India's Successful Commercial Satellite Launch

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday India successfully launched an Italian astronomical satellite. A BBC article (view video clip) notes that the launch grants India membership in the exclusive group of nations that can sustain commercial satellite launches. India's launch vehicle has less overall capacity than the competition — up to 1,500 kg to orbit — but the country plans to sweep the low end of the market by offering the lowest cost per launched kilogram for smaller payloads."

Comments

list please?

[tverbeek]

It is too much to ask, that a link labeled "nations that can sustain commercial satellite launches" might actually include information about which nations can sustain commercial satellite launches?

Racism acceptable on /. where India is concerned

[fiannaFailMan]

I've all but stopped reading /. threads on Indian technical developments. The predictable torrent of snide little stereotypical racist comments that seem to get modded 'funny' is a bit off-putting, and they usually outnumber any vaguely interesting or informative comments by about 7 to 1. The /. crew needs to grow the hell up.

Re:Next superpowers...

[vivaoporto]

Canada is also already one of the big players, and a very nice one too. One of the biggest economies of the world, fierce enough to have entered both world wars as soon as Britain did, but peaceful enough to stay out of most of the conflicts the rest of the world got involved afterwards.

I didn't mentioned the current top dogs because then can't go higher, they are already at the top. But Brasil, India, China, Australia, South Africa, all these countries still have an unfulfilled potential, and I hope that in the next decades they will get their act straight and rise to the place they are supposed to be.

Re:Racism acceptable on /. where India is concerne

[fiannaFailMan]

First, if something gets modded funny by more people than mod it overrated, than it is funny. /.'s mod system is as good as anything else at defining humor, and better than a lot of TV network panels, if you ask me. They're certainly not perfect, but funny is not something individuals can pick so well. Can something be funny and insulting? Sure, but if you're going to get offended by something in that vein, I'm not sure /. (or many public message boards) are for you.

Oh, so not only is racism funny, but /. is now a racists-only zone? Thanks for clearing that up.

Second, the Indian customer service phenomenon, which is the majority of cultural humor on this topic, is a big deal in India; has made a huge impact on life there--and they have their own sitcom about it!* Do the jokes get cliched and watered down after a while? Certainly. And some are much better than others. But I for one am glad that they are there.

Well bully for you. Personally I think that racist jokes are as inappropriate as they are cliché and irrelevant to the topics that provoke them. How would you like it if every story submitted about the US space program was met with a deluge of wisecracks about redneck moonshine-distillers, John Wayne, a gun-toting population, and your half-educated president? You'd start to wonder if it were possible to have a sensible discussion on anything, wouldn't you?

Re:can you blame them?

[fiannaFailMan]

if by competitive you mean undercutting first world by living in "developing" conditions, settling for income which wouldn't qualify to pay for a refrigerator box in the middle of highway 1 let alone raise a family, then yeah.. it's competitive.

Damn straight it's competitive. It's less than what you earn, more than what he would earn without outsourcing and therefore makes life better for him. If you can't compete, get another job. Innovate. Start a business. Get off your ass and do something. Don't just sit there expecting some communist-style subsidy or GW Bush-style protectionist tarriffs to keep your standard of living inflated to such dizzy heights while half the world squats in poverty. I know you'd just love to keep all that wealth to yourself but there are about 6 billion other people in this world too you know. If they can raise their income at the expense of a certain gas-guzzling nation that burns up 25% of the world's resources but only has 5% of the world's population, then fair fucks to them.

youre really sensitive to racism but youre perfectly ok with the dispossession of the middle class of an entire nation for the sake of another which should be building its own middle class without draining the wealth of another... im confused as to what political affiliation youre supposed to have.

Your justification of racism is noted. And I'm a bit confused as to why you think the USA is entitled to keep all the world's wealth to itself. Is that part of your 'manifest destiny' or something?

Re:can you blame them?

[fiannaFailMan]

stop contradicting yourself

Wait until I start contradicting myself and I'll think about it. "Troll" indeed!

youre either for the communist ideal of wealth redistribution or youre not. if youre for it you cant use "communist" as a derogatory term, and if youre not you have no right to assert the rights of other nations to steal american's jobs.

"Steal?" That would be an illegal thing. Here is the news. Open markets and free trade are LEGAL! Outsourcing is LEGAL. "Theft" has shit all to do with it. Communism is all about putting artificial constraints on the market. Free trade is the opposite, leading to a better distribution of wealth. Better distribution of wealth isn't an ideal exclusive to communists, free marketeers would like to see it too. But feel free to redefine free trade as 'communism' for the purposes of your argument if you want.

if india wants the freaking jobs, they should start their own companies and create their own job market rather than destroying the american job market.

Oh here we go! So you're another protectionist "keep the jobs in the hands of good, white, god-fearing christian folks y'hear" merchant? What makes your country so special that you're entitled to hang on to all the world's cool jobs when there's a bunch of people elsewhere who can do the same work for less, hmm? Anything to do with skin colour? Or is it a nationality thing? Something to do with your 'manifest destiny' or something?

Here is the news. There's a big bad world out there and it's got COMPETITION for you. If you don't compete, you get eliminated. So you either do it right (i.e. do a better job than the Indians) or get out of the heat of the kitchen and do something else. It's very simple.

And in the meantime, you might also want to think about fixing that little racism problem.