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India Brings Back Orbiting Satellite to Earth
bharatm writes "In a pathbreaking event heralding its arrival as a space power with capability to recover an orbiting satellite, India today successfully brought back a spacecraft to earth, giving a new impetus to the proposed manned mission to space in the next decade."
no mention on /. of China's newfound ability to shoot a satellite that is in orbit.
Monstar L
Is test an ASAT missile.
(I'm sure that's coming.)
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Holy Cow!
Now we can have cheap interstellar labour!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Getting spacecraft out of orbit... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Only_Live_Twice_( film)
When I first read the headline and blurb I thought India retrieved a satellite. As in how the Space Shuttle can go up, retrieve a satellite that otherwise is not designed for reentry, and bring it back to earth. This craft was designed for reentry in the first place, so they didn't really "bring" it back - they commanded it to return on its own.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
The Indian space program is now working on a recovery vehicle with four 'arms' to retrieve satellites. Here is a an artist's rendition.
Please could someone tell me what pathbreaking means. What path? The path to space greatness? In which case, is it a good thing they broke from the path? Are they no longer on the path to greatness? Or were they on the path to space suckness but have now managed to break off the path and providentially fallen onto the path of greatness?
I was in India last year; the poverty and malnutrition in the outlying areas is simply heart-breaking. Worse than anywhere else that I've been. Call me old-fashioned, but before a gov't starts acting on all of their world-stage aspirations, shouldn't they feed their citizens?
I guess that one could make the case that India's space program is an investment in the future, but I wouldn't want to be the one to try to sell that to people who don't have enough food.
Ya know, I just had an epiphany on outsourcing to India...
We all know the popular press about issues regarding process, quality, et al. with Indian Outsourcing. However: I recall that once upon a time, Japanese manufacturing was the butt of many a joke until the early 1970s.
Just saying, I would suggest that any smirking in the direction of the Indian Outsourcing phenomenon is a little premature because I imagine it is inevitable that these issues will eventually be worked out.
Wikipedia has a pretty good page on reentry technologies. Not that trivial to get all the systems perfected! A developing country like india needs this impectus to excite younger generation about science and space.
"Feed your children India!
(Score:0, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22, @09:16AM (#17709874)
why dont these heartless hindus use some of their engineers to design sanitation systems, water purification plants, food preservation technologies etc? This sorry excuse of a nation has the world's largest concentration of hungry people without access to clean water or toilet facilities. Shame on them!"
He does have a point however. "The World's Largest Democracy" (tm)
India spends a lot of effort on developing military capabilities. Feeding their people is obviously not a priority.
Shouldn't US have rebuilt New orleans and Missisippi devastated by Katrina before jumping into the Iraq War?
Each nation has its own priorities, and while you spout an altrustic question, the same was true in 1969 when UJS landed a man on moon.
The poverty in US at that time was high enough.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
India spends a lot of effort on developing military capabilities. Feeding their people is obviously not a priority.
Again: see my first post on this.
It's well and good for us Westerners to wag our fingers at them, but we're not the ones sharing borders with their potentially hostile neighbors (Pakistan, China).
You know, there are millions of undernourished people in the U.S. too. It would have been nice if our government fed it's citizens before acting on all of it's "world-stage aspirations."
Best to retrieve it before China shoots it down I guess.
Nothing witty
India must regain what they have lost before Atlantis returns.
Intended as humor but one never knows.
> India Brings Back Orbiting Satellite to Earth
n dc/la-fg-satellite19jan19,0,2329821.story
You think they're going to leave it out there for China to shoot it down?
It's like when you see someone practicing reverse parking on your neighbors car.
You briskly move yours into the garage.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingto
Good - the world needs more competition fueling peaceful space industries. And more stakeholders across national borders in space property, so there's more complex consequences to blowing stuff up out there.
Now, where will the quality ratings come from? A "Consumer Reports" or "JD Power" testing report for these services of varying cost and quality?
--
make install -not war
The Same reason why us heartless americans dont provide basic amenities to blacks and the spend more than half of the world's defense expenditure on needless wars. Shame on us too.
I do volunteer work in the inner-city and in rural Appalachia so I've seen first-hand the things that your link indicates, but the poverty in these places simply does not compare to what one will see in some of the places (India, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Pakistan) that I've been.
Yes, there is work to be done in the US but it's mostly treatment and/or education. Your post, however, glibly trivializes the dire circumstances that exist in many parts of the world where there simply is not enough food.While anyone can cook up stats about hunger, there is a simple test that can indicate the true level of hunger in an area: offer a half-eaten sandwich (or whatever) to someone in the street and see the reaction. In the inner-city area near us where I serve, that will at least get you cussed out, if not get the crap beaten out of you. However, we have had six-year-old children at an outdoor restaurant in Oaxaca, Mexico, gratefully eat the last bite of our salad. Similar results in the countries listed above.
