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Space

India Plans Moon Mission In 2005 270

Posted by timothy from the utter-lunacy dept.
ghoul writes: "I just came across this article in which the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has announced plans for a moon mission. Considering that till now India has only launched geo-synchronous satellites, that's a big leap. But ISRO scientists claim by using a lightweight orbital vehicle they can use their existing PSLV (which launches 1-tonne missions into polar orbit) to send an orbiter to the moon. The full article is available at India Today ." (No, not a manned mission, at least not yet.)
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India Plans Moon Mission In 2005 More

India Plans Moon Mission In 2005

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  • ...it's a good thing the Natives of this land could put together one of them space rocket thingies. They've been worshipping the sky for ages, now it's time to get up all in that.

    oh, wait, not for 5 years. Guess it's back to the bar....
    --
  • There are many other reasons that India could be looking to send stuff to the moon other than just the same old scientific reasons that have been brought up in the article and in the various threads that I have seen.

    First off, India is in need of some serious PR in their favour. While many people on their side in the Pakistan vs. India debacle, they need something to bolster the spirits of their people and make others think about them as more than just a country with a crapload of people and a few nuclear weapons. What better than a mission to the moon to proove themselves better than these other fledgling countries in the technological areas?

    Also, as the country is in some serious tension over the nuclear arms issue, the fallover effect of technology in this area could be quite useful to them. After all, new rocket techology could allow them to create missles that could carry a nuclear warhead much farther than before, thus making other countries who were thinking about backing Pakistan much more wary in their support.

    I'll admit that this is a very dark view of the reasons for going to the moon, but they are things that should be taken into consideration when you look at their motives. With motives like these, the Indian government will be much more willing to throw money at this project, whether it is something that they should be doing (as they could push that money into things that are needed much more than the new knowledge that this mission would probably bring -- but thats just the humanitarian hippy in me coming out).
  • NASA has been playing the gold-plated space exploration game for far too long. India, and the private launch companies, may show real guts and innovate in space.

  • It seems the world, certainly america, is on the brink of going from one extreme: scathing racism, to another: intolerance for controversy.

    First of all, you mean the US, not América.

    Second, can you point out precisely what the "controversy" was behind your bigoted, lame joke?

  • But you cant jump over grand canyon in two steps.

    /das Ix

  • Weird (Score:1)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    How come I only see this article in Lynx? When I use Netscape the first article is about the P4.
  • Btw I forgot to mention the proposed bill for the mission is 350 million half the cost of a Boing 747
  • First paragraph of my post above is a quote from the person I replied to.
  • India was never impoverished Farming colony. The British made it out to be that... and in spite of what the rest of the world thinks, it's a fun place to be. Right mix of the old and the new.
  • Everywhere, all you see is slow-walking and slow-driving people

    Take a walk down Queen St. at 5pm... you see the same thing. Your point?

    "Brain-Sucking Alien" emblem (available here as a screen saver), all over

    There are about a million times as many pictures of the Queen in Toronto (check your pocket change)... so, uh, your point?

    Since they seem to completely distrust and shun every other ethnic group

    Gee, it seems like you are the one shunning and distrusting other ethnic groups... so what's your point?

    Multiculturalism is a dangerous experiment.

    Hm, seems like the last "experiment" we had with state sponsored racism (Germany '33 - '45) turned out to be extremely dangerous. It also failed, as Mr. Hitler et al ruined most of Europe and (in Hitler's case) didn't even have the courage to stick around and take what was coming to him after we kicked his ass.... so, really, I don't get your point.

    I hate being forced by my government to be a part of it. I hate Canada.

    Congratulations. Get the fuck out.

  • yes (Score:1)

    by mattc ( 12417 )
    Right on.. I love how these PC Police[1] are all demanding Free Speech in one article and then in the next article they are complaining because they heard speech they didn't like!! Sheesh make up your minds already.

    1. Political Correctness Police

  • Yeah, this is so very convenient for you, isn't it? Yeah, this is so very convenient for you, isn't it? You assume that: 1) 'USians' are all white and 2) they can't take a joke at their own expense.
  • Sure India wants to go to Pluto And hang around a space station for decades but wouldnt people laugh at them if they attempted anything like that before they had even done something so boring,routine and easy as sending an orbuter to the moon Wake up and smell the coffee . Just because the US can do it doesnt mean they share the technology with other nations especially third world coloured non christian nations and if they want to do something about it they have no option but to reinvent the wheel
  • What was insulting about that? Oh the gringo part? I've heard it so much it has become kind of funny. Or at least I wouldn't take it that seriously if someone said 'Hey, gringo' to me. If they said 'Hey you fucking gringo', then I might, but a lot has to do with the tone.

