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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."
ISS: Houston, we have a problem.
New Delhi: Hello, please spell your name and give me your complete customer ID.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Well, I don't know if in a multilateral world (as opposed to the Bi-polarized Cold War world) there is space to the concept of "Superpower" anymore, but if there is (along with India and China), Brazil, South Africa and Australia stands a chance too. A lot of economic and technological development happening barely unnoticed south of the equator too.
I think that this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research _Organisation article has some good details about the Indian Space program, for those interested.
I hope this will help them to curry favor with other space-industrialized nations.
Their bomb is very touchy about its weight you insensitive clod. And no it's not fat, it just has an alternative structural framework.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
No government spends all it's money on sanitation first before looking into something more progressive like Space research. I appreciate it when a country looks towards the future, and not just the immediate short-term solutions.
The somewhat betterment of the conditions (And I do not turn a blind eye to the fact that these betterments are still only on the surface) in India is largely because of it's new-found IT power, opening of market to the west and getting more exposure to the outside world. Not because India was employing more people in the Sanitation department. Continuing in the same direction will have a good enough trickle-down effect to eventually help sanitation too (I know that you used sanitation only as an example. I am also using it only as an example).
Moreover, unlike most other space agencies, the Indian program still focuses a lot on educational broadcasting and remote sensing. Better than launching those "Spy" satellite, IMHO.
What CAN'T you outsource to India?
And there's a "thank you, come again" joke around here somewhere...
No, my dear friend, I am an Indian. And I want people to get to know more about the Indian program before they claim that the money could have been better spent on "sanitation" instead :-)
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?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It is a good job, but launching rockets is not rocket science. One dark possibility is that they are having problems with the six strap on booster configuration and are trying to salvage a reduced capacity vehicle from the detritus of a failed project. I remember the crash of ASLV (a fore runner of PSLV, two strap on booster on their basic SLV-3). My prof was in the post martem committee and was ranting on and on about how dumb their simulation of booster rocket was. "Thrust is 100% for 45 seconds and 0% after that? Why didn't the stupid hacks code up the table of thrust vs time from the static firing?" or something along those lines.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I left E.U., Japan, U.S. and Russia out because they are already major players.
While I am sure India would like to have a deterrant against China and Pakistan in a military context, satellites in India have been put to good use. Most of rural India can get accurate weather forecasts that helps them figure out when to plant, and harvest their crops. It also predicts weather patterns and climate changes. Television and other broadband communication is also possible. India has several satellites in orbit. The Geosynchronous satellites were all designed and made in India but were launched from French Guyana (typically) from a EU made rocket. With India getting better at making launch vehicles, they could build and launch satellites on their own as well as provide launch support for other countries. I am glad they are doing this and I am glad that gives hope and aspirations to generations of Indians. Remember, hope and aspirations count for a lot in the betterment of a country.
That's the reason I hoped you had left them off, rather than the typical US "dang soshlist ferners cain't do nutin' right!" reasoning. ;-)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Only political science and social work majors use "betterment" when the rest of the English-speaking world would use "improvement".
Actually the Italians have what seems to be a productive (if low budget) space agency. While they don't run many of their own high profile missions, they have payloads attached to both the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Casini-Huygens mission.
Not to mention that the top orbital mechanics professor in my department is an Italian, and the Italian grad students I've gotten to work with have been wonderful. Plus of course Galileo himself was Italian as well, even if his government and church weren't the most supportive.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
According to various reports, they charged the Italians USD 11 million for the launch of the 350 kg satellite. Roughly $30k per kg while international norm is 10-15k per kg for LEO. Also the launch cost them $15 million. So the launch is still subsidized by the Indian government and they are charging the customer more than the market rate. How is this "commercial", and how is it competitive?
Even if indiscriminately nuking these countries (all of them reportedly with nuclear capabilities) would not ensure Mutual Assured Destruction, the aftermath of this unlikely event would be disastrous for U.S. and worldwide economy in general, and the current politic of alliances would pit the world in another World War, but this time involving the southern hemisphere too. Just think about it: any of these 3 countries mentioned above are bigger than the whole Europe (minus Russia).
And the reason you put Australia on the list but left off Canada? Assuming it would be absorbed into the US?
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.
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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Well, good lucky bringing democracy to Brasil. Because (don't they teach history and geography around there? wherever there is), Brazil is already a democracy, and a strong one too. The current president, Lula, just won the second term receiving impressive 58.2 million votes, after winning his first term with 56.7 million votes, for a population of around 180 million people.
Compare that with 50.4 million votes for Bush on his first term, and 62 million votes on his second term, to measure the strength of Brazilian democracy, taking in account that, differently from U.S.A, not only there are more than 2 effective parties in Brazil but any candidate from any party appears equally on the ballots in the whole federal territory.
Add that to a nationwide deployed electronic voting system (even in the middle of the amazon forest there is electronic voting) that really works, and you can understand how much Brazilian people trust the electoral process there, unlike U.S.A.
I cannot speak for India (that happen to be a democracy too, afaik), but at least Brazil needs no help from U.S. Actually, the more far away U.S. gets from Latin America democracies, the better (go lookup "Operation Condor" and "Escuela de las americas" to understand how U.S. undermine Latin American democracies in the past).
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
You guys have had a good time for the past few hundred years. The rest of the world (the 'South') hasn't. Arguments for free-trade have been made and have been accepted both by China and India. And now that BRIC are competing with the Europeans and the US on an equal footing, suddenly free-trade isn't what you want. And a closed economy is what you want. Sorry guys, your corporates aren't listening to you any more.
And we're not going to stay quiet about 5% of the people taking 25% of the resources for much longer. We want our share to be reasonable too.
Learn to 'innovate'. Learn to be more efficient. Or we will take your jobs and your resources, and then you'll have no choice but to be more efficient.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!