU or Russia as some mad country just proliferating weapons tech is just plain wrong. That title would actually go to a country like China (sold nuclear weapons designs and materials and parts to Pakistan) and Pakistan (which sold rocket tech they got from China to NK).
*Soviets .
Well that and east Asia likes to steal plans after promising to pay licensing
@@seansteel3326 id like to buy 3, who do i contact? /s
Our perception of North korea is left over from the Korean war unfortunately we pecieve north korea via the lense of Korean war properganda
I didn't know why you described NK as having "struggled" in its space program. Do you know how many rockets NASA and the JPL blew up?
The difference is that nasa has actual accomplishments
@@liamcg2521 What are you talking about? NASA had infinite funding and Nazi scientists to get it spaceborn. The North Koreans are under severe limitations yet they managed to put satellites in orbit. It's a massive achievement given the limitations, and they didn't blow up as many rockets as NASA.
@@liamcg2521they were started by Nazis.
I like these more unusual topics, well done Simon.
Note that it potentially doesn't matter that the missile submarine sucks and can't hide forever. They can still survive a first strike simply by operating near North Korean shores where they can be protected by North Korean land based and surface assets, or hide near Russian/Chinese waters where those countries wouldn't be particularly enthusiastic about a huge SK/US led ASW effort.
It is reasonably impressive. The USA had German scientists and engineers to drive success in NASA via operation paperclip post WW2. What we see from NASA today, if we remove SpaceX from that consideration, is pretty average at best in terms of launches and crazy wasteful in terms of budget. Contrast this with what other nations such as India are achieving and it becomes more stark for NASA's achievement in recent decades.
"sir, 'Nasa' is already taken!"
"Then we shall call it... Nata!"
T is one better than S
"North Koreas non existing economy" speaks volumes about the ignorance toward this country, North Korea does in fact have a substantial heavy industry for a country of its size
That's about it, though.
In my humble opinion, a heavy industry alone isn't a whole economy if the state itself is the only real customer. That just means it's an industrialized regime. When all you do is for the government and its goals, that's not a full grown economy but I do agree, NK is seriously underestimated on the world stage in its capabilities
@@YeeSoest I moved to Bulgaria 15 years ago. I was genuinely shocked to find out that literally everything I thought I knew about communism was 1) wrong 2) propaganda and 3 worst of all LAZY propaganda, that really annoyed me.
cos its not just that it was better than we were told [it was] its that the stuff the people actually disliked we never got told about. And the stuff we did get tols about was mostly entirely made up.
@@piccalillipit9211 i have extensive family ties to the former DDR or East Germany and I had more than one ultra leftist teacher for most of my teenage years so I know communism wasn't what most of us westerners were told and people inside of it had an entirely different experience. That doesn't change the fact that most people - even today where societal changes fuel their confidence in it further - would not choose to go back to a plan economy etc and there's good reasons for that. Not the reasons they told us in school but still.
I'm just so jealous to not have experienced the direct comparison between the "have it all" west and the "all we need" east and honestly I couldn't tell you where I'd end up...
To be clear: If the West was at its core true to and honest about its ideals, goals and values? Easy. Since most of it is not...
@@YeeSoest - Well the big thing we didn't get taught in the wes t was how varied it was. Here in Bulgaria, they seem to have had a very good time, most people miss it and would like to go back [yes i know nostalgia will play a part]. Next door in Romania it was horrible. My friend there - her treat at Christmas was a pigs ear to chew on...!!!
As I say the bit that annoys me the most is how lazy the propaganda was.
@@piccalillipit9211 true, our parents heard about the pig ears and said "that's what we're telling our kid's"
Wasn't even a lie but was used like one!
Things are never black and white or red and blue for that matter
"literally the stuff of night bears" gotta love the auto captions!
Thank you for citing the sources in this video. Some of these websites have some absolutely fascinating stuff to read. 😁
without international trade, NO country can feed even half its people, agriculture require alot of resources and fertile land.
I kept hearing the name of their ICBM as "croissant" and refuse to change that
What is really scary is that photo of a little nuclear reactor facility. It looks so ramshackle, yet that’s all it takes.
Shouldn't this be on the Megaprojects projects channel?
Still just Sideprojects for the rest of the world
Should be a shit heap channel
@@topogigio7031 lmao nailed it. But it does kinda make you think about the situation, toddler with a toolbox and told to get after it, and a small block on the engine stand......meh we kinda just have to wait and see if she'll crank and start and not just blow up!
These is a Communist propaganda channel.
I love you content. Incredible how diverse it is. Do you operate a team or do you run your content yourself?
At 14:53
"....Yugo class...."
I didn't know Serbia made submarines!! Seriously, a submarine with that name....I I just don't think I could step into it!! I would be afraid to have the same reputation as the car....
Actually the us a while back did a test to see how difficult it would be for a small country to manufacture a nuclear bomb without any knowledge and the people (who had 0 knowledge of nuclear bomb making) had a working prototype within a very short time, like few months. Its kinda shocking it took them this long to make them as us/ussr had them 60/50 years previously. The ussr gave them the direction but it took a long time to figure out how to make it work
Imagine if they put the effort into agriculture- they put into say Ballistic missiles - they might be able to feed their people.
I'm thinking a video on the things discovered separately the most times would be interesting. Like rocket engines and jet engines. How many separate times in history have wheels been 'invented' or beer or sails.
I have no love for North Korea, but keep the videos about them coming! It's like watching mini dystopian horror films.
Not even close
@@redpipola in your opinion.
‼️ Million subs!!! Congratulations! ‼️
Hey NK, maybe consider doing some Megaprojects that don't involve a nuclear apocalypse?
They don't have resources for anything non-military.
FYI, the orbits for the space program is about right. The average LEO sat can do 16 orbits a day and the sat was up for ~130 days. that is around the number of orbits reported
Surprisingyly successful megaprojects... in sideprojects. Brutal.
Thank you for bring this tough information to those of us who do not see comparable news stories in the major press releases. Not pleasant to learn but necessary to stay somewhat informed about is going on in the big world that most of us never see.
If north and south korea ever would reunite it would be a powerhouse
South Korea is already a powerhouse my friend.
Strong economy, high quality life of people, strong army, strong allies 😃 in today's world Economy is your nuclear power. People of north Korea living in hell.
Eventually, quite possibly, but it would take *decades* after reunification, even if that reunification is entirely peaceful. Just look at Germany in the 1990s; the country is still in various ways suffering inequality, political tension, unemployment, and infrastructure challenges, 35 years later. -- And that despite the fact that the social and economic gap between the two Germanies was *nothing* like the Koreas is now. Moreover, at the time of reunification, West Germany had more than double the population of East Germany (while South Korea only just has double that of the North), and had the 4th largest economy in the world.
In a word: maybe, but it will be an extremely rocky ride.
Over 4000km high? But 900 km in distance? Doesn’t sound right.
I don’t know much about how missles/rockets work, but could it be that it’s easier to launch it high (without aiming at anything really) but much harder to launch it at an actual target, even if it is closer at “only” 900 km
Because of gravity and aerodynamics it's harder to fire 'up' than 'out', so tests are completed vertically which once the math is done give the expected range, payload and speed etc. Really interesting subject tbh :)
It's for testing. Fine tuning comes after proff of concept like rhe half kiloton nuke they made.
Please stop using A.I. generated images to depict historical events. It just distorts our collective memory of important facts.
Kim Jong Un isn't an astronaut!? Perfidy! I've been bamboozled!
Please please just stop crying who cares
Booooo
@@thegeneral19 he's right, go back to school child
@@GM-xk1nw He's*
I got an ad for JB weld before a NK mega projects video and couldn't help but laugh
Computer chips are more important.
They are obsessed with over grown firecrackers. They are good at it.
"Side Projects" refers to the many projects of Simon. Sheesh!
People make fun of their military, and most of their military is horrifically undertrained and undersupplied.
But they do however have some commandos that have a decent amount of combat experience as the Kims like to loan them out to other adversarial states. Combat experience makes all the difference in war, and these guys take their experience with them to the main North Korean military.
Their SF community is also very good at snatch and grab missions, which they've carried out to kidnap people from South Korea on numerous occasions.
You're right! It WOULD be legitimately difficult for ANY nation to develop this tech from scratch!