    Also your example wasn't that fair because it really is easy to laugh at the US society. Mexico has a genuine culture, well I've never been there, but from what I gather. I don't think it makes Mexico better necessarily, they just get the privilege of taking their society a little more seriously, or rather maybe expecting others to. I don't know any of my American (USian if you like, I don't care as long as it's not for insult's sake) friends who would blame anyone for laughing at us. We're not all bad people, and not having a rich culture doesn't make us evil... or does it?
  • Bangalore, We have a problem

    Actually, that will more likely be

    "Hassan, We have a problem"

    which is more apt :-)

    The city of Hassan has ISRO's master control facility, even though a large part of ISRO is based in Bangalore.
  • Dude, India easily has ten times the technical expertise and resources today than the US had back in the late sixties for a space program. Remember, there were guys using their friggin' slide rules to calculate trajectories and such. You had duct-tape and sheet metal spacecraft that couldn't be sneezed on without screwing it up somehow; it's amazing that there wasn't anything worse than the Apollo 13 accident in space in the early days. To top it all off, these guys were doing something that had never been done before; nobody really knew exactly what sorts of things they'd be dealing with in a moon landing. (There was even speculation at one point that the moon's surface consisted of feet upon feet of loose dust, and the whole lander would simply sink into the moon and be lost.)

    Today, we send rockets up so often that nobody even notices anymore. We can calculate in less than a second what an entire team of America's finest scientists would spend their whole day computing back when we went to the moon; I've got a better computer in my jacket pocket than they had for their entire operation. Today's spacecraft are durable, tested, and reliable--a far cry from the spindly, foil-wrapped craft of yesteryear. The guesswork of how to get to the moon no longer exists. What took the entire weight of the world's greatest superpower four decades ago could be done by any number of private companies today (assuming they wanted to devote their resources to a moon operation, of course.)

    As fly-by-night as you'd like the ISRO to appear to the casual reader, they're clearly more organized and better funded than certain other space programs [slashdot.org] featured on /. as of late. True, a moon landing isn't a triviality by any stretch of the imagination. Given what we have and know today, though, I'd argue that they've got an excellent shot of pulling it off, should they move forward with it.

  • > moon-orbiter for Rs 350 crore (a crore is
    > 100,000, so 350,000,000 rupees ~= $11 million),

    I thought a lakh was 10^5, while a crore was 10^7. So wouldn't Rs 350 crore be Rs 350,00,00,000, which is Rs 3.5 x 10^9 ~= $78.4 million as of today's market close?

  • ...I doont know how long the Curry weel 'old.....!

  • You assume that: 1) 'USians' are all white

    Point where.

    2) they can't take a joke at their own expense.

    Point where is the joke.

    Suppose I called you asshole: "Hey asshole". Where is the joke here?

    Strawman arguments.

  • The moon's an armpit. Not even worth going for the scenery. It'd be much better (I think) to try to rendevouz with one of the 900 or so near earth asteroids they've found. You could probably make a case for mining those things which would not only probably make you a lot of money, it'd have the beneficial side effect of dismantling those near earth objects so they don't crash into us. And you also gain space experience so you'll be ready to move your mining operations farther afield when the time comes. It's a win-win situation any way you look at it.
  • biological compounds that can be built in a zero-gravity environment

    That's all hooey. Check out this APS What's New [http] report, in particular:

    But Science magazine (25 June 99) disclosed that the crystals used were not even grown in space, but in Australia. Space-grown crystals can be distinguished only by their cost.

  • Argh. The link is here [aps.org]
  • With the US Failing at everything they have done reacently, a bit of a kick up the bum from another country will be good for them. Look how much they managed to do in the 60's with the race with the USSR.
  • What was insulting about that?

    You apparently happen to be a very easygoing person. Good for you.

