Slashdot Mirror
India Debating Manned Space Flight
alphakappa writes "India's moon mission and other space programs have been covered before on Slashdot. India is now debating sending a manned space mission and has acknowledged it's technological preparedness to do so in the next 6-7 years if given the go-ahead. The issues being debated before starting work on the mission include cost-benefit and other space priorities. (These missions also play host to international experiments) What does the general slashdot crowd think of these space plans?"
Of course being an Indian and having worked with ISRO I feel strongly about it. The space is definitely the next frontier. So far India has done incredible projects related to weather, remote sensing, etc. It's definitely time to venture into this. And this is not just showing technological superiority (and I definitely will see more posts on NASA outsorcing) but that's the proud thing that India can launch vehicles in space at much much lower costs. Putting this in perspective helps in going through further projects like star wars (when US is already thinking about making it a reality). Besides India also faces competition from its neighbor China in space frontiers.
a recent guardian weekly article states that it is not considered worth the estimated US$ 2 billion it would cost to put a man on the moon.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
With Brazil, Several Private groups, China, and India all now shooting for space it would hopefully put some pressure on our space spending which has dropped off considerably since the end of the cold war.
Perhaps if we convinced there was oil on the moon there would be more intrest but I belive the current compeition will help. It's bad enough our engineers are being squeezed out by cheap alternatives in other countries but losing out on our space program could have profound results elsewhere in our economy. We'll go from being a tech leader to a tech backwater. Were already there with our network infrastructure, were getting there with our engineering based workforces and high tech jobs going overseas.
Worse if you look at things you may notice that our society and economic structure may eventually destroy our country. With inflation on nearly everything it's becoming nearly impossible to compete with other countries. sure you can compare their living conditions vs ours but does everything here have to be so damned expensive? When I was born the average house sold for 55,000 dollars. Today you're lucky to see them in the 80's and the average is 250,000 where I live worse in some other areas. What justifies all that price jumping?
Worse is we have a president that went from a 5 trillion dollar surplus to hitting a 8 trillion dollar deficit. Where the hell did we spend all that money. IIRC those iraq spending bills were in the billions per year but looking at the deficit it's obvious that the money is going somewhere else unknown to the american public. Who are we paying and for what?
Too bad all the nations can't get into an agreement, if there was a single space program for the whole world, it'd be both easier to swallow from the economical point of view and would be good from a scientific point of view, instead of reinventing the wheel scientists could focus on the real problems.
As long as India is concerned, it's a bit harsh to spend bilions of dollars to send ppl into space, when so many in India are starving etc. However the problem is well beyond my comprehension, I bet that if they actually did spend the money just to buy some food, next ppl would be starving again, if however they spend on research, with some luck they will develop technological means to overcome poverty.
What bothers me most with developing countries is the fact that despite spreading diseases, high mortality, poverty, bad living conditions, the law (as in China) there is still growth in population. I won't have a child unless I can secure his future up until University at least, they just don't care...
The more the merrier, there is plenty of room in space for everyone.
roamingfeet
why does it interest us? Because it is India? What about China, Canadian and other groups wanting to go to space?
Because developing and third-world nations are making huge strides in progress. The US accomplished this over 35 years ago, but that really does not mean much because they've competition from what were unlikely competitors, until a few years ago.
It shows that as a civilization we are progressing and moving forward - technology is not as much of a niche as it once was. What one country could achieve after putting in so much of time and effort has now been made a little easier and a little common place.
That is why this is important. That said, I'm quite certain that if NASA was to launch a manned mission, Slashdot would cover that too.
"As long as India is concerned, it's a bit harsh to spend bilions of dollars to send ppl into space, when so many in India are starving etc. However the problem is well beyond my comprehension, I bet that if they actually did spend the money just to buy some food, next ppl would be starving again, if however they spend on research, with some luck they will develop technological means to overcome poverty."
What I was thinking the other day was to have a governmental construction force, similar to the army, to build cities. Anyone who wants to volunteer for work will be given work to build a city. Houses/schools/places of buisness would be made that otherwise would not have been made, and not with a plan.
Make a governmental food program too, but it doesn't have to be tasty, just really cheap food thats nutritional. Most people wouldn't want to eat it except those who are starving.
With food and shelter taken care of, people wouldn't be in trouble and can spend their time on an education and bettering society themself.
God spoke to me.
Will developing things like solid rocket booster technology be somewhat applicable to development of long-range missiles?
I know that some of the hubbub surrounding Loral's technology used in Chinese satellite launches was because of the supposition that it would enhance PRC's ability to lob nukes over longer distances.
Of course, since Pakistan is so close, I don't know how much of an impetus there is towards long-range missiles in India.
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I agree with the overarching point that I believe politically Pakistan has the potential to be a bit more of a powder-keg than India, but both countries have both inherently good and bad practices. India for example (if I remember correctly, which is often not the case) was spotlighted for numerous accepted Acid-burn attacks on women from Indian men because of marriage issues (basically very young girls not wanting to marry older men so the older men would throw acid on them scarring them for life.)
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Because India going to space would start a space race in Asia. China would speed up its own space program to try and prove that they can beat the Indians. Pakistan would start a space program out of contempt for India. All three nations will gain advanced rocket engine technology that will be used by their militaries to enhance nuclear weapon delivery.
Doing all of this will provide these nations with plenty of cool technology and a lot of capable engineers. At that point the US Government would have no choice but to join in the space race or risk losing what little edge it has left over Asia in that area. This will spur EU nations to start pushing their space programs so that they can at least stay in the game.
At this point the worlds economic powerhouses would all be engaged in cool space missions. With people of very different cultures approaching the problems related in getting people to space and back alive, there will be all sorts of different solutions produced.But without a cold war in the way this time, many of the technologies and personnel produced can be shared, allowing everyone involved to do it better and faster. And with everyone working together, maybe nations would be less likely to drop out.
A new space race would be a huge step forward in the scientific evolution of mankind and I can't wait!
I am actually quite sick of people branding people about whom they hardly know anything even in jest. Just as there are blues and reds in the US, there are a variety of people in India and equating India = turban is just advertising one's ignorance to the world.
How would it be if one would say America = "duh"?
That's why they are having a debate about it. The Indian space program has always been less about national prestige than some others and more focused on raising money and benefiting the population, that's why they do so many earth monitoring satellites (and they recently launched their edusat (?) for improving education facilities in remote populations).
Hopefully if they do decide to put someone up they'll have done a good cost benefit on it.
Boeing DOES do commercial launches for whoever wants to hire them and does it with their own facility launching from the middle of the ocean. Is this something like that what you had in mind?
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I can easily imagine canada becoming a major technological power if the US continues its race to the bottom. I don't think it is just an issue of national will. The US and USSR both diplomatically pressured other nations(i.e. Germany) not to develop orbital capability. Part of it is the notion that _only_ large countries can do anything to do with space development-though the X-Prize went a long ways towards dispelling that. If the US implodes, I can easily imagine Canada, New Zealand and Australia developing space capability. For that matter, despite deindustrialization, a lot of the US industrial capacity is in "Blue States" that are immediately adjacent to Canada-and many of the residents of those states might prefer association with canada to association with a fascist, fundamentalist United States(if that develops).
The world can be a better place if we leave nationalism behind, and think collectively in terms on the whole mankind.
The world would also be a better place if we were all transformed into magical fairies with wings so that we could fly wherever we wanted to go. What's your point?
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