http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21230691

I'm sure the ayatollahs would like to do that to Armoureddinnerjacket...

They have just announced that they will be sending another monkey into space with a 1 megaton warhead on a peace mission to Israel. /s

I hope someone points out to Iran that the trick s to bring it back alive and well....

It took the russians a while to master that.

Like the Iranians give a monkeys about that

Actually that was probably the point. Any fool can build a rocket and send junk up into space. The tricky thing is actually keeping something alive while it's up there and bringing it back in one piece. If you do that with a monkey (or a dog say) that's a 'proof of concept' for doing it with a human. I'm not sure why they're bothering going through the whole 'gemini' phase though. Surely if you were starting a space programme now, given the technology that is widely available, you'd skip the dumb capsule stage and go straight for a space shuttle-a-like?

The other possibility is they don't actually want a space programme in any real sense and it's just a cover story for ICBM development. It's a very expensive cover story though and there's definitely going to be some bragging rights if they can get a man into orbit before the Chinese and Indians do.

The Chinese have already had crews up. They've been practising docking manoeuvres with an orbiting laboratory module, with plans for a full space station.

You don't think the point could be more around getting a warhead to any given location on the planet?

A serious question - but what’s the protocol for a Muslim in space praying to Mecca? Given that Iran is a theocracy, I would expect this to be a fairly serious thing for them. Orbits mean that you won’t always be pointing in the same direction, so I would expect some kind of pod that always keeps a point targeted on the holy city. The astronauts could orientate themselves towards that and pray with impunity.

When you are a long way out praying in the general direction of earth would be in the same direction as Mecca give or take a degree or two.

Second paragraph.

You're correct. I obviously haven't been keeping up with that as well as I should.

It's just geometry. Any point in space has a vector that points towards the appropriate spot on the earth, even if it's on the other side of the planet at a time. You could get a computer to work it out for you at any given moment. You might have a problem putting down a prayer mat in low gravity, but there's nothing to stop someone facing towards Mecca to pray.

The bigger problem might be timing - in a spaceship a 'day' can be a fair bit shorter than on the surface and you can't be stopping every half hour to pray.

In reality of course, even though Iran is a theocracy, everyone in the country is not devout and there's no reason to necessarily expect they'd need to worry. Whether it would be politically expedient for the first Iranian astronaut not to bother with the whole praying thing is another matter..

Update : According to wikipedia, there have already been 9 muslim astronauts including one Iranian who was a woman, which I find slightly surprising. According to the same site



Wired even has an article about it.

Or he might just go himself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21320754

I say let him and McCain fight it out up there, pair of twats.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/iran-space-monkey-pic-switch-raises-eyebrows-article-1.1254075

Looking like they've swapped the space monkeys.
Or exposure to space radiation has mutated it, just almost (but not exactly) like the Fantastic Four.