Low-Budget Indian Satellite Launch

Geekonomical writes "On Thursday afternoon, for a mere 15 million U.S. dollars, India launched a meteorological satellite into geo-synchronous transfer orbit some 36,000 kilometres above the equator using a modified version of its highly successful space workhorse, the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV). The article also claims that China spends 12 times as much as this for a launch!"

Comments

Re:implications

[guybarr]

As for danger to rest of the world India is far less of an issue than Israel

this is either blind prejudice or blind ignorance. But just in case someone doesn't know the facts, I'll bite:

size of India : 2,973,190 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly more than one-third the size of the US
# of citizens : 1,029,991,145 (July 2001 est.)
these data (unlike your prepostrous claim) are not blown out of my ass, but can be found here

size of Israel : 20,330 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly smaller than New Jersey
# of israelly citizens : 5,938,093 (yes, that's six millions, not billions ...)
again, this is from the same source

so, wether or not India should be viewed as a potential threat by the US, it is a laughable to claim a country the size of New Jersy, with 1/200 the population of india, is anywhere near the military threat that can potentially be posed by india.

(this is not to say india is a threat to the US, just that Israel and India are of completely different o.o.m. ,and that the comparison is therefore absurd)

but, I suspect mpe will not let such shaky facts stand in the way of his solid prejudices.