Slashdot Mirror
India Plans Moon Mission by 2008
LPetrazickis writes "According to the Tribune, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has announced today that India will send a spacecraft to the moon by 2008. The Chandrayaan-I mission will showcase Indian achievements in science and technology to the world. Both European and Canadian Space Agencies have shown interest in the mission. SifyNews reports that 2008 was initially mispronounced as 1908. Today is the 56th anniversary of India's independence." Previous talk about this has come from the Indian space agency; this announcement from the Prime Minister seems to have more weight.
I wish India the best of luck in reaching the moon with an unmanned vehicle in 2008. Very ambitious.
With more countries demonstrating prowess in space technology, perhaps it will finally motivate the U.S. to get off our asses, reinvigorate our space ambitions and do something more meaningful than driving a bus three times a year into low Earth orbit to a bloated and finicky station that doesn't seem to be doing much more than Skylab did 30 years ago.
I must be in a grumpy mood...
A little bit of added competition in the space arena is exactly what is needed. The more countries that put their space programs on the map, the more pressure there is for the larger space programs to stay on top of things.
I think this could be a very good thing for even more expansion in space.
And even if the pressure isn't put in other programs, it's still an increase in the space research being done.
I think it's a good thing that countries like India and China have their sights set at the moon.
The sooner we start mining the He3 up there, the better.
For the whole planet's sake, we've gotta start colonising the moon.
that is 96.5 million dollars (assuming 1 dollar is 40 rupees). "Titanic" - movie cost more than twice as much. Lets hope that this does better than the titanic. 1 crore = 100 lakhs. 10 lakhs = 1 million.
Iraq - no nukes - gets invaded - lots of dead people on both sides. (and counting). N Korea has nukes - no sign of it getting invaded - nobody has died.