Which is why I expect the Chinese and/ or Russians provided help to the N. Koreans in this endeavour (ICBMs + MIRVs). After all, China has always shown a vested interest in supporting N. Korea, going so far as to directly go to war against the USA in the 50s, in defence of Korea (ostensibly to prevent the USA from having control of the Korean peninsula, so close to the Chinese mainland).
China only sees NK as a buffer against a possible land invasion. They would prefer if NK did what China did and improve their economy and stop destabilizing the world. But China has to make do with what they have as a neighbour.
This reminds me of an anecdote that a sergeant in the GDR army told me in the 1980s. At the time, the NVA was considered one of the best armies in the Warsaw Pact.
"My captain said that one of the tankers must have a broken valve. I went there with a heavy hammer and found a broken valve. We were then able to refuel our vehicles with the leaking fuel."
How many tanks and troop carriers has North Korea decommissioned for a single submarine?
I find it hard to believe that picture of Kim Il-Jung on the Moon is AI generated, it looks soooo realistic 🤣🤣🤣
But seriously their rockets look pretty darned cool
In 2009, North Korea announced more ambitious future space projects, including its own crewed space flights and the development of a partially reusable crewed shuttle launch vehicle mockup, which was displayed at Mangyongdae Children's Palace.
Oh no! Simon and the Sideprojects team must have downed their own weight in Kool-Aid!
Video leads off with North Korea's space program, and the same day the video is released, their spy satellite blows up mid-launch 😂
imagine if one of these projects produced food and wealth for their people. haha
Well when you're building because your life depends on the outcome is bound to be good.
0:08 Meanwhile / The USA still uses 8" floppy Discs to launch it's Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles!!! :(
Imagine the security needed for these weapons.
Now imagine your tech is so old that no one has the tech any more to interface with it.
You now have secure hardware.
Additionally, this was purpose built hardware when these were new in the 70s, they do the job and do it well. We have no reason to change a functional, well understood system just because it's old. Need drives obsolescence, not age. It doesn't need to do any more then make sure object A intersects object B.
I believe the US started switching to solid state some years back. At least I do recall some press around that, no idea what happened from there but I guess details of modern, current solutions aren't really supposed to be public knowledge so not knowing would be the norm.
So you want nuclear missiles to be connected to internet??TO launch them from Android APP? OR maybe from Smart TV..yes that would be modern
@@dzonikg I belive the point here is, despite romaticized nostalgia, really old rarely actually mean "reliable and effective". Especially when it comes to utility tools, means and tech. 8" floppies weren't even particularly reliable back when they were our primary data storage. They were never made for long term storage (neither physically or in terms of data integrity), and even the freshest ones out there are knocking on 30 years old at least.
@@pr0xZen Some things were more reliable some not.I used 8 inch floppies on my first computer Commodore 64.
But some things now are just more complicated then they need to be.Like i still use Office 2013 or many older programs instead off new versions
It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t care about human rights
Thank you for being honest that your AI images are AI. I personally dont mind you using them as long as you are transparent about it.
That AI pic of Kim on the Moon was quite funny I can't lie.
I’m surprised that North Korea has one successful megaproject let alone 4.
At least they are not bombing kids
So true. And the only reason they prioritize their military is to keep the Western empire at bay after they massacred millions of their people.
just starving kids
The graph at 7:44 states the distance from LA to DC is 1.5k km. Am I just interpreting this wrong, or are they woefully inaccurate on that one, as it's over double that distance 🤔
man stop making me root for the underdog here
The dreaded floppy disc, what's funny is that maybe it could
In the Korean war the Pentagon had a game plan of nuking North Korea ..
With US pointing Nukes at North Korea ( and heavily Sanctioning them ) then pointing some Nukes back is a logical defensive step ..
Criticizing North Korea is well and good, but the Pentagon is not so perfect either ..
holding biases when reporting diminishes your report .. 🤔
It’s crazy how every nation that defies the whims of the most powerful nation to have ever existed all just so happen to be despotic, insane, inept etc.
What other traits do they share?
@@xjunkxyrdxdog89 one common thing they often share is that not a cent of their economy / resources goes into the hands of American businessman.
The success story we DON'T want to see.
