Slashdot Mirror
Indian Moon Mission to Have Landing Component
Anil Kandangath writes "Last month, it was announced that the Indian moon mission Chandrayan I would have a component that would land on the moon to function as an impactor. For all those who complain about India spending big bucks on its space program, The Scientific Indian has a list of updates about the space program's plans for this year which includes two cartography satellites, a satellite based 'total disaster management system', a few communication satellites and a satellite launch for the European Union."
Allow me to translate:
[...] which includes two spy satellites, a satellite based 'total spy management system', a few spy satellites and a spy satellite launch for the European Union."
Hellooooo, the U.S. never landed on the moon. I strongly doubt India will ever have any success either.
Why is EU paying india to do it when they could use the Arianne rockets in france and keep the money at home..
Will code a sig generator for food
Plenty of people in the US have no job, no home and no health insurance. One could use a similar argument to advocate shutting down NASA until all US citizens reach a decent standard of living.
Personally I think space exploration is a worthy cause for mankind and see no wrong in diverting a reasonable level of funding toward it.
Even a failed mission can function as an impactor.
It's an interesting predicament: one of the things that makes America, America is the value we put on human life. For example, today, bridge building is so safe that to have a single life lost is considered hugely threatening to a project, and a huge tragety overall. Nary a hundred years ago, building a bridge could easily lose a hundred lives, and it would be considered "Average" or even "Expected".
India is a country of billions of people, it's mostly pre-industrial, and can "afford" to expend lives on something like space travel, especially as it will bring up the morale and feeling of honor of the Indian people, and that it will help unify India with the European Union and the people within India (which are already quite fragmented via religion and language).
In short, we are values and emotionally bias towards the loss of life on such projects because we have yet to lose a single human life in space, and we value human life much higher than we value the equipment that they ride upon to outer space, even if that equipment is worth multiples of billions of dollars (e.g. the Space Shuttles). A country like India will have the reverse value situation, as since those dollars can't easily be replaced, they must make the equipment work under any circumstances, even the loss of human lives.
Just sit and think about it a little before you judge the Indians for the want to feel industrial verses the helping of their people..
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I'm sure this is just the first step to outsource NASA to India.
"and that it will help unify India with the European Union..."
Whaaa?
"Bangalore, we have a problem..." - "Please describe your problem." - "We are leaking oxygen" - "Try restarting your landing computer" (Yes, I know this mission is not manned)
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
* Joint Project.
* History of bad blood.
When two people who have bad history's get together and agree to work on a project, it's embracing unity, even if it's on a very small level. Once we can overcome the past, the future is no longer such a hurdle.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Sorry to reply twice, but I felt the need to add something right as I hit submit; Think about the United States and Russia. We may be totally independent in space programs, but without each other, we are nowhere. Now we are very reliant on them in order to work with our astronauts on ISS, until the Shuttle fleet is back running. In our recent past, we haven't had a lot of trust of the Russians, but now, working together with them with to get to our people in space has really brought us together. More people in America know about things going on over there, and fewer people in America think of the Russians as "commie scum".
Think about when the UK finally gave up India as a colony. This left India in a very hard way economically, and the relationship was tarnished. I couldn't imagine the feelings they must harbor towards the English now, after that event. Now, by the EU working with the Indian space agency to get their satellite into space, it's like saying "Hey, we're sorry about what happened and we want to make it up to you".
It's all about getting that trust back.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
"How about putting the big bucks to help your own people?"
How about looking ahead a few years?
"Derp de derp."
Bleh. Why do people always argue the "big picture" concept against the allegedly "small picture" argument? It'll never get traction - it isn't ignorance stopping people from agreeing with you, it's indifference. How tangible is the notion of a "better" society? Bleh.
No, the argument is people starving and money spent on a space program being wasteful so address it as such. A NASA engineer requires a lot of expertise, and is employed, therefore the Indian equivelent very likely requires a lot of expertise and is employed. Said expertise requires higher education - you've just employed a professor or five. Said expert's income can go towards housing and food - you've just employed a carpenter and a farmer... yes. Noone is going to eat a space module, but the persons responsible for mining the materials to construct it are, as are the people who constructed it, support it...
Great Depression in the US was at an impasse because economic thinking before then was the immature cognitive process that produces the fallacy of immediate needs spending. Sometimes you gotta borrow money to make money ("You gotta spend money to make money." well if you've got no money...) - and on the scale of an economy, borrowing money is national jobs no matter how "crazy" - artists on government payroll, eccet.
Man this rock around the ball of fire has gone to crap, invasions that make the Vicotrian era look like a bad 1980's video game. I am looking for the next Stargate out of here, what do you mean transport to Tatooine, I am looking for a wormhole, bet you that I will beat you to a Tatooine ( if there is one ) :)
PS Star Wars is not real.
but on the over all congrats to India and space exploration and landing on the moon. Maybe this will be a big step in moving sane/peaceful of this rock around the ball of fire.
"Maybe I didn't really know you. Maybe you were just a mirage. Maybe the world is full of food and sex and spectacle and we're all just hurling towards an acropolis, in which case it's not your fault. I'm been thinking about all these things and....you're probably standing there monitoring. And one more thing -- about the letter. NUKE IT, FLAME IT, DESTROY IT -- it hurts me to know it's out there. Later." - Loyd Dobbler, Say Anything
The biggest risk of human life in the whole project is the development of the platform, which, from the sounds of it is pretty complete. We may never know how many lives were lost developing the hardware (mining the iron, making it steel, refining the chemicals used for propellants/oxidants, etc), but I can guarentee the process wasn't without its share of lost lives. Even our space program has lost its fair share of lives in development of the platform, and from failed launches/recoveries.
The moot point is the fact that India's population is increasing. It really doesn't matter what the growth/decline of the population is, just that the value of the population is considered less when it comes to the cost of industrialization. It's cheaper to spend 20 lives to build something in a pre-industrialized society than it is to expend 2 lives in an industrialized society. Life just carries a higher value. That's all I ask you to think about.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
No EU country gives announce of pity/history/love/loyalty/or your momma's fried chicken to India. Maybe India is a 'pre-Industralized' nation so what. And ciroknight I think you got it wrong, I don't think the EU is trying to make it up to them. if they are they are saying, "Hey you Brits, remember India well looks like we got Ikea ( I don't think there are any in India) and we got there space contract ...." And India is not about wasting lives, there are far few executions in India than maybe the _state_of_Texas_....
That is not a way to judgg industralized nations. the way to judge an indsutralized nation is far more deeper than the way a country may look at judging life.
Sorry to say this, but there is more to life than living your life to buy your materialistic goods produced by an industralized nation.
This is helping.
A space programme is an investment. Just like Apollo, there will be a lot of spin off technologies.
A space programme is also a public works programme. It requires a very large staff. This means that most of the money invested will remain in India(I'm not totally sure about the economics of this. Ask an economist). The ent result is that they spend more money buying stuff (hopefully from other indians) increasing the overall wealth.
I don't know what method they will be using to choose the impact spot for the impactor.. I hope they wait until the data has been gathered by the onboard instruments and choose a spot where there is likely some water-ice.
This way when the impact happens hopefully their spectrometer would be able to detect the vapor and finally(hopefully) confirm that theory.
-
india has much much larger problems in those reguards then the USA.
how about BASIC emenities and such as clean drinking water and waste treament. you can't use the arguemen t that the space project generates jobs either, because building waste treatment plants does the same job and benifits the whole community.
but then again india has nuclear weapons to, so their government clearly rates it's peoples needs a distance 6th or 7th on it's list...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
First it was the 2Mbit/s for $2.30USD now its the Moon landing Mission
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Whats wrong with putting the big bucks to help everyone on Earth, which will benefit us (Indians included) for generations and generations?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
Sorry, but I can not see any intelectual differences between a human from India and other from "western nations" or from any other point of the world. May be your intentions are good or enthusiastic, but your argumentation it is weak by design.
;-)
My best wishes to every single human in the world. I hope some day we'll live as one
the USA sent men to the moon in the middle of one of the most tumultuous decades in our nation's history.
This article talks about plans to introduce telemedicine through satlellites. This move , if successful could have far-reaching effects in India , especially since even basic healthcare facilities are out of reach for many in rural India. What is also commendable is that organisations using this for social good would not be charged for the service
on *american* life(life that has not been deemed a criminal).
building the america wasn't that pretty(not that building any nation was..).
statistics go a long way in showing the respect for human life... but pr doesn't have that much value in india as it does in usa where pr is everything and as such even a little tragedy can haunt projects if they make it to the social-porno news.
havent lost a single life...? don't _going_ up there and coming down count? one of the reasons why usa took leaps in the moon race was that russians got really paranoid about safety after first problems..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
i normally wouldn't reply to obvious flamebait, but i can't help it on this one occasion. (feel free to mod this down as it's only half on topic and entirely a reply to the parent)
yes it's nice that india is doing this sort of thing, though i would personally rather see them spend their money more of on the planet earth and developing their nation. this WONT help the majority of their population, at least not within the next 20+ years. space research and exploration is a field with no guarenteed profits and nor even guarenteed information gained, and typically programs end up deep in the red but with some decent amounts of good research gained. I personally think India should stick to satellites in relation to space as satellites can bring real profit and truly help the Indian economy (and slow down or stop the damnable IT outsourcing) but i'm also obviously not leading a nation.
offtopic: as for the obvious hate rant at the United States and company. I won't say anyone is perfect, and most things in the united states are anything but perfect, but we could dish trash about any nation's past or even current policy, and native americans weren't mostly killed by US soldier's weapons, but instead by diseases (namely smallpox), the same way the aztecs and other centeral/south american natives were whiped out by spaniards and the other european nations exploring.
the United States is not this big evil nation out to do everyone in and make itself godly. real people live there too, the same as you, they bleed, they work hard, they live life. we're just a nation working as a nation with a government that is working as it is, albeit not always as well as everyone hopes, but it still is the government we americans choose to use. if you truly believe that what a some people in a government, a very tiny percentage of a population, for a very shot period (4 to 8 years), do is a good reason to bad mouth, to practically hate, hundreds of millions of humans with different ideas and beliefs; then i feel sorry for you on so many levels it's not even funny.
</rant>
"Think about when the UK finally gave up India as a colony. This left India in a very hard way economically"
The relationship between Britain and India is SO much more complex than this it's laughable. There's virtually nothing that India cannot do alone if it wants to, but they are pragmatists above all.
That was classic intercourse!
Not sure if you pose this as a straw man or not. But if NASA was closed down etc ,,, it would make NO difference. I don't know why people persist with this delusional thinking. That is not the way the world works, if you close down NASA the money will not go to social programs, and even if it did they would almost certainly be poorly thought out and be effectively useless. One could argue that these claims of mine are just supposition, but if you look at the last 50 years you see that it is pretty much the typical outcome. BTW, remember at the end of the Cold War and all the talk of the Peace Dividend? So were the 90s a golden age? Was world poverty cured? Q.E.D.
Bitter and proud of it.
The real reason people from the US complain about this is that Americans think they own space.
Unemployment in the U.S. holds at a steady 5% (give or take), which is far better than even in the EU. In India, by contrast about 300 million people, or 29% of the population, live on less than a dollar a day. (Note that the entire U.S. population is about 280 million.) These are the people who do have jobs. The government was able to count 40 million workers who cannot find jobs at all. While this makes for an impressive 3.8% unemployment rate, as mentioned above, many jobs pay very poorly. The conditions are so bad that as many as 3,000 Indian farmers in a single state (Andhra Pradesh) have killed themselves over the last six years because of debt and drought.
This is not to say that India should not be building a space program. Indian universities produce more than 1.5 million graduates each year. There are nowhere near enough jobs to employ all these people entering the workforce. India's tech industry employs only 1 million people total. Industry and grand capitalistic vision will help to produce jobs.
Capitalism is not a zero sum game. India's "pie" is increasing rapidly and will continue to get bigger. Its economy is forecast to grow 8 percent this year. India is already home to thousands of millionaires and nine of the world's richest billionaires. By the way, another name for rich people is "employers." That's good news for the lower classes.
The sad reality is that there is no quick fix to India's massive poverty, space program or not. India has more people in poverty (we're talking literally dirt poor) than any other country. It's been that way a long time, and it's not going to get better by scrapping a space mission.
If priorities are your concern, consider this: Indian teenagers spend $3 billion a year on fashion accessories. And you've heard of Bollywood, which churns out twice as many movies per year as Hollywood. But then again, if Indians were to restrain spending on fashion accessories and movies, those industries would shrink, and many Indians would lose their jobs. Consumerism is the engine of wealth.
There are many things hindering India's progress. The people speak hundreds of languages; religions and customs also vary wildly by region. It is like several countries within a country. Its population of 1.07 billion is both a blessing and a curse; it is a reservoir of great potential, but right now, it is dragging the country down because most are uneducated (or undereducated) and poor.
Source: "India Surprises," The Commission, November 2004, pp. 30-35. (printed magazine article contains more information)
If you never hear anything about this again don't worry about it the US have just eliminated the team so there is no evidence that they were never really on the moon.
Have you metaroderated recently?
Everyone know that this mission will fail.
Simply beacuse there is no moon
Have you metaroderated recently?
Personally I think space exploration is a worthy cause for mankind and see no wrong in diverting a reasonable level of funding toward it
I disagree a little with this; We know more about space that we do about the depths of our own oceans, and I think that some funding funding for space projects should be reduced a little, and we should put the same amount of effort into deep sea exploration.
Saying that though, at the end of the day, I think that all research is good, no matter what it's about. The more we can do to expand out knowledge of the universe and our world, the better.
Just my £0.02.
Wait a second, this is 101% wrong. India does spend money on poor. But as you know for spending money you need to generate it first. And no indian satellite program is used for "educational" purposes unlike western countries.
Now coming to Western countries, well in the name of free trade agreement all the western countries have done is to ensure that the latest technologies are so costly that developing countries are forced not to use it. The whole Drug patent thing that India had to subscribe to made our generic drugs costlier than what a person would earn in a whole months of work.
In terms of technology transfers it is pathetic even mundane things like a microwave oven is a thing of luxury for many Indians.
Talk about environment we have all the players like Mercedes, Chevvy, Hyundai, Toyota none of the companies give clean cars to India. If they do its cost is equal to 20 years of a common mans salary.
Moral of the story If the western counrtries dont help us we help ourselves.
EUA has giving more attention to Brazil on the Satellite Vehicle Launching, because the base of Alcântara is so near the Equator line reducing the use of gas to launch the roquets.
http://www.michel.eti.br
NONE of the work going to be done by indias satellites is going to help anyone in the world. I hope you realise that the west is far ahead of india in science and medicine. Therefore anything they "discover" will be old and nothing of significance. And the reason why the US sent men to the moon in the middle of the Cold War was because of the competition from the USSR. That was to do with national pride and prestige. However I will say again, both USSR and US were extremely developed industrially, technologically, scientifically, and economically. India is none of these things and should focus on them before trying to compete with CHINA and the US, EU, and former USSR nations.
The biggest hurdle is in keeping the camels oxygenated when pulling around the landing rover.
...to the oft heard comment, "Jeezus, where is your call center - on the MOON?!"
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Once India has its space program up and running, we can outsource NASA to India. That'll save us a fortune! I'm sure those rocket scientists will be able to get work at their local Wal-Marts.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I have had enough of crap about India.
It is time you all woke up to and figured out that USA is as bad as any other country.
We may have more illiterates than any other country in the world, but you forget that India also has the largest number of engineers. More Indians can speak English than there are people in the entire USA. Think about that.
We are not poor due to our stupidity. We are poor by design. Just a 100 years ago, we were the richest nation on earth. Then we were split up into two countries and made to go at each other's throat. The Indo-Pak cold war has cost us an entire civilization.
Our political system is bankrupt. Most politicians are plain goons. But we also have the vision to elect a woman to rule us. Every second President of India is from the minorities. How many black presidents, how many women presidents has USA had? How about a Jew for the Prez?
I find it very surprising that most of the posts talk about Indian Poverty. It certainly points to the assumption that money according to American values is what defines a person. That is simply not a simple truth for many places in the world.
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
Wow! All this concern for the welfare of the poor starving Indians on Slashdot! And yet, when an Indian programmer gets an outsourced tech job, supposedly "stealing" it from a good ol' American programmer who is thereby forced to live a slightly less affluent lifestyle, he's pure evil.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
I don't know why you'd post your rebuttal as AC.
I assume the information contained in your link is accurate, and it's not surprising. However, I must point out that people living below the poverty line within the US are still far better off than impoverished citizens of third-world countries. Additionally, people are willing to risk life and limb just to get into the US to live and work illegally, even if it means living below the poverty line.
Why? Because the US still offers one thing that you won't get in most other countries (including INDIA) -- opportunity to rise above your current status -- above the poverty line.
It is this that makes the US great. Unfortunately, a lot of our own citizens and even members of the Congress have forgotten this fact.
Only in Soviet Russia they own space.
Also only old people in Korea don't launch their own satellites.
i think usa has got its own shares of problems. After all, how many nations are there in this world where people are discriminated based on there _skin color_ ?
r ticle.v iew?page=225
How many nations...besides ALL of them?
http://www.adventuredivas.com/dispatches/a
http://www.friesian.com/caste.htm
The US has its set of unique problems due to its history. As difficult as it has been, the US has chosen to deal with them. Don't think for a minute those problems are indigenous to the US. There are plenty of racists to go around, especially from more "civilized" peoples in Europe and Asia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1899420. stm
Norrath, the setting for the online game Everquest, has been found to be the 77th richest country in the world, sandwiched between Russia and Bulgaria.
Online gaming has attracted millions of players and their rise in popularity in recent years is mainly down to improved graphics and more players to interact with.
Research carried out in the United States shows that virtual internal markets, combined with illegal online trading on auction websites, mean that Norrath has a gross national product per capita of $2,266, bigger than China and India.
Most of these people (the Grand Parent) dont seem to realise that Space rockets arent made from gold and loaded with bundles of cash that make up the projects budget. The money actually goes to the populous. Yeah, OK maybe not all of it, but it sure helps some of it.
If India had spent the last 50 years spending all its budget on eliminating 'poor' or poverty from the populous by giving money to these people, it would still be doing it today, and it would STILL be exactly where it was 50 years ago. You dont give poor people money. You dont eliminate poverty by handing money to these people. You spend that money on education, betterment, you bribe people to make a little effort on their own behalf and further themselves.
A Space program produces trained and educated people, people with goals and drive. It supports universities, and higher education, it produces whole new commercial sectors (where do you think all those people who have had US jobs outsourced to them got trained? They dont grow on trees.)
I thought he threw his medal into the Ohio River to protest the Vietnam War.
Note, I'm not trying to make any point about how poor these people are, I know India has terrible problems, I am just querying whether the "dollar a day" thing really reflects reality. Is it really a dollar a day, the same value dollar as you get in a western city, or do they have the potential to get more bang for their buck so to speak.
While i agree that being impoverished in a 'third world country' are opposed to impoverished in the US is different, the matter of if the person is far better off i disagree. The one main reason people are willing to risk life and limb to get in to the US to live and work is mostly due to the perceived imporovement in their life they hope to gain. For some it is ture and for others it is not. In which case the come back disgusted with the US way of life. As for rising above the poverty line it all depends on where you are here where i live it is possible to rise above the poverty line but what is lacking in most cases is a lack of will power to do so.
Simply beacuse there is no moon.
Spoon, dude. There is no spoon .
-kgj
-kgj
It's great news that India is developing the next stage of their space program beyond simple payload to orbit missions. Soon Iran, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea will cut the legs out of that sector of the business so NASA, the ESA, Japan, India and Russia will have to find new venues for their space programs. Scientific missions to the moon as proof of concept programs for new technology are a great first step.
Because there's so much money to be had in space! I mean, with the asteroid mining, and I hear they've perfected a genetically-modified money tree that grows in microgravity and produces an extra abundance of $100s. Oh yeah, every launch some government makes is bringing in the moolah, even compared to the gojillion-dollar costs of launching in the first place. Right.
And yet, when an Indian programmer gets an outsourced tech job, supposedly "stealing" it from a good ol' American programmer who is thereby forced to live a slightly less affluent lifestyle, he's pure evil.
No, it is the executive who pockets the difference in salaries who is pure evil. The American gets to live the "slightly less affluent lifestyle" of being unemployed, an Indian gets a well paying for India but not so great paying for here job, and some person who is already wealthy beyond either employee's dreams gets another million dollar bonus for saving the company money.
My problem with outsourcing has nothing to do with Indians getting tech jobs. My problem with outsourcing is that it is just another way for money to be siphoned away from the lower classes into the hands of the extremely rich.
Concentration of wealth is what is hurting us, not offshoring. Offshoring is just the symptom of a system that we know is killing us but we can't seem to do anything about. Getting mad at the cheaper labour that replaces us is just misplaced anger.
The enemies of Democracy are
if u check the currency coversion a dollar is approximately 42 rupees. 42*31= 1302 which is more than enough for a farmer living in the outskirts to sruvive because of highly lowered rates and ration given by the government and that amount in the city is too low i agree but c'mon give them some credit all these things that India is doing will get them recognition from other counrties of the world and thats the main reason that their doin all this and too boost the already flourishing Indian economy.
Feed, Clothe, House your people
Stuff that matters.
From TFA
Officially, this Rs 384-crore project is not a landing mission.
WTF is a crore?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
No that was John Kerry :-)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Why would they crash something on the moon's surface. They could easily collect rock samples by landing a probe.
True.
Also, people assume that since Britain ruled over India for 200 years and were driven out, Indians must somehow hate the English. This is simply not true. Remember that the freedom movement was largely a peaceful one thanks to the Mahatma and others. So when the British were finally 'driven out', it was not by war or revolutin - it was through discussions and negotiations (and many other things - I do not wish to over-simplify the whole freedom process).
So today there are tons of Indians in Britain, and Indians study about colonial excesses and make films about 'those lousy bastards', but the average Indian does not hate the British. They just happen to be part of our history. As in, they really are a part of our history and culture. Like the zillion other invaders who came to India and became part of our culture. No hard feelings.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
While this is a great advancement for the Indians I just can't get excited. Been there, done that. Landers, orbiters, impacters... Who cares!!! We had PEOPLE on the moon 35 years ago!
will Chandrayan 1 make a decent slurpee?
Sorry, I couldn't resist, nothing mean meant by it. Some of the nicest and brightest people I've met were from India.
http://www.marxist.com/
Thats where the ISRO control center is. Hassan is some 200 kms north west of B'lore.
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
Playing devil's advocate. Your "executive" has provided someone in India with a well-paying job that didn't exist before. In the process, an American employee lost his job.
Now why is that "pure evil"? Why shouldn't an executive be rewarded for helping out a developing economy like India's, even at the (relatively lesser) expense of an economy like ours?
I believe that figure is US$1/day at market exchange rates, as this is the international standard used by organizations like the UNDP. By purchasing power parity the poverty rate would be lower, but--it must be said--almost certainly still much higher than in the U.S. et al.
You have to have good income flow to help. India is just getting moving. I wish them well and hope that they help jump start american interest in really getting into space and staying there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nah, people still die on construction projects all the time--right here in America--and nobody considers it "hugely threatening" to the project. In fact, a common superstition among construction workers is that a site isn't safe to work on until a death has occurred. The ground demands blood, or something like that.
But yeah, it'd be weird nowadays if a bridge claimed upwards of 20 lives in its construction. OSHA and the unions would throw a fit, at the very least.
"We are not poor due to our stupidity. We are poor by design. Just a 100 years ago, we were the richest nation on earth."
No you weren't.
Probably they weren't the richest but do you know that Dubya's Yale University is named after the guy (YALE, ELIHU) who robbed India in the name of Trade(as a governor of British East India Company in Madras, India around 1687) and donated a little bit of that robbed Indian money to the Collegiate School at Saybrook, Connecticut around 1718 and it was eventually renamed Yale University after this Mr Yale.
WTF? Are you for real?
... that is pretty harsh.
Were/are there no Indian equiv's of Rosa Parks, Malcom X, or Martin Luther King. Is there nobody in the lower caste that can say 'I have a dream'?
I mean don't get me wrong - racism is fun and all but DAMN! To tell a quarter of a billion people 'whoops, you were born in the wrong caste so you are forever fucked and can never, ever dig your way out - and you have to accept that and be happy with it'
I say let India go for broke with their space program. What's the worst thing that could happen, assuming they build spaceships as good as they write computer code? A space program today is an incredible money pit that will consume as much money as possible and give absolutely no return whatsoever - but it will give the news agencies all kinds of fun things to report over the next few years.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
My post was not meant to give an exhaustive explanation for India's problems. I just listed a couple of things that came to mind first. I agree with the factors you listed.
Besides, who determines what's a reasonable level of funding? You? The guy you sent to Washington to represent you? Some NASA bureaucrat? More likely it was some pork-barrel trading, and in the political process, untenable projects like the ISS get funded, which squeezes the relatively cost-effective stuff out of the budget.
Will any space research be done in the absence of government funding? You bet there will. Enough people are interested in this stuff to at least pay for piggybacking some cool cameras on the next communications satellite.
That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
Now why is that "pure evil"? Why shouldn't an executive be rewarded for helping out a developing economy like India's, even at the (relatively lesser) expense of an economy like ours?
If the executive cares to do that, he can hire an Indian employee, keep the American employee, and take a pay cut for himself. Nobody has lost their job, and he is still rich but with a soul -- everybody wins. Instead he makes more money for himself, and will ditch the employee from the "developing" country as soon as it "devlops" wages that are higher than somewhere else.
I appreciate your devil's advocacy, but it's damned hard to sell greed with a circumstancial positive outcome as "good" when you could have no greed and better positive outcomes.
The enemies of Democracy are
pull out of iraq, save yer social security system, maybe contribute more than the 70 millions tht yer benevolent dictator so generously contributed
7-8-9-10-0
Actually a moon program is not like building white elephants, unless of course one picks really hard places to build the elephants in. A space program of any degree requires engineers to face and defeat some of the toughest environmental engineering challenges around. Said engineers are then the best and brightest at a lot of tasks that do make good money (like oh say, making commercial airliners, designing communications satellites, building better cell phones, etc. The design challenge of making an electrical device capable of providing high quality sensor data on a bitterly frugal power budget with a reliability capable of operating months or even years without service in an environment of high radiation, large temperature extremes, and total vacuum gives an engineer design tools he can employee forever. It provides a foundation of talented, trained technicians able to work to the most exacting standards which then can go on to design and build far more mundane objects with the object lessons learned. And the mechanical, electrical, chemical, and process information you learn or create from doing this kind of work can have serendipitous application as well (Teflon being one of those oft quoted examples) Plus the prestige contributes to national pride and self confidence which translates to a positive to the consumer confidence factor which leads to stimulation of the economy through more buying. Big, showy achievements tend to create better press then simple small advances regardless of the actual merit of the achievement (Call this the P.T. Barnum rule of economics) Bookkeepers and beancounters may quibble about the actual merit, but these classes can not lead a nation to greatness, they can only sustain the status quo. I congratulate India on their program and wish them the best of luck, perhaps the competition will push my own country to get serious again with it's space program. GO India!!
Or we could just go socialist and make everyone's wages equal.
no respect for birth control (which China has done right)
I am really shocked at this line of thinking. Forced abortions/sterilization is "birth control done right"? How would you like for someone to cut open your belly just because you act like a normal human?
Welcome to our timline, stranger from an alternate reality. Here we have an interesting development, peace through MAD, that has prevented major war for over 50 years.
The discovery for for the new millenium is that it works for everyone, not just members of the UN security council.
Anyone who thinks nukes are a waste of money should ask Israel if it wants to give them up.
Work for peace! Nukes for Iran now!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Hum, "Leon" was the only good film Portman was in, maybe you're right.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Indian infant mortality rate: 57.92 per 1000; World: 50.31 per 1000.
Indian life expectancy at birth: 63.99 years; World: 64.05 years.
Indian literacy: Male: 70.2%, female: 48.3%; World: Male: 83%, female: 71%.
Indian GDP/capita (PPP): $2,900; World: $8,200.
A pretty average place, bit low on the old GDP though. The 8% growth rate might help a bit.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
?! Please, don't misunderstand me, my parents got me a humanistic education, then, for me, a human is a human, with paying no attention where he/she lives. I do not became "humanist" by fear, but by a clean -and I hope I'm honest with myself- desire for welfare and dignity for every single person, despite his color or religion (in case he/she has).
Think about your second paragraph, still anonymous, I can feel hate in your words. Don't think other people as the "enemy", people is just people: feeling pain, fear, etc. just like you and I. Best regads.
Actually, the UK is a net exporter of curry to India; UK curry manufacturers (often founded by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent) now export curry paste/mix to the rest of the world, including India. Meanwhile, tikka masala recently was acknowledged as the English national dish.
Going the other way, a few years ago, the Indian conglomerate Tata Group bought English tea company Tetley's.
And Hinglish has the added charm that anything written in it, even a bureaucratic form, will read like a P.G. Wodehouse novel.
I'm all for hopping the next transport to Tatooine.
Yeah? Who's gonna fly it kid, you?
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
And the first settlers wil be an IBM call centre.
Might finally get brits on the moon if they can get a decent curry..........
If there is ANYTHING history has shown us is that governments are usually pretty good at solving TECHNICAL problems and fatastically HORRIBLE at solving social problems.
And why exactly do you say that India was the richest nation 100 years ago ?? Or that's what you call an agricultural "paradise" ?
The Raven
Indeed, congratulations to India, and hoping for more Indian missions in the future...
For a human to have kids when they know that they cannot feed them? Is it "humane"? Or is it insane?
The fact of the matter is, "world hunger" will not be solved without some form of population control. IF you were to snap your fingers and have enough food and health care instantly available for the current needy population, all you would do is double or triple the population in less than a generation.
Most places that have pulled themselves out of the muck have solved this with education. The Chinese, recognizing that their situation was desperate, have solved it with force. Others have not tried to solve it at all, and so they are still poor, diseased, ignorant, and starving with no hope in sight.
In the US, we have managed to pull most of our population out of the squalor by the sheer strength of our economy. Still we have problems that would be solved in a generation if we practiced some form of enforced birth control. Consider what would happen to our welfare system if every child was sterilized at birth and then as an adult had to pay for an operation to restore it to fertility.
While I don't advocate this, I do think that there are some forms of behavior that ought to be criminal, that aren't. I also think that the sentances for some crimes should include sterilisation.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO