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An Indian On the Moon By 2020
turgid writes, "The Hindustan Times reports that the Indian Space Research Organization plans to land an Indian on the Moon by 2020. First, experiments will be conducted to launch, orbit, and recover a capsule. Plans are to launch an Indian into space in 2014. Manned orbital missions will be launched, initially for a day, but eventually lasting a week or more. Expeditions to the Moon are expected to last 15 days to a month." The article doesn't estimate the cost of such a program. The US Apollo program cost about $135 billion (in 2006 dollars), according to Wikipedia.
... oh, you meant the other kind
Americans haven't been to the Moon in decades. I think we could possibly recruit Indians for space travel here in the U.S., but I think they'd have reservations.
The article doesn't estimate the cost of such a program. The US Apollo program cost about $135 billion (in 2006 dollars), according to Wikipedia.
Yes, but considering that, much like the elephant population, these estimates have TRIPLED IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS, I'm guessing that cost is closer to $405 billion.
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They do have a cold war with Pakistan, though its pretty small scale compared with US vs USSR.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
India and China have also been the poles of Asian culture for most of the last few thousands years. With China having had men in space, it's only normal for India to go on the moon.
A lot of the cost of the American space program was developing technology that is now commonplace. The Indian IT team will have better equipment on day one than the US had on the day of the lunar landing, for example. India is no slouch in telecoms terms either.
Also, there was a lot of experimentation involved in the first space exploration that doesn't need to be done again. We know how to make space suits, and, thanks mainly to the Russians, we know a lot about the effects of long-term zero-gravity trips on the human body.
And even if America and Europe don't play ball (which is depressingly likely on past form), I'm sure the Russians will be willing to hand over as much technology as the Indians don't feel like reinventing.
So it won't be cheap, but I'd expect it to be cheaper in real terms than the first race to the moon.
And I'm taking as read that the Indian space program really has the same motivation as European and American space exploration, ie it's an excuse to pour lots of state funding into your high-tech industries, which gives you more competitive terrestial technology as a spin-off. In other words, this is probably more about kick-starting the Asian airliner industry than about photos of Indians eating poppadums in a crater.
Virtually serving coffee
> China, India, wtf??
India isn't outsourcing it. It would only be outsourcing if another country got them to do it. Most of the science America did was always outsourced anyway - except that the people were brought to the US to perform it there rather than doing it in their native countries.
Are we out of fun things to do?
They are so gonna be pissed when they find nothing up there. We mined all the chese out of it in the late 60s.
Exactly, so why is this necessary then?
They would have far better scientific equipment than the Americans. Maybe they intend to go to different parts of the Moon or stay for longer.
I've been in India for about a year now. These guys have horrible infrastructure: bad roads, horrible mass transport, not to mention spotty internet. Their education system is pathetic. Any task that involves the government (ie starting a business, importing something for use in a business) takes forever (despite all the bribes given). Yet these idiots are trying to put a man on the moon. Fix the basics first WTF are they doing? The people here are obsessed with copying America and Americans. The problem is that in 1969 America was pretty much set, there were not people killing each other in the country (Naxalites vs the Government), there was no "communist" part in power anywhere (the government right now is actually a colation government in which there is the moderate Congress Party and the leftist Communist party sharing power). In addition to all that why are they sending a person to the moon? Set up a new Hubble telescope or something. Sending someone to the moon is rather pointless, it won't achieve anything whereas a new hubble would maybe expand our knowledge of the universe.
because there are things that no amount of money will solve.
The same problem exists in many developed countries. There are just people who either don't want the help or cannot be helped. There are many people in the US who we classify as being below the poverty line that are happy and content with their lives. The problem is that we assign our standards of happiness to them and cannot contemplate how they can be in a state other than misery.
India suffers further complications because of class differences that are more important to their society than ours. They also have logistics, religious, and other issues. Sure the money could be used to try and fix these problems but money cannot buy the time needed. Only so much can be spent before your wasting it. A moonshot helps all of Inida, both directly and indirectly. It gives hope. If India can land people on the moon then people can see that yes, one day their children's lives will be better because what they see as an impossible situation really isn't. After all, landing on the moon certainly looked impossible but India will do it.