However, its important to note things like this so we're never deluded into thinking sanctions or non-violent actions work.
so you do not have a problems with wars your elite wage, but the lack of wars? 😂😂😂 oh my, your grandpa must have been a completely nnocent German that came to US to get away from communist threat... 😂😅
Never underestimate the KOREAN people. North or south, they are ALL
KOREANS. I am a proud korean.
Now if only they could feed their people?? Definitely a mega project worth taking on
I'm noticing a trend with their megaprojects
Neat.
The achievements in order: Rockets, Rockets, Nuclear Rockets, Submarine.
Submarines that launch nuclear rockets.
Simon, please, I love your content and your channels, but the AI images are JARRINGLY bad. I have to agree with the others voicing this here. You can do better
Agreed. 👍
😅
He could do better, by using more. 2 isn't enough when I know most ai programs pump out at least dozen to choose from.
🤓
Guys made so much copyrighted material, i really dont think he gives a shit what yall think 😂
last time I was this early, Korea was a country
They get a Bravo for being told exactly how to build certain things by russians?
Credit where credit is due. I like it.
I will say i enjoy the AI images atleast when they are clearly labeled and you can see its almost artistic in nature
How many youtube channels does this guy have?
Those altitude numbers, you sure you're not adding a zero? 🤔
Their ICBM's go 10 times higher then the international space station. They are no joke, they are the real deal.
When was the former Great Britain had anything close to a Megaropject?
Echoing, please do not use AI images, I understand how it can help aid in storytelling to fill in the gaps - but one of my favorite things about your channel is looking at each of the sourced historical images
Gotta love it when you need to do a disclaimer in advance so that everyone knows that this is still an insult in the end :)
Does the floppy disc have number munchers and Oregon trail disguised as a total control computer virus?
what a surprise, every thing on the list has to do with rockets...
On a clear day, with the wind at their backs, they can usually hit the ocean.
this is really horrible if you think about how their population is starving and freezing
Maybe you lift sanctions from North Korea then?
Shut up
Love the content and writing just no ai pics please
Simon is like Alton Brown's younger brother...😅
Which is a complement.
So what happened to the ‘unsuccessful’ teams. Take your time.
I thought nuclear powered subs were really noisy underwater, with those steam turbines?
noisier than a diesel electric when the diesel electric is running on electric only. But the nukes are *much* quieter than the diesel electric when they have the diesels running which they have to do every few days even if sitting still.
They have great sound insulation. If you watch WW2 submarine movies, they have to freeze and not make any sound.
Nowdays scream if you want too nobody gonna hear you
How many people know that before the Korean War, what is now North Korea was wealthier than what is now South Korea?
Imagine how great the people could be if all that money was spent farming and industrialization
Feeding its population will never be a successful mega project in the DPKR.
Yea, regarding the space program, there is people all over with home made rockets that is almost capable reaching space, and with CCP as their sponsor, I´m not that impressed.
wtf is home made rockets?
Minus the new satellite rocket they fired off last night. A very expensive firework 🎆🎇🎆🎇
I’ll never understand why nobody especially NATO didn’t do whatever was necessary to prevent North Korea from making nuclear weapons BEFORE they did.
AFAIK N. Korea has a defense agreement with China; so declaring war on one means war with the other as well. And NATO still wants a few years before it takes on China.
koreans are extraordinary people. north korea is a perfect example.
When you realize even tiny terrorist groups can make basic rockets, the first half of this video makes sense.
Basically North Korea gets a participation medal. The video.
North Korea renamed their space agency NADA, lmfao the jokes write themselves
Submarine Diesel Engines can be super stealthy, didn't the Finish or was it Norway remain undetected with theirs under a US ship during an exercise?
2002 I was assigned to be convoy security for SFB1 on a mission into N.Korea to confirm their success and capabilities with their nuclear program. The result of that intel was on every news channel a month later “North Korea has nukes”
A lot of the NK Juche philosophy really appeals to me. Its a very can do, sweat of our brow outlook, Its a hard philosophy for hard people, and I think it has much to do with the success in projects like these; and although I like to live by the principles of self reliance and strength having to live under it as law would be frightening.
Same here
I feel like I'm watching a special Olympics award ceremony 😂
Guy in Australia built a cruise missile for pennies on the defense budget dollar and shot it over Perth just to prove the government was wasting tax dollars
The part on nukes implies that they fooled Soviets and were secretly working on nukes and the work just "happened" to produce results in 2003. This is BS.
