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.'"

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Re:mutual benefit?

[Tablizer]

Studies by the Rand institute and other research organizations have shown there is NO "engineer/sci shortage". Thus, it is a corporate myth that the US is not graduating enough. However, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if offshoring drives down wages in those fields.
   

Re:mutual benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen what kind of mathematics is teached in American colleges?

Math110 has less content than most math classes in the first year of high school in Europe!

Maybe there are enough US engeeners around, but are they good for anything?

Re:This is geopolitics 101

[evilviper]

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.

China and India are likely to be very serious rivals, rather than friends. Both have huge populations, and are developing countries trying to break into high-tech. Being right next to each hurts rather than helps.

Iran seems an extremely unlikely partner as well. India is an open democracy, with a far freer society, and are not predominately Muslim. I also don't see much that Iran could offer India to begin with, as India is technologically much further along.

Russia... Maybe... Though India has much stronger economic ties with the English speaking western world than it does with Russia. Are Indian car makers trying to buy the Range Rover and Jaguar brands so that they can sell such branded vehicles to Russia? China? Iran? Not likely.

Re:This is geopolitics 101

[XchristX]

Iran seems an extremely unlikely partner as well. India is an open democracy, with a far freer society, and are not predominately Muslim. I also don't see much that Iran could offer India to begin with, as India is technologically much further along.

India's greatest strength over Iran is it's liberal education, particularly in colleges and universities. That is why the technocrat generation in India is much larger and better trained than the ones in Iran.
Interestingly, a lot of Iranian students are now interested in pursuing higher education in India, particularly after Ahmadinejad expelled liberal professors from Iranian Universities, and Iranians have a harder time getting into western universities because of political problems. I spent a summer in the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India and there were several Iranian students with very progressive and liberal outlook , unlike the Ayatollahs (they got me hooked on Dariush Mehrjui http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts/iranian_cinema_2595.jsp [opendemocracy.net] films) who were all cursing the Islamic theocracy in Iran.

Re:This is geopolitics 101

[miletus]

Iran has gas, India needs gas, and there was a pipeline deal from Iran to India through Pakistan, which pretty muched got nixed because of U.S. pressure.

Russia has historically strong ties with India and still sells it a lot of weaponry. With the rise of a the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an emerging military alliance between Russia, China, various Central Asian countries, and now Iran, India has to choose whether to ally with her neighbors or the U.S. The stakes are pretty high geopolitically.

Re:mutual benefit?

[MillionthMonkey]

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.

Re:Call centers in space...

[khallow]

Seriously, I don't think anyone on either side of the Atlantic is considering the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear capabilities falling into the hands of Islamic extremists.

If that is true, then there are a lot of government officials being grossly negligent in their duties. If I were the US president, I'd already have a military strategy for destroying or smuggling out those Pakistani nukes in case their government were replaced with a radical islamic government.

Even at the peak of anti-American sentiments after the invasion of Afghanistan, the hard-liner Islamic political parties never got more than 11% of the popular vote. Most political parties in Pakistan are moderate, and the nukes are buried deep in the military chain of command, which is secular.

11% is more than enough. And we don't know how secular the military chain of command will remain. Given what has happened in the past with the Pakistani nulcear program, this isn't something that I'd rely on.

Pakistan remains firmly in the pocket of the United States. And there's enough inertia from both Pakistan and the United States to make sure that these traditional allies remain that way.

Pakistan isn't firmly in anyone's pocket. And given how shaky (and illegitimate) their government is right now, you're whistling in the dark.

Re:Call centers in space...

[TheRaven64]

Maybe he meant a bomb which works by compressing Muslims until they reach critical mass? Do they then split into a Jew and a polytheist and emit a high-energy atheist (which then collides with another Muslim causing a chain reaction)?