To all the people making snide remarks about feeding their people first, skip your lattes and such and donate yourself. Why ask others to do what you will not?
oh, thats right, its far easier to assign guilt than to acknowledge it
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think the question is "why?". Indian (which is where I'm from incidentally) has a space program that's useful to it. Fine. Spending lots of money with the sole intention of "putting a man on the moon" sounds a little out of place for a country which has environmental and social problems that need to be fixed. The man on the moon is not going to help the masses that actually need help.
The class system mention is an understatement, the current caste system as it exists in India is coming under greater and greater strain.
Take for example the Dalits who're essentially a slave caste in all but name.
This is why a lot of Indians are in poverty, not because they won't help themselves or don't want help but because of extreme prejudice against them. There is a growing growing Christian and Buddhist movement in the country, of people who're throwing away the shackles of the caste Hindu Dalit system and converting. Read this BBC story for an example.
Being an American of Indian descent who has spent time in India, I can assure you that this will never happen. India's infrastructure (electricity, roads, communications, etc.) is horrible, and the country refuses to adopt modern methods to improve its vast problems. For example, if a road needs to be build here in the US, the Dept. of Transportation (at whatever appropriate level of government) will assemble a crew of professionals that use modern road-making machinery and techniques. In India, because they wish to appease peasant laborers, only manual labor can be used. The same road that would take two weeks to build here would take over a year in India. Only the simplest of machinery would be allowed, with all the other work coming from unskilled day laborers using shovels and hand tools. The end result is a road that will only last 5 years at best, is not level and doesn't drain water, and took almost a year to build. This is the sad reality, and with the exception of the newest high-tech areas like Bangalore, this is the way projects are tackled in all of India, and it isn't going to change anytime soon. An Indian on the moon? Forget about feasability, I can't even imagine all the people that would need to be bribed to get the project off paper. EVERYTHING in India requires bribes, especially police and bureacrats.
When you take into account that India's population is over 1 000 000 000, the answer is obvious...
They must have run out of space for call centres.
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India has one of the world's largest gaps between the richest and the poor.
And the USA is a very rich country in which many people can't get medical treatment because they can't afford it. As my grandma used to say - sort your own house out before criticising others. According to your logic, the USA should divert funding from NASA to national health programmes.
I've travelled in India and I find the homeless on the street in many big cities in the USA more of a disgrace than those in India. The USA is rich.
Developing, building and selling airliners is linked heavily to other activities, in another words companies like example Boeing and Airbus doesn't just build airlines, they are involved in much more activity. Boeing is the second largest defense contractor to US army. Airbus is subsidiary of EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company) which is a large defence and armaments company supplying many European armies. Also both Boeing and Airbus get government subsidies in a form or another. Boeing gets big contracts from US army and works very tightly with NASA. Airbus also gets subsidies in form of a "launch aids" and other government involvement.
It should also be noted that South Korea and Japan in economic terms are quite small compared to United States or European Union, they just don't have muscle enough to set up a support systems to make building airliners economically feasible. Also it should be noted that both South Korea and Japan are allied with US, so it would be politically risky to start building a competitive industry to a industry that US sees as a strategic as. Airline, space and armaments industries are heavily strategic industries in the eyes of world powers. In that perspective both India and China will one day build up their own airliner industries to compete with Europeans and Americans.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
I read some of the comments
- How the money needed to fund this project could be better used for other things like eradication of poverty, better infrastructure etc.
- Some sly comments on corner side stores
- etc.
All I can say is, as a soverign country, with a govt elected by a democratic process, India is entitled to its opinion on all self sponsored projects. And for people who have not noticed, most facilities that you deem common are often byproducts of funding on defence and scientific projects.
Sending a man to the moon is as pointless an excercise as hosting the olympics. The real payback is that the target motivates people to push harder on all fronts, develop a sense of pride, develop better infrastructure, create a consumer market bouying the economy, make more children wonder about science/sports etc. These things are often intangible, but more useful in the long run than those guided missiles you gurantee can destory the world, but cant deploy, since they will take you out as well!
Stop trivializing everything and you may find the world is doing ok for itself, with you or inspite of you!
When India started sending satellites in space, many people said we have so many naked-starving people, why spend money in R&D and invest in future. Today, they are the one who besides from direct outcome, are benefiting from the indirect outcome of technological advancement. Everyone agrees that sending Man/Woman to Moon is a big technological challenge. But the advancement it will bring to India will be of great indirect outcome. I am an Indian and I support all investment into better future. Let us not make a make-shift country ...
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
Thankyou come again.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
All his extended family and friends by 2021.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Hi Friends,
Request some urgent help with this matter.
Am on moon, and I would like to know the procedure in getting back to Earth. I have been landed rocketship, how can i do. Please somebody can help me with my condition?
Please kindly advice.
Rashpal
You just got troll'd!
The Indians have till 2020? That's fourteen years. It can be done. I doubt it will be done, unless the Indian government is really serious about this, but it's definitely not out of the question.
Advantage would accrue to India, as well. Global prestige, and the perception of their country as technologically sophisticated. People would take homegrown Indian technology more seriously. That could boost the economy a hell of a lot.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I agree completely. Pakistan is not India's enemy. China is India's #1 threat. Pakistan is relatively inconsequential and misdirected (and not getting much better, if mainstream media is getting the story right).
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Are you talking real measureable stats in terms of income distribution? The reason I'm asking is I'm wondering if you actually did some reading about India, or if you're one of those international travellers who land in Delhi and start shrieking "Ooooh my god, these cow-worshippers; why aren't they more like us?"
If you're of the former type, then I'd like you to be more rigorous in your assertion. My reading tells me that we've just turned the corner in terms of BPL households; I've read -and this is a freely available stat, google it up - that the largest agglomeration of poverty in human history was in 1991, and that, given the way both China and India are growing, it is unlikely that we'll ever again have 300 million people in one place, living in such abject poverty. I'm told that the
If you're of the latter type, just to say this; we love you guys. We love the way you hate us, we love the way you like being condescending on us brown folk, we love the fact that you think you're brilliant enough to dictate policy for the largest democracy this planet has ever seen.
Otoh, if you were just trying to provoke an indignant response from folks like me, ahh well, IHBT. IHL. I don't care; I'm waiting for a build to finish, I could do with some verbal sparring.
You know, I consider myself one of those pragmatic folks who's mostly beyond mere nationalistic loyalty and would like to think about policy through a purely rational perspective. The problem with responses like yours is that you tend to look at everything in black and white terms, ignoring the real shades of gray that reality encompasses. I could go at length on medical, and drug, policy (and I have, on multiple occassions here on Slashdot), but I'll just limit myself to pointing this out: in 1940's, when we got independent, life expectancy was 41 years. Now, it is 76 years (or thereabouts). For a system that's an _abject_ failure, that's some result, you'd think.
I've recently read, mostly as a part of the reading packet I alluded to earlier, that the house in which my grandparents used to live is actually located in an area officially designated as a 'slum'. Always knew the area wasn't really posh - Grandpa was a lowly village headmaster, he really couldn't afford those fancy bungalows - so to see it being designated as a 'slum' was, well, more amusing than surprising.
Funny thing eh, that I've turned to tech for a living.
And oh. You should hear what they did to Grandpa's house after we sold it. They demolished the old house, a three-room-dwelling with tiled roofs and wooden support, and built a cookie-cutter, stalin-isque office-like building. Yes that's right; they built an IT-training center in that very spot.
Yeah, did you hear that all of the national budget will be siphoned off into sending people to the Moon?
How wise of you to decide our technological challenges for us, and how gratifying that we've got you to call us stupid. So going to space is a solved problem for mankind that doesn't need more impetus or thought? An American astronaut, Kalpana Chawla would agree with you. No wait
More than mere navel gazing.
Let's say that it's not the most efficient way of redistributing wealth. You can copy all technology you want, like other countries have done, and get your jump ahead a lot cheaper and faster.
Having your own moon program is just ambition, to show that you're there with the rest of them. Well, the Americans to be more specific. You just want to be more American than the Americans, as one in every two Bollywood movies shows...
>>It's OK to have dreams and it's OK to step a little ahead to give people inspiration, but a moonshot ? Come on !...
--
Mmm, in my youth, when the US moon program was announced on the radio,
there was still a caste in the US, who had to sit on the back of the buses.
They also couldn't vote freely and yet, they had a dream.
It was not a dream about a moonshot though.
I have to admit this is a shrewd marketing move by the Indians. If this succeeds, it will put the world's eyes on the sub-continent. It will do well to further reinforce India's image as a technology leader.
Everywhere I travel, people already speak-of India's software prowess. If this really goes forward it will establish India as a leader in aerospace, mechanical and electrical engineering... However that is a big 'if'... Not that I doubt the collective brain power in the country. Right now, the President of India is a PhD in Rocket Science (he ran the space research program at ISRO (the indian equivalent of NASA) and the Prime Minister is an economist from Cambridge. Together, you have a couple of Brainiacs in charge. This seems to be exactly the kind of things a couple of PhD's would dream about... (Reminds me of that episode of Simpsons where they put John Frink and Skinner in charge...!). Anyway, given the back stabbing that is Indian politics, such outstanding individuals at the helm should not last very long. Once they are gone, so goes the dream....
Great, more American and European jobs to shift to Bangalore and Hyderabad!
NASA seems to be interested in sending their payload on the mission. Also http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.p l?file=2006051307181100.htm&date=2006/05/13/&prd=t h&
Read current science article for scientific need and international collaboration (there seem to be countries other than US, Russia, and iRaq) on unmanned mission.
Most points on the debate (poverty, public (though not scientific) infrastructure) have all been beaten to death for the unmanned mission itself. Stop being cynical and think of something interesting.
Yours truly,
a fellow snake charmer.
India doesn't have the heavy-lift rocket capability right now and it is unlikely they will develop it on thier own within 13 years. Of course they could contract out to the Russians but that doesn't really fufill the nationalistic drive to do it yourself.
Not to mention develop the skillsets and the hardware to land and return.
Besides that, Indian aerospace programs have had a really hard time keeping up with thier schedules, for example the HAL Tejas has taken much longer to develop that planned for.
No.
Yes. Going to the moon is next on the list of fun things to do.
List of Fun Things to Do. by:GWB
1. War!
2. Have one friend shoot another friend in the face.
3. Send someone to the moon.
We are all just people.
I still love this potted history posted on the news of Bush's moon announcement:
In 1961, when shit wasn't invented yet and people fought bears for vital food, President Kennedy had the balls to give NASA less than nine years to get to the moon. In this day and age, when there's metric shitloads of technology all over the place and the internet makes valuable porn as free as air, President Bush gives it twelve years. What a tool.
Now I am reading more, and the deadline is actually 2020. That's seventeen years.
See, Kennedy had the balls to lay a firm deadline down. "You bitches will put a man on the moon before January 1, 1970 or I will come back from the grave and kick your ass," he said. He knew he was going to get shot. That's how hardcore he was. He also got crazy laid by Marilyn Monroe.
President Bush says, "You ought to think about just possibly putting a man on the moon sometime during this five year period."
President Kennedy showed us that you have to slap NASA around a little bit to get them to do anything worthwhile with manned space exploration. You can't be all lovey-dovey and set long gradual timetables.
And Bush mentions "the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods." So we'll have another Skylab ISS, but on the moon. The only differences will be that it won't crash into Australia like Skylab (it will crash into the Moon instead - that might sound hard to acheive since it would already be on the surface of the moon, but they will find a way to do that), it will leak more than ISS, and since it won't even be international we won't be able to bum rides from the Russians.
If Kennedy was alive in this day and age he would have said, "Fucking NASA, I am still alive in this day and age so you assholes better have a self-sufficient Mars base by the year 2013. Also make me a space elevator. And resurrect Marilyn Monroe." Then NASA would complain that it is not their job to resurrect people and Kennedy would punch NASA in the eye.
I bet the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" is going to blow the fuck up about twenty times too. You can probably trace the suckiness of manned space exploration to the decision to switch from cool names like "Mercury" and "Apollo" to crappy names like "Skylab" and "STS." When the Apollo blew up they fucking fixed it and came home, but when the Space Shuttle gets fucked up they make Powerpoints about it and ignore the problem.
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
"Thiruvananthapuram, we are having a problem!"
(most) Americans seem totally America obsessed, there is more in this world than just the USofA
India is ususally more concerned with local politics,
that is they are dealing with countries like Pakistan and China
they feel ususally threatened by China as does any other country over there, china being an expansionist power on their borders. Also they want to compete with china on equal footing. like with the nbr of people within their borders and likewise on the spacerace front..
I didn't know NASA was now outsourcing too...