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?"
With Hundreds of Indians attached to the spacecraft in anyways they can fit in hanging off the edges blasing into space?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
why does it interest us? Because it is India? What about China, Canadian and other groups wanting to go to space?
Iraq wanting to go to space? That would be interesting.
There a few imbalances in the world that need to be sorted out and space is one of them. The more the merrier.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
Any offsite expainsion of the human race is welcome. We can't continue to depend of the Earth for everything.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
They manage to fit the American ego in there, so I don't see why not.
liqbase
In view of the problems we've had with the shuttle, I think the more countries that can send people into orbit and retrieve them, the better. We should make available to India and China our docking adapter plans and technical assistance, so all spacecraft can dock to a common interface.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I bet they do it about 25% of the price.
Although they'll have to outsource to Americans that used to work at NASA
NASA: "Hello? This is Gutmar."
INDIA: "Yeah, 'Gutmar', your real name is something like 'David' or 'Paul' isn't it? Damned Americans taking our jobs."
NASA: "My Friend, I cannot tell you where I am. It is not our policy My Friend."
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?
For India, this actually has a lot of benefits.
.. and pharmaceuticals in zero G environment without having to pay for expensive robotic equipment ..and yes lives on the ground will be saved by the economic and social benefits of being able to do this kind of research.
Ironically the USA at this point doesnt have the same benefit return on manned spaceflight that India has.
1) Commercial satellite contracts will be easier to get for a variety of reasons and insurance of those launches cost less as well
2) it will encourage indian kids to get into science
3) Reduce dependency on imported foreign technology by developing local talent in engineering and also the extensive IT etc. other support systems needed. Depending on imports is fine, but you need to have knowledge in case there is a loss for some reason.
4) Having a missile program is good for defense (sorry but its true given the way the world is, with all the whacko rogue states running around)
5) Be able to hook up with the ISS and carry out experiments in semiconductors (crystal growth)
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 countries we have going to space the less chance there is of our own space program stagnating. Competition will keep our Congress people's attention. Even if they would rather put the resources into another payraise for themselves or Halliburton, they will have to think about the stigma of the US losing its place as the world leader in space on their watch.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
"I'm frankly sick of all the damned jingoism and nationalist fever in the red states" ...whereas there's none of that in the red state of China? No self delusion and jingoism in China? None at all?
I am sick of such messages which regularly appear on the topic of some technological development in the developing nations. And these messages get moderated as +5 Insightful.
If I were to use the same argument, then US should spend a little less on defence and bring the number of people below povery line to zero.
Your comment is ignorant.
You can can toss all the money you want and it will not fix the situation and possibly make it worse. The issue isn't the squalor they live in, for some of those people they don't see it as squalor. Many live as those who lived before them and it is by OUR standards that their living standards are not acceptable. You cannot buy them a new lifestyle. You cannot pay them to think and act differently.
Sure spend some money, but also realize that the national pride will go a lot further for many Indians with a successful space program. It allows them to dismiss people who constantly call India "3rd world". Too many people see that country as "3rd world" while ignoring all they accomplished.
Why do people mostly complain about DEMOCRATIC countries that do this but give a pass to China who not only throws a ton of money into their space race, their military, and such and at the same time likes to whack 5000+ of thier own people?
India is progressing nicely, I don't think they need our Western standards to intefer with a job they are doing.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The Race for Space was an expensive bugger, but it was also a time of great innovation.
I welcome the Chinese, and the Indians, and the Japanese. Go Arianespace! Whose idea was it to replace two lumbering bureaucracies with a single humongous multinational lumbering bureaucracy?
Nice to see so many techies falling back to racist sterotypes of Indians or worse (the person who made the comments about it being a shame that there were no visa restrictions to prevent Indians in space - I'm talking to you).
How would people react if instead we were talking about Africans swinging from tree branches into space?
I know I will get the typical idiot responses banging on about freedom of speech, but you know what? I don't care.... racism is racism is racism....
From your post I can tell two things:
1. You're ignorant. Sorry for being so blunt, but it's true.
India might have a population of a billion, but they're not all "poor, illiterate and starving", far from it. As for things like "an ancient infrastructure and horrible pollution", well I have two words for you: Union Carbide.
Seriously, put down Half-Life 2 for five minutes and read a book. Perhaps then you'll have a better understanding of the world beyond your own nation's borders. And perhaps you'd also appreciate that you don't even have to get a passport, or even get into a car, to see real abject poverty: I'm sure there are plenty of people living hand to mouth existences only a few miles from your doorstep.
2. You have no appreciation for the benefits that technology can have for even the simplest people, or the role of technology in elevating people from poverty.
Farmers benefiting from better weather forecasts is just one example of what I'm talking about. Solar panels providing electricity to even the remotest regions is another. Water filtration and recycling techniques are yet more.
Sorry, but the only thing that's asinine here is your attitude. I've been there and seen the country too, so I know that you're talking out of your backside.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Canada is obviously delaying putting people into space until after they develop a reliable method for brewing beer in zero gravity...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
First of all, I did read that you'd been there: if you bothered to read my reply as well as I read your original comment you'd notice that I said that "I've been there and seen the country too", a clear acknowledgement of your claim.
Poor is a relative term. Of course there are poor people in India, just as there are poor people in the US, in the UK, and everywhere else in the world. India certainly doesn't have a monopoly on poor, and it certainly doesn't have "about a billion poor, illiterate and starving people" as you claim. If nothing else, the number of technology jobs being moved their from the US and elsewhere should blow your argument out of the water.
According to the CIA World Factbook, India has posted an average annual economic growth of 6 percent since 1990: see if you can find any other comparable nation that's making those sorts of strides. And the distribution of wealth isn't as bad as in, say, the US, with the bottom 10 percent of the population having 3.5 percent of the wealth (compared to 1.8 percent in the US). Life expectancy is rising just as it is in the West. Etc, etc. The idea that India is still a poor backward nation is just that, an idea, whereas the reality is very different.
As I've said twice now, once in my original post, once again in the previous paragraphs, I've been to India too. The reality is that I've never had a problem phoning the West (maybe 20 years ago, but not now) and the infrastructure is visibly improving year on year. Pollution, the other issue that you mention, is hardly something that's specific to India either: I've experienced smog-filled days in the developed as well as the developing world.
I've been to India several times. My last trip to India covered everywhere from the northernmost states down to Mumbai and then onto Bangalore, and lasted 13 weeks. My next one, scheduled for early next year, will cover New Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan, Gujurat, Mumbai, Goa and Kerala over six weeks. My hindi is a bit poor in places, but my gujurati is spot on, and I can converse with the average man in the street anywhere in the country without a problem. So, please, don't presume to tell me I'm the one who's ignorant about the Indian subcontinent. Because what you know about India that I don't probably isn't worth one fucking rupee.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg