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Project Orion to Bring U.S. Back to the Moon
ganjadude writes "Thirty-seven years ago yesterday, Project Apollo put the first humans on the surface of the Moon. The next time the U.S. launches its astronauts to Earth's natural satellite, they will do so as part of Project Orion." From the article: "Under Project Orion, NASA would launch crews of four astronauts aboard Orion capsules, first to Earth orbit and the International Space Station and then later to the Moon. Two teams, one led by Lockheed Martin and the other a joint effort by Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Co., are currently competing to build the CEV. NASA is expected to select the winner in September."
Didn't Apollo manipulate the goddess of the moon (Artemis) into killing Orion?
Not exactly the most auspicious name...
I read that as Project Onion.
Either way - something to cry over, I'm sure
To put it bluntly, we need to get off this hunk of rock we're on and start colonizing elsewhere.
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That a few simple organisms once existed on mars, and that Mars once had water? But don't we know this now?
Finding even simple organisims that evolved on Mars would be of fantastic value. Right now all we know about life is derived from one sample point. A lot of what we assume to fundamental about life could be proven completely wrong if we find out the Martian life does it differently. It could be that Earth life has unnecessary complexities and finding Mars life is the key to creating life from scratch in the lab. All sorts of amazing bio-technology could result.
... and cutting Shuttle flights and ISS funding and space telescope funding ...
I predict we will get some nice, new expensive exhibits for Space Camp and not much else.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Yours is a common argument. In an earlier era in the 1970s people were saying, why don't we spend that money here on earth where it's needed? Yet, every cent of that money is spent here on earth; it's not as though we launch tons of dollar bills into orbit and eject them into space. Thousands of engineers, scientists, physicians, space suit makers, rocket ship builders, computer programmers, astrophysicists, and others are employed by the space program.
I question that we would necessarily have developed velcro, microcomputers, Tang, new alloys, biomedical advances, etc., by sending robotic ships to explore space. Perhaps other things might have been developed instead, perhaps some of the same things, but scientific developments and spinoffs are not predictable. JFK didn't say he believed this nation should develop microcomputers and velcro by the end of the decade, he said we should land a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth. The implementation details are where the technical advances are made.
What's more, it's the manned space flights that hold the public's interest and keep the funding up. The public latched onto astronauts as national heroes early on, in an era when heroes were greatly needed, and today is no different. Dangerous exploration is a glamorous thing. Sure, the robotic craft that explore Mars are very exciting and of course we should continue such efforts, but the extra effort of accommodating humans in space is what really pushes us forward technologically and emotionally.
It's also worth considering that even if the U.S. doesn't travel back to the Moon, other countries will. Do you really want your grandkids to have to buy tickets on a Chinese spacecraft to visit the Chinese moon city fifty years hence? Or the EU moon base? Or the Russian Mars base? Not that our grandkids will be able to afford such things; we'll be the has-beens, the left-behinds who stand at night and gaze at the sky while other nation-states dominate the heavens. No way. The U.S. has got to maintain its leadership role in space or it will become an also-ran.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I was also really annoyed at the name. They take the name for a project to get man to a planet on another solar system, and use it for this much much smaller project. :(
I vote for a name change
No kidding. Naming in Orion is travsity. The real Orion would open up the entire solar system. This return to Apollo style capsules is an embarassment, a belated acknowledgement that we went down the wrong path and now must back up and start again. Nothing at all like the great leap forward that a nuclear pulse rocket would be.
As far as the value of "putting men on a rock in space" is concerned, it's more than just the science value. That is not to discount the science value which is very real. I heard of an experiment that was done with a simulated "alien" environment. First the unmanned probes (may have been rovers) were given their chance to explore the area. They found nothing remarkable. Then they sent in the *HUMANS* who within seconds discovered a soda can that obviously did not belong in the simulated environment.
That may be an urban legand, but I believe it makes a valid point. A trained *HUMAN* scientist can quickly determine what is relevant and what is not, and focus on the relevant. That is not to say that all exploration should be manned. I believe the manned and unmanned missions should be complimentary, not competitors.
The money spent will be spent here on earth. Its not like there will be a bunch of guys shoveling money out the spacecraft hatch.
Any spin offs are gravy, and historically have vastly exceeded the total budget by several orders of magnitude in untold commercial applications of even the most basic research by-products.
Spending the same amount of money on any terrestrial application OTHER THAN the development of additional energy sources would probably be a boondoggle.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Apollo 18 was killed by budget cuts shortly after 19 and 20 were. :(
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On the other hand, I agree that the Shuttle was the wrong path. It is/was an expermiental vehicle, neutered by politics. Who knows what it might have been had they stayed true to the original vision. Alas, politics is the fountain of compromise, and compromise is the enemy of engineering.
Not really. In order to use a nuclear pulse rocket (or any realistically sized method of nuclear propulsion) you need a heavy lift rocket. Currently there is no heavy lift rocket that could realistically put a nuclear pulse rocket into LEO (and a nuclear pulse rocket would have to be in a very high earth orbit or in interplanetary space before any politician would allow it to be activated). Rebuilding our heavy lift capability with the CaLV or Ares V is essential.
Second, we need a cheap way to put humans into space. The CLV or Ares I will do that.
The only part that you should consider a waste would be building the lander (and perhaps the CLV if you are one of those machine-only supporters). The Ares architecture will be extremely useful for future technologies. Even large rockets like the Delta IV or the Arianne V are kids toys compared to real heavy lift rockets like the Saturn V and the Ares V. Having a 100 ton class rocket makes a lot of projects possible, not just Project Orion.
You've already gotten the usual answers: dubious claims of technological advances (always a very short list, usually stuff that was being worked on already), and utopian ideas of being able to provide a backup of human life (which would cost hundreds of trillions and doesn't really seem necessary, especially to a cynic like me who thinks that if we manage to wipe ourselves out then we're not worth backing up). Plus the usual "It could produce all kinds of stuff you don't know about" (which hardly seems like justification for spending a quarter-trillion dollars) and a vague notion of manifest destiny.
All of which are lies. They're obviously justifications because they don't want to tell you the real reason: because it's cool. And arguably, that's the best reason.
The US reached its position of power in the world largely on the back of its inventiveness. (Immensely fertile land didn't hurt, but we'd have long since tapped that out if we hadn't invented a huge array of technology to prop it up).
If a high-profile "scientific" mission (there's actually little scientific value to manned space-flight) inspires the things that bring money into America today, from Sergey Brin to Dean Kamen to Craig Venter, perhaps it's money worth spending.
Other than that, it's mostly a way to funnel vast sums of money to prop up the military contractors. Guess what Boeing, Northrup-Grumman, and Lockheed do when they're not building space-ships? And they do it in practically every Congressional district in the country.
Project Orion didn't use nukes to "lift" the ship. It was an interstellar craft that would have used nukes for propulsion once well away from Earth.
Using nukes to "lift" anything would be utterly insane.
The cake is a pie
If you bother to look past the short term expenses I think you will start to realize how beneficial it would be to establish modes of efficient travel and a permanent presence on terra luna. There are physical characteristics there that make it ideal for a number of different industries, most obviously, an inconsequential atmosphere, and relatively low gravity.
For example, how big and how perfect of a pure silicon crystal could you grow there? And how much energy would it require? The low gravity means that you could make one much bigger (6 times as big? or is there an exponential factor there?). The near-nothing atmosphere means that probably all the energy you would need would be available via solar panels. Energy collection could be a business in itself (you want to stop using hydrocarbons, right?). And what about transport of these goods? What would it cost? How about almost nothing to any location on planet earth? I imagine even small towns would have a designated delivery port where lunar cargo could be dropped with the accuracy of a smart-bomb... cheaper and faster than a cargo ship from China.
Sure, it's incredibly expensive to establish a presence there, but in the long term, it's more expensive not to.
I question that we would necessarily have developed velcro...
Once again, Velcro was not developed by NASA.
From Wikipedia:
"The hook and loop fastener was invented in 1948 by Georges de Mestral, a Swiss engineer. The idea came to him after he took a close look at the Burdock seeds which kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur on their daily walk in the Alps. De Mestral named his invention "VELCRO" after the French words velours, meaning 'velvet', and crochet, meaning 'hook'. Today Beige-a is the leading exporter of velcro in the world."
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
I question that we would necessarily have developed velcro, microcomputers, Tang, new alloys, biomedical advances, etc., by sending robotic ships to explore space.
Tang and Velcro were devolped independently of the US space program. Velcro was invented in Europe in 1948. Tang was devolped as a breakfast drink in the 50's about 10 years before its association with the space program.
What's more, it's the manned space flights that hold the public's interest and keep the funding up.
Then why were the later Apollo missions abandoned due to lack of public interest?
Holding the public's interest is impossible, the public is far to fickle.
Key takeaway (at least according to some random internet source, ha ha):
Not to mention the cost of updating the design to include child seat brackets, non-CFC air conditioning, and an MP3 player input...Well, repeating the past is hardly going to help advance current science, don't you think?
We need fundamentally different, harder challenges! Why? Because going to the Moon is possible with 1960's technology, so actually going to the said Moon will sink hundreds of billions into the said 1960's technology!
That sounds like "well, we've sent a couple planes with daredevils across the atlantic, so we know we can do it. let's not waste money doing it again" and then expect modern passenger jets where the passengers yawn their way over to appear out of nowhere. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. We need to evolve modern spacecraft if we're to reach Mars, if we're to populate the solar system, and if we're one day to go out among the stars. And even if we don't, we won't be sinking hundreds of billions into 1960's technology but to apply modern technology to space travel. I've no doubt we can find uses out there that we can bring back to earth. This isn't "Moon II: The remake", it's about how safe, easy and comfortable we can make going to the moon with all the luxuries of modern electronics they never had. What landed in 1969 (and beyond) was with all due respect a very primitive craft. A great achievement to be sure, but they don't prepare us to go further. These missions do.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Can we only put ~70 mT on the Moon or can we put more?"
Um... 70 militeslas?
If you're trying to say "metric tons," you might be better off with "mton," "tonne," or the far less ambiguous "Mg."
Interstellar? No, interplanetary.
And the original developers behind Orion did indeed envision using it to lift very large craft. This was back in the late 1950s, atmospheric testing of nukes was common amongst them that had 'em. Talk about direct to Mars...
Ever seen film footage of the test models? Small things, using grenade-size explosive charges, but pretty impressive considering. The number of (small) nukes needed to lift the real thing beyond the atmosphere wouldn't have amounted to as much as some of the strategic weapons they were testing anyway. Indeed, as much as anything else, Projects Argus and Starfish (high atmospheric/ionospheric detonations, in the late 1950s/early 1960s) put the damper on Orion because it showed the adverse effects of ionospheric detonation. The EMP from Starfish blew out phone lines and street lights in Hawaii, and even fused car ignitions.
-- Alastair
The Saturn V is insanely inefficient by today's standards. But they are thinking like you're thinking- they are using the same concepts as the Saturn V, but applying space shuttle technology (specifically the main engines, which are arguably the best rocket engines ever designed). SSMEs are wonderful units. Lots of money were spent on them, lots of testing was done, they've been continuously improved and have never experienced a failure. They're the way to go.
Because the reason you have to import engineers from India, China, and Russia is lack of founding to American teachers... After all, just look at all those bags of money Indian, Chinese, and Russian teachers seem to have lying around... The causes of your lack of native grown engineers are many, and teachers' salaries are probably not anywhere near the most important problem. Until you are willing to take a hard look at what your society and education system have become, instead of throwing even more money at the problem, I fear you shall continue to fail.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
How about we land in earnest and setup a permanent base, really hedging humanities bets against any astronomical catastrophe short of a supernova.
We need to head up there and build a glass factory and an iron factory, is what needs to happen. Then we need to start building all types of stuff that will be very inexpensive to launch because the moon's gravity is so much less than the earths.
I mean, is there a point to these missions? Or are they just more little go and take picture expeditions?
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
In 1800's the Chinese started building a giant stepladder to reach the Moon. While some said they should wait for a better technology, the Emperor decided to sink the country's resources into the 'project' anyways "because the country needed to evolve modern stepladders if we're to reach Mars, if we're to populate the solar system, and if we're one day to go out among the stars"
I hope this litte joke illustrates the problem with what you are proposing. Do you realize that the Titan rockets burned 20,000 gal. of fuel per second (!) to go to the Moon. Current technology is no better; Crew Exploration Vehicle launchers will be about as efficient as the old Titans, so the money invested into the Moon missions will literally go up in (rocket exhaust) smoke!
What we need is a new propulsion system, something like the ion thruster prototypes the Europeans got (ions get expelled at near-light speed, with power coming from a nuclear reactor or solar batteries, hence very little fuel is actually needed; this tech is at a vaporvare-prototype stage due to lack of funding).
To be sure, Lockheed-Martin and NG want money to build 1960's junk relabeled as CEV at a premium, not asking for money for new fundamental research. If they invest the taxpayer money into fundamental research, they will have nothing to show for it to taxpayers for decades!
The truth is, companies cannot make profit off the fundamental research; this is why you need NSF, NIH (of government), or universities/non-profit labs to get the money, not the likes of Lockheed-Martin and NG, as would happen under this Orion scam.
Sorry for ranting, I hoped this might help you.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I see your point, and I agree that there is a larger problem somewhere in the system. But high-school science funding is a huge problem. Well funded private and public schools have small class sizes, dedicated, enthusiastic teachers, fun hands-on science experiments, something to capture young minds distracted by porn, sports, videogames, drugs.
Most schools in this country have non-existant science lab programs (dissolve NaCl in water, separate these metal shavings from sand with a magnet). Most science teachers are crap (e.g. teaching PE and some science on the side). Most poor students don't have the basic fascilities to get homework help (and yes, science and math are HARD, take TIME to understand and start liking them). Those interested in science AND able to get to college are weeded out due to lack of basic knowledge/concepts (sin2 x+ cos2 x=1, V=IR, N=6.022*10^23)
Not enough science PR in our classrooms, either. The students do not get to hear about Craig Venter, Flemming, Crieg and Watson, Oppenheimer. Instead they are hearing about what Paris Hilton sucked last month, how much money a basketball player can make, how much steroids can help some, how many bitches one can slap as a rapper, etc.
What can you expect when poor kids trully believe that basketball/army can be their ticket out of a trailorpark/ghetto?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
There's a Russian historian/philosopher, Lev Gumilev who had some interesting ideas as to what causes nations' and enthnic groups' rise and fall. His theory was that when such a nation is born (usually in the fires of revolution, migration, war), its people are passionate and idealistic. This lets them defeat their enemies and establish themselves in relative security. The next stage, as the people feel more secure, the culture flourishes and you have a golden age. But after that people become more and more concerned with improving their lives and they become more cynical and "decadent", unwilling to take risks. After that someone comes and knocks them over (sometimes their neighbors, sometimes just some more passionate group in the same nation). Obviously, Rome is a good example to look at.
For many nations, it's easy to guess which stage they are at. You could say that, say, China is clearly being reborn. France is looking back at its past glories. The US is an unusual case. It's sort of still in its golden age, held there by the immigrants who keep renewing it past where the nation could normally stay without becoming decadent. The space program is a good indicator. If it is cancelled, it would mean that the US is finally on its way down. It does not matter to me whether it is the economically right thing to do, its the right thing to do if we don't want to end up where the other empires usually do - decaying into the dust as its young and vigorous neighbors go forward.
Do you realize that the Titan rockets burned 20,000 gal. of fuel per second (!) to go to the Moon.
No, I actually didn't realize that. I always thought it was the Saturn rockets that did that, not Titan. Wow, I guess I was ignorant.
Do you realize that the Titan rockets burned 20,000 gal. of fuel per second (!) to go to the Moon.
Funny, Titan rockets never went to the moon. Apollo went to the moon. Please read your space history.
What we need is a new propulsion system, something like the ion thruster prototypes the Europeans got
You mean like the one the US developed and launched in the late 90s on Deep Space One? Yeah, too bad we don't have one of those. Please find out what is going on before you spout off on a rant.
The human race needs to go to the moon, and eventually it needs to stay. Here are some other things which were a waste of resources during their development, and without any immediate payoff:
- transoceanic ships (why go to another country, we have everything we need here!)
- cars (horses were far better in the early years)
- airplanes (think how many people spent their life savings working on one, and never made progress)
Please look at the US budget. NASA's entire budget is 0.7% of that, compared to 17% for defense and a whopping 40% for social security and health benefits. We could pay for NASA by spending 4% less on defense, or finding a way to decrease medical costs by 2%. Several drug companies could fund NASA in its entirety with their profits alone. Space exploration is not the "low hanging fruit" for saving money on the budget.
Funny, when I first read the header I thought we were going to use a large spacecraft with nuclear warheads detonated behind it to reach the moon. That's what Project Orion used to be. But that's not the point. NASA has already used ion propulsion on a mission (Deep Space One) and I believe it's fairly common for station-keeping in earth orbit. But it's spectacularly ill-suited for launches. You fire a long time to get the velocity change you want, it's not like a swift kick in the pants.
And I'm pretty sure that the cost of lunar missions is not determined by the price of the fuel you use to get into orbit.
This login name for sale.
I suppose it wouldn't help to tell you that the income gap in European nanny states is lower (quite lower) than it is in the US. Giving cash to the poor probably isn't what does it, though - it's probably the investment in infrastructure to help the poor, things like national healthcare, free or cheap university, job centres, housing, and so on.
Odds are though, if we cut out NASA's budget, it would probably get rolled into the Pentagon's budget. Pitty, that.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
NASA's deep space 1 launched 1998 http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/quick_facts.html
ESA's SMART-1 launched 2003 http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEMSDE1A6BD_0. html
boeing sells ion thrusters for satelites http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/fact sheets/xips/xips.html
additionally, these technologies will never be used to replace chemical rockets. chemical rockets throw a lot of mass out the back at a relativly slow speed, but all at once. giving you enough velocity to get off the planet.
ion thrusters throw a very little bit of mass out the back at very high speeds, but run continuously for months/years. after that length of time at a constant acceleration you end up with a very high velocity.
unless you have discovered some new physics and an antigravity engine, throwing things out of the back of the spaceship, or hauling it up an elevator are the only conceiveable methods of getting something off the planet.
Once upon a time, this nation was comitted to putting the best and the brightest forward, and creating the most we could with the technology available to us at the time.
Sadly, those days are behind us.
Now it seems, every project is a bad compromise, and it seems to have started with the Shuttle Program. Originally intended as a fully reuseable system that took off like a plane and landed like a plane, it then became a boondoggle of wildly incompatible systems that culminated in a bad hack where you strap the orbiter/glider to a fuel tank and two sticks of TNT and cross your fingers.
NASA still had high hopes for a full resuable system with the VentureStar, which sadly, never got beyond computer animations and little plastic models. The DCX, which had a 1/3 scale flying prototype, was scrapped after a few tests.
And now here they are again, with a bad compromise, using existing parts from the shuttle program and haphazardly slapping them together and crossing their fingers.
It would save a ton of money to design a good system from the start, even if it's more expensive up-front, than to build a system that's awful to start with and hope you can improve upon it with time.
It's funny that sci-fi from the 60's and 70's was so hopeful about where we'd be by this time, because we were making so much progress back then. If only they could have forseen how much time we'd wasted by going backwards, and designing lousy systems that can never really fulfull their mission requirements.
It's hard to believe that even before Yuri Gagarin was launched, America was reaching the edge of space in a rocketplane called the X-15, a simple, durable design that worked stunningly well, and, had we continued along that path, we'd all probably be living in space right now.
But no, we took two steps backwards with "spam in a can", sticking a capsule on top of a missile, and we've been making the same mistakes since then. And now, here we are in 2006, talking about using essentially the same technology from the 60's, when we should have already been reaching the outer planets in long-distance exploration vessels as seen in Stanley Kubrick's "2001" film.
America no longer puts its best and its brightest on top. America no longer prizes doing the best it can do. It's embarassing, that's what it is.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
If the above were true, we'd all still be living in caves. Clearly progress is possible even in the presence of reactionaries.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I'm a capitalist. I hate Wal-Mart, true, but I'm a capitalist economically speaking. I see nothing wrong with people driven by profit, I believe in the "invisible hand", although I recognize its flaws.
But I also support various programs that produce no profit (directly) and cost a great deal of time and money, including space exploration.
Why?
Because I'm a human being. I like that we're exploring. I like that we're pushing beyond these bounds placed upon us. I am fascinated by the idea that man could do something so complex as leave this earth and visit the Moon, or Mars, or beyond. It's not just the money - it's the fulfillment of a human desire. Something we were "made" for - to reach out and extend ourselves beyond this sphere and to travel to new lands. I must admit - my thoughts are based purely on ideology, not "reason". But I think I'm not alone in this.
There's something about space exploration that should set off that spark in all of us - something beyond money, beyond mere profit. It's the advancement of the capabilities of an entire species - it's not merely that Americans have been on the moon, but man has been there.
If (when) it costs hundreds of billions to go to Mars and back, with no economic returns, it will still have been worth it. We will then be able to say that man has gone to the moon, that mankind has made yet another massive acheivement.
Are there things on earth that need to be fixed? Yup. But if we wait for things to be perfect here before we leave, we'll never go. In any case, simply giving away money has rarely had a positive effect on most social problems - it's often made them worse.
Why climb Mount Everest, when it gains you nothing and could cost you your life? Because it's there. That's a good enough reason for me to see us go to the moon, Mars, or anywhere else.
In any case, I think we all love the moon...
I heard a story that the space ship, Discovery, in the movie 2001 was originally concepted to have an Orion-type nuclear propulsion system. Trouble was that Stanley Kubrick had just made a big splash with Dr. Strangelove. He decided that it was just too many nukes.
A quick google netted this web site that supports the story.
It's also worth considering that even if the U.S. doesn't travel back to the Moon, other countries will. Do you really want your grandkids to have to buy tickets on a Chinese spacecraft to visit the Chinese moon city fifty years hence? Or the EU moon base? Or the Russian Mars base?
Being an European myself, I find it highly offensive that you assume that any reasonable American person should answer: no.
Not that our grandkids will be able to afford such things; we'll be the has-beens, the left-behinds who stand at night and gaze at the sky while other nation-states dominate the heavens. No way. The U.S. has got to maintain its leadership role in space or it will become an also-ran.
It doesn't really matter to me what "nation" goes to space. I want that human race goes to space. The whole going to space thing seems to be a mere a mean to protect U.S.'s status as leading superpower. And what comes to left-behinds: They won't be Chinese or Europeans. They will be Earthlings.
Yours is a common argument. In an earlier era in the 1970s people were saying, why don't we spend that money here on earth where it's needed? Yet, every cent of that money is spent here on earth; it's not as though we launch tons of dollar bills into orbit and eject them into space. Thousands of engineers, scientists, physicians, space suit makers, rocket ship builders, computer programmers, astrophysicists, and others are employed by the space program.
:-)
By the same argument, wars are good for the economy. It is, however, a flawed argument, an example of the "broken window fallacy": "Throwing a baseball into the neighbour's window is good for the economy, because the glazier gets the money (by the insurance company), who then spends it at the baker's, or whereever."
It is a fallacy because the money that the insurance company pays has to come from somewhere. Overall, it is better for the economy if that money is invested productively.
The grandparent (poster)'s argument may well be that the same money could be spent more productively. Besides, part of the money really is burnt in space
It is a matter of discussion what percentage of the money spent at NASA could be called productive (in a similar way to "fundamental research").
Now, there may be all sorts of political reasons (and I don't mean this in a negative way, I mean it in the way "people want it") to go to the Moon and Mars (beside the fact that eventually we'll have to leave Earth, and we'll have to start some time before it's too late), but your economic reasoning is flawed.
Please let it be known that I love the idea of going back to the Moon etc., I'm just trying to be fair and not claim that there is more to it than there really is: A good idea, yes. Economically, probably not.
According to Wikipedia, the number zero, negative numbers and binary and decimal number systems are Indian inventions. You might have heard of them sometimes ;).
According to this page, sugar (extracting it from sugarcane, to be exact) and cotton were also invented (found ?) in India.
Indeed.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.