India To Launch First Manned Space Mission By 2022 (hindustantimes.com)

India will launch its first manned space mission by 2022, the country's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday, which could make it the fourth nation to do so after the United States, Russia and China. From a report: Modi congratulated Indian scientists for excelling in their research and are at the forefront of innovation. "Our scientists have made us proud. They launched over 100 satellites... They successfully completed the Mars mission." ISRO, India's space agency, successfully launched 104 satellites on 15 February 2017, of which three were Indian while the rest were foreign commercial satellites. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan, India's first interplanetary mission was launched on November 5, 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It has been orbiting Mars since September 24, 2014.

Comments

Re:Impressive

[Kjella]

Space travel is 10% science and 90% demonstrating that you can lob a nuke around the earth. But, hey, it's that 90% that pays for the science.

I think you're projecting Cold War history on everyone else. India doesn't have any particular need for ICBMs, if they're going to start a shooting war with anyone it'll probably be Pakistan and they're right next door. The driving force here was probably business, providing a cheaper alternative to the US/European/Russian launch options for telecom, observation satellites and so on. It probably looked like a good idea, I mean the Proton rocket is a 50+ year old design and was up until recently pretty competitive so if India could undercut them on labor cost they could become the "budget" launch provider. Of course then SpaceX happened...