The fact is that there is hunger in some instances in the US, but it is more often due to parents' mental illness or drug/alcohol use than to a general lack of food availability. Often there is enough money but it is squandered on other things. In many cases in rural Appalachia, we have gone to houses where the kids truly do not have enough to eat and yet the parents have Marlboros (not even generics) and/or satellite TV. There's not much that can be done when parents care more about smoking and television than feeding their kids. Also, have you never heard of the Hunger/Obesity Paradox. Read up, becuase in America, the poorest kids are also the fattest.
Hi ,
u r certainly right we should look at feeding our poor . but being an indian i can tell u it is not so easy to get things done in the biggest democracies while all civil, sanitation things fall into local governments responsibility and due to local beauracracy and poloitics nothing gets done.
while the top brains with good funding and focussed on goals in research orgs like ISRO get done things quickly and hence u see poor people and space progs and N Bombs.
" India Brings Orbiting Satellite Back to Earth"
When someone points to others countries problem (like poverty, malnutrition etc in India). It definetly reminds me of New Orleans and the poverty in US ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United _States )
I just started humming the theme from "Moonraker"
> India launches them. China shoots them down.
I believe that it should be:
"India launches them. The United States, Russia and China shoot them down. "
Yes, China and Pakistan are potentially hostile neighbors to India. But what is India really protecting? A very large portion of the population barely finds enough to eat each day. I don't think their biggest concern is Chinese or Pakistani soliders. It's just finding enough edible material to subsist on for the day.
There's really no significant infrastructure to protect. Again, the vast majority of Indians do not have access to things as basic as running water or sewage treatment facilities. In many regions, the housing is little more than straw huts and bent iron sheets.
It makes little sense to spend so much in the way of resources guarding what basically amounts to nothing.
I was in a food bank yesterday, volunteering, right in NJ. They explained the need for such an organisation in the USA, the land of milk and honey. Why dont they make sure that the kids in USA have enough to eat etc before they drop billions you know where?
I am well aware of all the things that you mentioned. However, you missed the point of my post. Your original comment was chastising India because they are spending millions on a space program while ignoring the plight of their citizens. I was merely pointing out that the EXACT same things happens here. And everywhere else. While you were chastising India, you should have been chastising every country that has the means to help others (and not just its own citizens. People are people, regardless of nationality), but chooses to use those means on other less noble endeavors (ignoring the "investment for the future" that many other posters have also mentioned).
The only thing broken about America in this regard, is that some of her citizens are still so racist as to propose that blacks need to have basic amenities provided to them. No Caucasian belief could be more destructive to a black's career aspirations than that.
India, by contrast, still reinforces a caste system that prevents vertical mobility no matter how clever and productive a person is. A black person in America may have to work harder to move vertically, but at least the barriers set in his or her way (such as asshats like you) are soft.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
First laugh of the morning... A +1 Funny for you!
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
I'm very sure that the budgeting issues between these two activities are so insanely far apart, that any sort of comparison would be impossible to make.
Tossing a rocket into space with a vehicle built for re-entry would be a lot easier and cost a lot less than making sure everyone in a country containing 1.2 billion people will be fed properly.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Let's see, how much food is wasted in building a satellite? Unless the rocket burns flour or vegetables, I can't see how not launching it would contribute to feeding anyone.
Or do you mean the money spent in the program should be used to buy food and give it to the needy? In that case, perhaps not launching one rocket would ease the hunger of a few million people. Today. But what about tomorrow? How do you propose to end once and for all the chronic problems of malnutrition in India? The Indian space program is giving their people a future, something that's infinitely more valuable than a plate of food.
It is a little to easy and a little too "20th century" to continue to believe that governments must solve all problems. Yes, poverty most definitely lies within the purvey of gov't, and it must make poverty alleviation a major priority, regardless of which nation we are talking about. But it is also the responsibility of all of us to take individual steps to help each person on this planet realize his or her full potential, to break the cycle of poverty, to get educated, to be healthy. Check out this website if you want to take a step towards helping in that way -- http://www.results.org/ or http://www.results-resultats.ca/ or http://www.results-uk.org/
The same can (and has) been said to all nations that spend money on space travel.
From "Whitey on the Moon" (1969) by The Last Poets:
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
As if all that shit wasn't enough
A rat done bit my sister Nell
(and Whitey's on the moon)
Her face an' arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made last year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Whitey's on the moon!)...