  • Excuse me ? (Score:4)

    by Betcour ( 50623 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @11:00PM (#969338)
    Its about time the US got some competition in the space arena

    Duh ? Ever heard of the Russians ? The French ? They both have very good space infrastructure - hell, the French even have a bigger market share than the US in term of commercial space launch ! The Russians have always been better than Nasa for manned missions (you can laugh at Mir problems, yet it did more than Nasa ever did). Even the Japanese and Chinese have some kind of space industry (yet quite small right now). The US always had some competition in the space industry, from the first Spoutnik to the modern Ariane V.
  • Hmm, I wonder what they were thinking back in the sixties. I mean, come on, if nobody can claim ownership to any part of space, what's to stop a bunch of alien pirates to exchange copyrighted MP3z in outer space ? Not to mention the fact clearly demonstrated by recent history that it's impossible to actually innovate(tm) on something if you cannot patent it. No wonder we don't many exciting new space missions these days.

    I bet India hasn't signed that stupid treaty. I wish them good luck, though I think that a manned mission with a lawyer inside their space vehicle would have been better.
  • sctualy, back in the sixties (i don't remember hte exact date), the US along w/ the USSR and a bunch of other nations signed a treaty declaring that no nation could claim ownership to any part of space, not even the orbital space above each respective country.

  • Good... Competition (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @05:34PM (#969341)
    Good. Its about time the US got some competition in the space arena. Nothing could be better to get us interested in space again.
  • Maybe India will plan a joint effort with Radio Shack and their hope to get to the moon? Heck, they're the perfect people for Radio Shack to sponsor, considering most of Radio Shacks products come from there.
  • Only this can be said next... "They can land a man on the moon, but NOONE can spell Apu's last name!"

    ----------------
    Programming, is like sex.

  • Not a moon mission (Score:5)

    by 348 ( 124012 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @05:35PM (#969344) Homepage
    Folks,
    This is not an article about a planned moon mission, this is an article about a planned proposal for a moon mission.

    In the next six months the team will wrestle with the details of launching such a mission, including its cost-effectiveness and the areas in which Indian scientists can significantly add to the mountain of knowledge that has already been collected about the moon. It will form the basis of a project report that ISRO will submit to the Central Government for approval

    They have no funding, no governmental support, no scientific sponsors and no plan. Hey if all you need is a "desire" to get press, hell, I'm planning a mission to mars!

    In the next six months my team will wrestle with the details of launching such a mission, including its cost-effectiveness and the areas in which /. wannabe scientists can significantly add to the mountain of knowledge that has already been collected about the Mars. It will form the basis of a project report that 348 will submit to the Slashdot submission queue for approval.

  • Behold.. the power of cheese
  • And the US has how many times Vietnam's population? Besides (and I'm stretching my geography here) they're fighting over Kashmir correct? Well that's a relatively small plot o' land. Not like India could put their entire population there to fight it out.
    As master Yoda says "Judge me by my size will you?" (or something close to that)
    -cpd
  • That's Chinese, not Indians ;-(
    Apparently the Chinese are even worse of than the Indians.


    ---
  • Except that theres no way in hell that Pakistan is going to launch anything into orbit in the next five years. So who are they competing against?

    Everyone knows who the first country to launch something into space was - Russia, and the second was the USA - who was the third (I'll give you a clue "true north strong and free")

  • i believe it is the intent behind the reference, sir.

    I said that indian people were in poor dental health...and that they were poor. while in fact india is a relatively poor country (comparatively at least) - i make no assumptions regarding their dental health. Assuming Indians eat better than americans, one could probably think they have better dental health than my own country. It was all in jest. While you one may find my joke tasteless, it was entirely obvious that it was, in fact, a joke

    However, when i was called a bigot, that, sir, was in all seriousness, and yes....that does offend me. Not once in all the reply posts have i made in this thread did i state that i truly believed that India was a country "lesser" to that of the U.S. - I suppose i am just glad that when someone makes light of my heritage, i am able to laugh it off, or perhaps even participate in the meriment. I would hate to be as miserably defensive as the Indian gentleman who originally replied to my post.

    BTW - if you haven't read all of the sub-threads, i encourage you to do so. there are some very insightful coments from several other people. Regardless of their viewpoints.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • > India: Don't eat other cows Actually.. Not anymore! Sure all animals are suposed to be sacred.. but i guess some just couldn't resist the monetary possibilities of slaughtering their beloved cows... Then again.. *some* in the US have been known to eat other humans...
  • But how many people write unreadable because of this pen?

  • Well, I agree with the arogance part, but I seriously doubt that India will see the same return on their investment that the space program gave the US. I believe the six-to-one ratio was achieved primarily during the early missions, when the US had to invent a lot of totally novel technologies just to get the damn things off the ground and keep people alive and healthy for the flight. Return in new technology and techniques is bound to be high when you're attacking such totally new and foreign problems as the US was in the 60's. India, meanwhile, would be throwing itself at a problem that has already been solved. We got a lot of return on investment from building the first computers, like ENIAC. If you set out to build ENIAC today, you just get a piece of obsolete technology and a huge bill at Radio Shack. I have no doubts about the ability of the Indian technical community to build innovative technology, but I doubt that that much benefit would come from this project.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • The LAST thing that India needs to worry about is a moon mission. They should take some the money they're going to burn on this idea and do something revolutionary with it - improve the lives of their citizens. In a country where (IIRC) something like 50% of the cooking is done on wood fires, where rivers flood, and where, as my friend put it, a "wall of stench from all the dead things in the heat" hits you when you get off the plane, they have bigger fish to fry than some trip to the Moon.

    ATM, there is no profit in getting into space, why go when you can't even feed yourself?

  • India and Indian people contribute a lot to the world. I think that especially the US should be thankful to them. I think even though india may be a poorer nation, they are still a very important nation, and this will help spread that knowledge
  • um Clemetine [navy.mil]? Lunar Prospector [nasa.gov]? Even barring those two missions to the moon, various missions to mars, venus and the outer planets are ample evidence to show that the US is capable of lunar flight.

  • Millions living in poverty and this is the best use for cash the subcontinent can come up with.

    Priorities people!
  • But front lines of wars are usually very small.
    Its a war of attrition that they would have won quite easily.
  • There's no first step if you leap.

  • Re:Cheap, cheap, cheap (Score:4)

    by stevelinton ( 4044 ) <sal@dcs.st-and.ac.uk> on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @11:35PM (#969359) Homepage
    Um, no. A crore is 100 lakh and a lakh is 100 000. So the estimated cost is 3.5 x 10^10 rupees, which is about $10^9.

    This is either very cheap for a manned mission or very expensive for a probe.

  • "...you mean the US, not América."

    Woohoo! Can I play too?

    [put on scientist coat, wave finger in air]
    "Actually, what I think he means is the United States of America as opposed to, say, the United States of Brazil."

    If you're going to pick nits, try to do at least a half-assed job of it (or maybe you're having trouble obtaining the necessary .5 donkeys).

    Oh, I'm a karma whore alright--just not the kind you're thinking of...

  • NASA caused, both directly and indirectly, millions, possibly billions, of dollars worth of return from aerospace technologies

    I have heard many times this argument for investing into space.

    But tell me, if instead of investing in space waiting for "direct or indirect returns", you invest directly in Earth technologies, what would you have achieved?

    Maybe the returns would have improved even aerospace tech. Certainly the Earth ones would be much better.

    I can share that going to space is good, but don't try to defend it with phony arguments.

    __
  • Please compare:
    "The spins-offs for us are going to be many"
    (chairman of the ISRO) and
    Says P.S. Goel, the centre's director who is likely to head the team: "There is nothing fundamental that we have not already done."

    Mr Goel is certainly right. Sending a satellite in lunar orbit is not extremely different from placing it into geosynchroneous Earth orbit. In fact, a commercial comsat of Hughes (AsiaSat 3S), which was thought to be lost due to a 4th stage malfunction of a SL-12 Proton, was rescued to geosynchroneous orbit by performing a double lunar flyby using new resonant orbital hopping theory. Checkout this press release [hughespace.com].

    Do something different, please! There are so many good ideas which are untried and could give India international respect and real spin-offs.

  • Re:Not a moon mission (Score:5)

    by SectoidRandom ( 87023 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @08:23PM (#969363) Homepage
    Slightly off topic but hey:

    During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ballpoint pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules.
    After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about $1 million U.S. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on Earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.

    Who ever said Americans do it best? [grin]
  • try ONE quarter of a million miles.
  • t's amazing that there wasn't anything worse than the Apollo 13 accident

    Unless you count Apollo 1 [nasa.gov], which burned up during a launch pad test, killing the entire crew.
  • This is off-topic (TOPIC?!?) but I once heard that it is possible for a human with enough training to actually withstand a vacuum for a few seconds, safely. I mentioned on Slashdot's IRC channel that I'd heard that, and everyone said I'd been lied to and what a bunch of baloney, and you will instantly explode into a billion pieces if you're ever exposed to a vacuum, etc. Nobody would even consider that maybe it was actually true. But I have yet to find that reference again, so I don't know. So, listen up, anyone that knows:

    Set me straight!

    Somebody tell me the truth. I don't want to hear a bunch of people informing me how obvious it is that you would explode, or even die. I want evidence saying that either: "With the right training, a human can survive a vacuum;" or, "With any amount of training, it is not possible for a human to survive a vacuum even for a few seconds." I'm curious!!

    STOP THE PRESSES!!

    Here [google.com]'s a quote I just found (it's Google's cached copy, which loads much faster):

    6/ Could a human being survive exposure to a vacuum as Bowman is in 2001?

    In the short time Dave Bowman was in a vacuum, there is little chance that the water in his body could evaporate and the structural integrity of the human body is enough to prevent it exploding. In fact, there is more danger from freezing than of exploding eyeballs or the body losing all its moisture.

    Studies with chimps in the 1960's showed they could survive for up to two an a half minutes in a vacuum, substantially more than the ten seconds Bowman is subjected to in the film, which lead Clarke & Kubrick to add this plot device to the movie. The worst thing that could befall Bowman in such a situation, would be something like "the bends" although he would have been breathing a high oxygen environment before he exited the pod.

    Well that's certainly interesting!! I feel a little better now that that's resolved... (If anyone's got any links to actual hard numbers, I'd love to see'em tho. :)

  • It's time to stop irresponsibly dropping cash on space research and start focusing on Earth-based work

    but.... I likemy teflon pan.... and although I think that plastic is used stupidly (why give me something that is permanent for a use that is obviously temporary???) HDPE can be wonderful stuff! Hey, did I mention that my local electric company [enmax.com] just yesterday started offering solar power?

    But don't trust me, I'm just some geek in an over-air-conditioned room.... read what the ieee thinks [ieee.org] about the benefits we got, get and will continue to get from ye olde space programme

  • I own a Fisher Space pen and according to the literature in the pen case, the pen was vital to saving the mission. Supposedly one of the switches in the lander broke and the pen was used in its place.

    Maybe a pencil would have broken? Then again, if they had a screwdriver it probably would have worked too.
  • Bad. Think of how much money this is going to cost. Think of how many children could be educated with that money. Think how much medicine could be bought instead.

  • +5 funny? How about +5 flamebait. I'm from India and I find this extremely offensive. I'l have you know that a good majority of slashdot readers and for that matter a good portion of the DBA's in this country are from India and we are proud of it. You take the first positive Indian article on your capatalistic site and turn it into a bash forginers article. We happen to be proud of our country and you mock it with bendy straw jokes. You the poster, and you the moderators should be ashamed. How can you look in the mirror at night thinking you have done your country well merely by insulting another equally strong and independant culture. Just because we don't have MTV doesn't mean we're as poor and underpriviledges or as stupid as you make out. By the way Mr. "flame others for karma points", your calculations are grossly incorrect. And you think you're more intelligent than my people. Ha, Go watch southpark or the simpsons, you simpletonman!
    Lighten up, chief! You aren't the only Indian on /., and there are some of us here who found it funny.
    Maybe you should cut out the caffeine, man...
  • India: Don't eat other cows

    Better make that
    India: Don't eat other cows and humans
  • I, for one, am far more interested in lunar missions than Mars missions. Sure, Mars missions are more *sexy*, but what happened with regards to the Moon after Apollo? Nothing! It was all about getting there, not staying there.
    Establishing a base on the Moon is far more important than some one-shot effort to show the world that it's possible to go to Mars. Get the ISS working (if possible), then expand to the Moon and establish a PERMANENT base there. So I'm all for having more countries able to launch payload to the moon - the more ways to launch stuff the cheaper it is likely to be, which again means that it will sooner rather than later that we'll go back to the Moon - this time to stay...

    Just a thought: Who in their right mind would collaborate with NASA about putting stuff on Mars? (hehe)
  • Maybe one day you'll learn to put the percent sign after the number like the rest of us.
    That was the joke, you nitwit....
  • The book was "The Fountains of Paradise". He wrote about the building of the first space elevator.

  • Haiku (Score:1)

    by 575 ( 195442 )
    Advanced rocket tech
    What a firghening prospect...
    India has nukes
  • "'GNU' without using an acronym."
  • A slave-labour cartel

  • Ah, the Fisher Space Pen. $1 million white elephant, or...

    Last time I visited KSC, those suchers went for about $5 at the gift shop. How many do you suppose they've sold over the years?

