India Launches Five Foreign Satellites 85
vasanth writes: "India has put into orbit five foreign satellites, including one built by France two from Canada and one each from Singapore and Germany. The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) has so far successfully launched 67 satellites, including 40 foreign ones, into space. The PSLV costs about 17 million USD and the cost is seen as a major advantage India has over other countries in terms of commercial launches. When talking about the cost of the project, the Prime Minister of India noted that the launch was cheaper than Hollywood film Gravity.
Great for India (Score:5, Interesting)
Other nations used military funding, the private sector, other governments and imports to try and boost their own domestic projects.
So many failed as the cash needed never could make up for what India fully understood from the 1960's: its about not getting ahead of your own domestic science.
Now India can enjoy lower cost launch systems without needing any other nations help, costly imports or permission.
"Indian Space Research Organisation"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Manned mission please... (Score:2, Interesting)
That was true until the GSAT-14 launch. Those guys have talked about their commitment to delivering a better GSLV Mark III, so it'll be awaited.
Technically, it doesn't make too much sense to send a human being as much as it makes to send a robotic creature down there. It's the same reason we use Drones and Surgical Arms. :-)
Perhaps we may require humans on a space station if Robots can't handle certain sensing tasks too well. But that's pretty much the scope of human beings out there. What we could really benefit from is actually better satellite communication and reliable remote assignments with a 5 minute purview.