"I'm very sure that the budgeting issues between these two activities are so insanely far apart, that any sort of comparison would be impossible to make."
Laughter hits the hardest when you're not expecting it. Hilarious!
I suggest investing in crop science to produce more food with the same land resources. It's worked here.
You don't think Canada is hostile?
Epiphany, huh? Actually, if you read even popular press, you'll see that countries such as India and China are commonly referred to as "developing" countries. This means that some day soon they are widely expected to be on par with other "developed" countries such as Japan, South Korea, etc. If this sort of thing interests you, pick up the Economist or a similar magazine and you'll get some estimates about when this might occur.
On another tangent, if you go back in time a little further, you'll learn that Japanese manufacturing was considered world-class after their battleships knocked out most of the Russian west fleet around the turn of the century and was continued to be considered so until the Americans came knocking thirty-some years later.
I think you're right about Americans being arrogant, however. There are a lot of other people smarter and harder working than the average American out there, and global trade doesn't care if you think you're superior if someone else can do the same job better for less money.
From the 2nd article:
I guess that's ONE way to do it. <grin>
Ummm... I would think that this successful test BUILDS a path instead of BREAKING it.
*Sample sentence. Opinions expressed within may not reflect actual opinions of the author.
sic
So, how about the USA sharing with Third World nations some of that science? Why should a poor country like India have to reinvent the wheel when so much food surplus is sitting in warehouses in the rich countries?
Let's face it, all that advanced agriculture has a *negative* return in investment. India doesn't have those hundreds of billions of dollars that Western Europe and the USA spend in farming subsidies. Not to mention the ecological disaster that is erosion and fertilizer run-off.
Less developed countries do export cash crops. But rich farmers are the true benefactors of the "Green Revolution". Poor farmers cannot afford the patented seeds, tractors, fuel, and everything that's needed to produce the crops American science has developed.
To feed the starving, many small social actions are needed, such as better education, professional training, crop diversity using native plants which have evolved to be resistant to local pests, etc. This is an effort that does not compete and can perfectly well coexist with and profit from space science.
So, if everything should be done to feed the hungry right now, without regard to the future, what are you doing in Slashdot? Sell your computer, give up your internet service, spend *EVERYTHING* to feed a starving Indian child!!
Why are you scoundrels unable to feed half your children
You seem to be under the impression that I'm an Indian. I'm not.
India launches the first space-based "You found it, we down it" service. Dignitaries laud it as the best way to bring home employees who overstay their space vacations in the future. Now there's no excuse for not being at that 9AM meeting after missing your shuttle flight back to Canaveral.
One of the 187.
FTA: A Coast Guard helicopter located the spot, and a team drawn from Coast Guard and Navy was soon at the job of retrieving the spacecraft, which they did, and uploaded to a ship "Sarang" to be taken to the spaceport of Sriharikota via Ennore Port.
Did the U.S. Coast Guard pick up this satellite or was it some sort of Indian Coast Guard? And India has a "Coast Guard?" That article seems really confusing. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if the government has sent the U.S. Coast Guard overseas... nothing surprises me any more relating to the deployment of American forces in places they shouldn't be.
Looking at your words i believe you have no idea on what is really happening in India,
India has the most amount of meal in school schemes and all sponsored by the government,
All these meals are of course nutritious, India is no more a hungry country,
It is required to remove all poverty which would take another 10 years if it grows at 10 % PA.
A strong pointer is India's Space technology is used for delivering education to remote places,
Weather Prediction and Satellite broadcasting.
A country to progress has to concentrate on all core areas, you would accept this if you understand how an economy works !! Science is important and India's space program and Nuclear Program are very important not just for this country but for the whole human civilization as it reduces it dependence on conventional polluting energy resources.
You have to understand India is no more an under developed nation , and if you think the country has to go to each Indian's home and feed them, its not possible nor is it practical, when it starts to grow in all spheres those unfed Indians will find a way to feed themselves, and thats the way its supposed to happen .
So is it your claim that India is one of those places that have this "true level of hunger", where "there simply isn't enough food"? On what basis do you make this claim?
You'll find that hunger in India has the usual causes: unscrupulous businessmen and government officials beholden to them. (Hmmm, sound familiar?)
And, to bring this back on topic, do you seriously believe that unless you've solved problem A you can't work on problem B? In other words, as long as there are starving children in India, India can't work on, say, computers.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Why is it India's responsibility only ? Why is it the responsibility of India to feed Indians ...oh just because you were born in a different country gives you the right to throw away resources. Who gave you this right ?
the Indian scientists and the army is just doing what Europe and USA is doing consuming a lot of resources per capita.