Building nukes is not that hard if you already have access to nuclear materials and do not need it to be good. Even North Korea had technology superior to what the US or the Soviets had for their first nukes for decades before 2003.
The deterrent blocking them was that despite technically being at war the risk of their enemies invading despite opposition from China and the Soviets was too low to justify pissing off everyone, including China and the Soviets. They would have just been giving the US an actual reason to invade or otherwise mess with them for no real gain in security. Especially since both China and the Soviets made it clear they do not approve the idea and just might decide they prefer the US winning the Korean war to North Korea with nuclear weapons. Unlikely but too possible to risk without good reason.
What changed was that the US decided to invade a country to do a regime change using weapons of mass destruction as the rationale despite said country already having been forced to give up such weapons and there being no evidence to suggest they had any that wasn't already known to be unreliable or outright proven false. This drastically changed the calculus for nuclear weapons for both North Korea and Iran. The need for deterrent against opportunistic invasions for regime change went way up after the US did one despite it being obvious the resulting instability would be bad for their interests. And the benefit of not being an international pariah for building nukes became irrelevant when the US just ignored all evidence and treated Iraq as an imminent threat close to having nukes anyway. Plus North Korea is a pariah without real friends anyway. Even Saddam was far more popular.
Incidentally, this is one thing many allies were warning the US about BEFORE the invasion of Iraq. Bigger concern obviously was how removing Saddam would totally break Iraq because Saddam had spent decades removing everyone who could replace him. Which in turn would give both Iran and Islamic militants a golden opportunity to move in. Not to mention the separatists that Saddam was already brutally suppressing also obviously being a major obstacle to having a stable central government. And this was something everyone already understood because it was the reason Saddam got to keep his position in the previous war.
But obviously both North Korea and Iran would have been more interested in having nukes instantly going from an expensive major liability without real purpose to something you need to prevent being invaded that doesn't really lose you anything that might not be taken away at anytime anyway. North Korea already had access to nuclear materials and basic nuclear technology so they could respond fast without there being anyway for anyone to stop other than the US doing a third major invasion while still being committed in Afghanistan and Iraq and China likely to provide significant support to already large North Korean military, which by the way, even before nukes, had the ability to destroy many South Korean cities with conventional weapons.
At least potentially, nobody really knows how that would work out but South Korea doesn't really want to find out no matter what people in Washington say. So in practice even if the US president wanted to invade North Korea they probably couldn't because their local allies and possibly even the Pentagon would refuse to risk the potential number of civilian casualties in a country where they won't just be ignored by media like with Iraq or Afghanistan. Too bad the people in power in North Korea are too paranoid to trust their enemies refusing to attack them so... they got nuclear deterrent as fast as they could. Which really is just few years if you already have the materials. To be fair invading Iraq was known to be dumb in advance and the US did it anyway and even got a coalition to support it, so the paranoia was somewhat justified.
Impressive.
All this cash spent on rockets yet 90% of the population are starving!!! Dreadful!!
At least they stopped doing the nuclear tests after they got one that worked that they were happy with, I don’t particularly like how many seemingly unnecessary nuclear tests the USA and the Soviet Union and so many other countries did after the first inventing of nuclear capabilities particularly because it caused so many health problems for the people and the environment and of anyone who was anywhere near the testing areas or if the uranium wasn’t disposed of in a permanently safe way after it was finished being used and for the military veterans and uranium miners, and just seeing the Japanese people getting sick after being bombed could’ve told them that radiation is really dangerous and that they didn’t need to do any more nuclear tests when people were nearby because they already knew how much damage it causes, I really hope North Korea never use them again and they just keep a few of them around for the deterrence purposes and I hope they are being safe with their uranium miners and other people that are around the radioactive material in the meantime because I don’t want anyone getting a cancer that could’ve been avoided, I also hope that they don’t ever actually go to war with anyone and use them for real either.
I like this. I want to know more about human achievements regardless of which country did it. Remember, some of those who are making these achievements possible are just normal people wishing for a better life. Its not their fault where they live.
Oh. Also, stop using those ai generated images. They cheapen all of your channels.
"Also, stop using those ai generated images. They cheapen all of your channels."
This. ☝