40 seconds is a long time

I've talked to some folks, and seen some blog posts from folks who are comforted by the fact that North Korea's recent launch attempt only lasted 40 seconds. The best was the Daily Show's "Taepodong is not a funny name" video (which I can't find, now).

I for one am not comforted. I commented a while back on some launch failures. It turns out that almost every launch vehicle's maiden launch ended in flames. There are a few exceptions, but most of them had a failure at some point.

Well, anyway, even the veteran Russians have had some failures of late. So don't be fooled into thinking that just because Kim Jung Il is a dope, his engineers are, too...

By the way, check out this Russian (maybe-not) failure:

Launched skyward on June 21 atop a Russian sub-launched Volna rocket, the spacecraft may have actually made it into Earth orbit.

From wikipedia:

The launch took place from Delta III Submarine "Borisoglebsk," in the Barentz Sea. The spacecraft failed to reach orbit after stage one shut down prematurely at 82.86 seconds instead of the expected 100 seconds. The failure was attributed to “critical degradation in operational capability of the engine turbo-pump”. The second and third stage did not separate and the payload did not reach orbit.

I mean, they launched a satellite from a ballistic missle submarine. How cool is that?