Be oblivious as much as you can !
So you have a "home made" rocket, a device designed to pick up sattelites, and a re-entry vehicle that will bring the sattelite back to a point of your choosing. What happens when they decide it would be nice to have a spy sattelite. Go up, pick out a sattelite that looks nice, look around for the cops, grab it!
Thank you. I've gotten cussed at for pointing out that there are no poor people in the states. I've been throughout the horn of Africa and latin america, and there's nothing in the US that compares. And I did grow up in Appalachia, and we were poor but proud. Most Americans and Western Europeans have no idea what poverty really means.
Your post, however, glibly trivializes the dire circumstances that exist in many parts of the world where there simply is not enough food.
Umm, the biggest problem in India is not production but storage and distribution.
And oh, these satellite thingys have helped improve agriculture by weather forecasting, geological and geographical surveys, communications etc. Amongst other things, such as education, industrialization, early weather warning systems and the like.
But hey, you go ahead. In your total idiocy and lack of vision, sit there mocking at technological achievements which are the crux for the foundation and development of any society.
But before you go, you should consider reading a little something about economics and Japan before and after WW2.
People have won Nobels for proving that you cannot solve any economic problem by throwing money at it -- oh, and the guy who won it happens to be an Indian. Turns out that you actually need a grassroots system, and a system capable of needing and sustaining higher order tasks and needs within a society.
What sheer stupidity. Denying a man his dream is the worst kind of sin one could commit. To quote Oscar Wilde, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
But hey, if the gutter smells wonderful to you, who am I to stop you from sniffing at it. Those that can dream will dream.
India's Space budget is a small fraction of what US, EU, China spend on theirs. AFAIK the primary motivation for India's space budget is Remote Sensing, searching for groundwater, checking weather patters. India's Remote Sensing dept (ITRAC) does a lot of groundwork which helps farmers, even fishermans who get information on movement of fish schoals.
We often think of India as a competitor for jobs, and they are, but nevertheless we should congratulate them for their success. It took a lot of hard work and Indians can be proud of what they have accomplished.
And oh, these satellite thingys have helped improve agriculture by weather forecasting, geological and geographical surveys, communications etc. Amongst other things, such as education, industrialization, early weather warning systems and the like. Good point. Seriously, I hadn't really considered that. I wonder if going to the moon helps too.
But hey, you go ahead. In your total idiocy and lack of vision, sit there mocking at technological achievements which are the crux for the foundation and development of any society. Way to go, Strawman! I never mocked technological achievements. Not once.
What sheer stupidity. Denying a man his dream is the worst kind of sin one could commit. Such an asinine statement, that it doesn't really need to be refuted...but what the heck. A man (or woman) doesn't have the right to fulfill his/her dream on public money. Public money is presumably for the public good. If it is his/her dream, let him come up with or raise the cash like Jeff Bezos.
But hey, if the gutter smells wonderful to you, who am I to stop you from sniffing at it. Those that can dream will dream. Dream on then, Oh Great Strawman Dreamer!
Less developed countries do export cash crops. But rich farmers are the true benefactors of the "Green Revolution". Poor farmers cannot afford the patented seeds, tractors, fuel, and everything that's needed to produce the crops American science has developed.
To feed the starving, many small social actions are needed, such as better education, professional training, crop diversity using native plants which have evolved to be resistant to local pests, etc. This is an effort that does not compete and can perfectly well coexist with and profit from space science. I agree. My wife and I have been very active for over ten years in efforts to bring this training and technology to third-world countries. I travel outside the US to teach certain aspects at least twice a year. More help is needed, especially from the type of technologically savvy people you find on
BTW folks India happens to be one of the bread baskets of the world, isint it ironic ?
In one of my early Civ3 games, Ghandi surprise attacked me with a nuke. For some reason that has stuck with me. (It was a bad move as I had several nukes and wasted India...he apparently had only the one.)
> Umm, well then use the money to build infrastructure.
Infrastructure needs engineers, resources and a system that can produce such people.
> Good point. Seriously, I hadn't really considered that. I wonder if going to the moon helps too.
Oh, I do not know - maybe the fringe benefit of discovering all these other technologies along the way. Not to mention a technological know-how that brings business to launch satellites for other countries into space. Something that helps the economy, you know?
> Way to go, Strawman! I never mocked technological achievements. Not once.
Umm, India did something technological (i.e. bring a satellite back from orbit) and you said that the money was better spent on poverty blah blah (classic troll) - if not mockery, perhaps derision? That, or stupidity. Sorry, I just couldn't figure out between all those, "Oooh, sit back and live mundane lives without any thinking or progress till you have solved every problem in your country" statements.
> Such an asinine statement, that it doesn't really need to be refuted...but what the heck. A man (or woman) doesn't have the
> right to fulfill his/her dream on public money. Public money is presumably for the public good. If it is his/her dream, let
> him come up with or raise the cash like Jeff Bezos.
Ever strike you that a lot of people in India maybe proud of what is going on? Ever strike you that a large chunk of the "tax payers" maybe folks who are in the middle class who would like to see their nation make it big? It's called national pride, d'oh.
> Dream on then, Oh Great Strawman Dreamer!
Hey, being a strawman dreamer than a party pooper.
And, to bring this back on topic, do you seriously believe that unless you've solved problem A you can't work on problem B? In other words, as long as there are starving children in India, India can't work on, say, computers. Actually, at this point, I'm not sure. There may be an overlap that I hadn't considered. I'm not so sure about going to the moon, but as someone else pointed out, satellites have benefits for food production (weather predictions, etc). I wonder if it can be quantified.
In all fairness, I could be reacting more out of emotion and despair than straight logic. It is really a horrible thing to see so many people in so much need and realize that you can do so little about it.
A lot of Heartless Hindus did actually work on such technology. Problem is This tech is too expensive for India . Maybe you use such tech without realizing that some indian engineer had a hand ( mind??) in the design. WIndows , Intel , AMD , Nasa , Theoritical Physics, Math ??Part of the so called developed world was developed by people from the third world.Mebbe they should have stayed home and you wouldnt be typing this so glibly.Perhaps you dont know that India has the worlds highest population density. That India is working peacefully to solve her problems is no reflection on another larger richer country that seems to wage war in other nations for their oil or in retaliation or lead the world in plundering and polluting the environment or in it's wasteful use of resources.
Isn't the Sarang a Vulcan ship?
I didn't say the Hindus are heartless. Please think before you lash out.
I merely rescued the AC's post from (-1 Trolldom because they are making
a valid point here and somebody obviously didn't like it.
The main reason that many folks in India go hungry is due to the failure in part of the food distribution system due to corruption at the lower levels nearer to the point of distribution to the masses. As a result of the Green Revolution during the 70's and 80's India has had surplus food production for a long time allowing the export of food products.
...but as I said due to corruption at the lower levels .. the benefits do not entirely reach the masses. Spending more money is merely going to make the corrupt more rich .. what is needed is to make the system more efficient, not pour more money into it.
The Indian government already spends a lot of money on feeding the poor
Unless of course you want to be President and become so - which happened with a guy from an "untouchable" caste who obviously couldn't have done it without popular support. The attitute to women there isn't perfect either but they have also had a woman in charge of the nation. Any other misconceptions you want to talk about?
So, when India absconds with an orbiting satellite it is heralded as a positive event, and when the Chinese merely slam a rod into one, it's a very serious threat! Is this a recycling thing?
Oh, how the Pentagon will quake in its boots should China and India ever decide to blind the eyes above Asia.
Every time there's a story with India in it, the usual moronic statements about outsourcing and poverty ...
I'm pretty sure we've brought back satellites back to earth before, such as Skylab. Oh, they didn't mean cratering it? That's a little different.
Well, it already provided everyone a free, compulsory education, and you didn't bother to learn the difference between "it's" and "its". There is only so much the government can do, and beyond that, people have to help themselves.
In the United States, it's really damn hard to literally go hungry. I know this because I've known people who couldn't afford to feed themselves without government assistance, and I've seen what the government provides. Heck, I even been to the grocery store several times with one guy I knew who paid for essentially 100% of his food with the public money available to him as a single guy. It wasn't super, super generous, but he was able to get enough to eat despite his penchant for buying $15.00/lb salmon and the most expensive organic free-range chicken you can buy and despite his tendency to shop at the high-end grocery stores in town, all of which is, incidentally, perfectly legal when buying food on government assistance.
Oh, and speaking of legalities, this same guy would also sometimes have some credit left over at the end of the month and be in a "use it or lose it" situation, so he'd try to get people he knew to go to the grocery store with him, buy their groceries with his remaining credit, and get them to give him cash. (The astute reader will have noticed that I described him as a "guy I knew" rather than a "guy I still know".)
And this all happened in Texas, which is not exactly on the "hey, let's tax people to institute more government programs" center of the universe. So tell me again: why is it that you think there is a hunger problem in the US?
China just did this last week. Old news.
it doesnt make much sense to reply to someone who looks up facts on some unknown website and making racist comments here as an ANONYMOUS COWARD !