Slashdot Mirror
India and US to Cooperate in Space Exploration
p1234 writes "India and the US plan to cooperate in the exploration and use of outer space. India's first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1, is scheduled to be launched later this year. This is the culmination of long-term planning on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from India's moon mission, Nair said a probe of Mars by India was very much on the agenda.'Our scientific community would like to see what new things we can find. It is not just for the sake of sending a probe to Mars. Yes, we have an agenda by 2012, by then we should have a Mars mission.'"
India gets permission to use our moon landing sets in the American desert far from prying eyes :)
Now we are outsourcing NASA?
Like the previous deals on nuclear power, this is an attempt to bribe India away from getting too friendly with China and Iran, and buying U.S. arms instead of Russian. Science has nothing to do with it.
I see several jokes about cheap engineers or bad education, the scariest example of the latter is probably the statement in the summary about 'both sides of the Atlantic'.
:)
It really makes me wonder where India borders the Atlantic...
A likely indication the summary was done with some US-style geography classes
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This is a great opportunity for both countries to share the best scientists on both sides. This mission http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/about_chandrayaan.htm is very critical and challenging for Indian scientists. They need every help they can get to pull this. In the past, when US denied supercomputing facilities, Indian went and reinvented the wheel http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2906865.stm (although the effort was worth it).With relations improving between two countries, it will be foolish and immature not to accomplish.
This effort will NOT face any opposition like the Nuclear deal. The nuclear deal went down the drain because the stupid "left" politicians played the "Indian congress government is surrendering to US" card. They also threatened to withdraw their support which would have collapsed the Congress ruling party http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/wm1688.cfm. This time, they will make sure this deal is made and take the bragging rights for landing India on the moon. Yes, the Indian politics is screwed up. But they are not fools to let this deal go away.
Stop being a racist! You ass hole!
I think the anti-offshoring sentiment is more an anti-corporation movement than an anti-Indian movement. I've seen in detail how corporate lobbyists manipulate the facts to create a "shortage". The bad guys are really the corporate lobbyists who hype free-trade and bribe politicians with campaign donations. We are not a democracy if lobbyists control politicians to such a degree.
Table-ized A.I.
who gives a shit when we can waste billions on exploring space?
Do you have any idea what you talking about, what the value of near-Earth space efforts have been? Billions upon billions in economic returns (hell, weather monitoring alone is worth the price of admission.) Space research is hardly wasted. Could all of us do better at managing our world? Sure. But shutting down space programs isn't the way to do that.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Satellites are not launched everyday, moon missions still more infrequently. The usual way to obtain access to space for whatever reasons is often to provide some payload to a party who's going to launch a vehicle anyway. Not too long ago, India launched a military satellite for Israel. What India is providing here, is the excellent satellite launching infrastructure it has due to an active space program. The US space program was always geared towards manned-missions.
Let me end this rant by saying that developments in all fields do not have to reflect the trends in IT (where India does provide a cheap back-office). It's time people got off the idea that the US always provides the money, the knowledge, while other countries are sources of cheap brainless workers. Appreciate the achievements of others.
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
I have a sweet job at a small biotech startup in Silicon Valley. I was born in Philadelphia and I'm as white as white guys come. So who else works at this company?
The CEO, the CFO, and one of our principal investors are all from Iran. The CTO, the DBA, and my supervisor are from India. (The CTO is writing a tech book for a well-known publisher; I expect it will be reviewed here in a few months.) The principal database curator, the statistician, and three people on the dev team are Chinese nationals. The product manager is from the former Soviet Union; so is one of the UI devs and our street-smart IT guy. The head of tech support is Indian (OK, technically Canadian); she manages an offshore team of scientists in South America who import data into the system all day. We also just hired two additional Indian employees whom I haven't really met yet.
And then there are three white guys including me- AFAIK the only U.S. citizens. Maybe a few others are too (I've never really thought about it). Half of the people where I work came from a company that was originally started by another white guy. He lost faith in the future of the United States a few years ago, sold his business to a Fortune 500 corporation here (which promptly mismanaged it into oblivion), and took something like 10 or 20 million dollars back home to Australia.
I read threads like this one, I watch the news, and I listen to all the bloviating over Iran, over India and China, and it all just seems surreal to me. I wonder what the future holds for this place.
Sad to see the types of comments posted here---remuind me of blue collar miners etc...who would talk of "college educated" guys in the same way---because they were scared their way of living is being disrupted. If you're getting your butt kicked by India and China, learn to innovate---that's what America stands for---I don't hear Bill Gates or Steve Jobs whining like the pathetic folks here.