    Having liven in Orlando, FL, and knowing firsthand how tourists'll buy damn near any little trinket...

    I wouldn't be at all supprised if thet sell 200,000 a YEAR, much less TOTAL.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • We never really even explored the moon. We have maps of it out the wazoo thanks to the fact that you can take a map-quality picture of it with a backyard telescope (albeit and expensive backyard telescope), but we've only been up there the one time

    One?

    Apollo 11 was our first manned landing, but it sure as shit wasn't our last.

    Besides this is "just" a probe, I beleve we have done that quite a bit (including the "manned probe" -- the Apollo 10 mission....)

    I know U.S. schools suck (witness my spelling), but maybe you should go rent HBO's "from the earth to the moon", the drama has been punched up a bit, and the stories compressed, but it's basically true, and entertaining.

    A pity India won't get as much spin-off tech, they could use it. Regretably most of the problems have been solved. At least there are still intresting moon questions to answer, I hope they try too rather then just going for the orbiting flag.

  • you know - some of the few racists i know in this world are the ones that go "hey - i have a friend who's black!"

    you just said it. - you know what you're problem is, you've given in to the P.C. view of life. You might think i'm a narrow minded individual because i posted the way i did. I think you're a narrow minded individual for exactly the opposite reasons. You will defend to the death freedom of speech - so long as you're in agreement with the speech. But it doesn't matter - when all is said and done, i don't see color or culture. I see an individual. - now...run along, there's a cause somewhere that's one protester short!

    "I don't agree with what you say, but i will defend to the death your right to say it!"
    -Voltaire


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • well DUHHHH... In zero gravity, there will be no force holding down the ink. That's why the commies used pencil, plus they can go back and rewrite history. But Americans, noooo, they want everything permanant on the record.

  • Massive funding? If anything NASA's UNDERfunded!!! (Score:4)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @08:56PM (#969399)

    Sure, NASA's budget may look massive by the standards of ONE INDIVIDUAL. But try comparing it to any of the MANY money pits the US dumps dollars into... and it's a (tiny) drop in the bucket.

    Compare it to the money dumped into social security every year (thanks HEAPS.. F-ing FDR)

    Compare it to the money dumped into national debt intrest every year (thanks HEAPS.. F-ing congress)

    Sorry, but If *I* were appointed "budget root" and tasked with cutting wasteful government fat, NASA'd be nowhere NEAR the top of the list. In fact, it'd prolly get a budget INCREASE, even AFTER a tax cut, AND a faster repayment schedule for the national debt.

    Want all of the gory details of where money is wasted? Go to:

    http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Re:It makes sense.... (Score:4)

    by A Big Gnu Thrush ( 12795 ) on Thursday June 29, 2000 @02:12AM (#969412)
    So are you saying that everything in the US is (was?) all well and good?

    From 1999 Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade Practices: [state.gov]

    India:

    Labor Force (millions) 420.0

    Unemployment Rate (pct)22.5

    So compared to the US, things are all well and good... and that goes for the 1960s as well as now.

    In the "new economy" India has an opportunity to cash in on the vast resource of mental power that their population provides, transforming the liability of overpopulation into the asset of a highly skilled work force.

    Building nukes may help a little, going to the moon may help a lot, but either way, they have a long way to go before misery and the assault on human dignity ends in India.

    And yes, that is even in comparison to the U.S., home of Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Simpson murders, and (the horror, the horror) Kiddieland in San Antonio, TX.

  • Percentage of gov't revenues from corporate income taxes have approximately halved since 1956 while revenues from individuals has remained constant.

    Good, corporate taxes should be abolished, as they are quite possibly one of the dumbest "features" of the US tax system. Corporate income taxes are only passed on to the consumer ultimately, and therefore disproportionately affect those with the lowest incomes. Not to mention their contribution to the double taxation on corporate dividends.
  • actually, using a more practical approach, india plans on stacking each member of the population on the others' shoulders untill they create a human tower...they should reach the moon with a stack of approximately .82 billion people - all with poor dental health

    how is this possible? how do they breath outside the earth's atmosphere? - simple. very long bendy straws.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Slightly different from NASA though.
    The space program has spun off quite a few benefits, including new polymers for surgical treatment. I do recall reading reports a couple of years ago (sorry, no data online) that at one medical conference, there were three major breakthroughs (locally again) in the treatment of cardiac problems. These were from the space program (material research in carbon fibres). This brought down the cost of treatment by about 20 -30%. That includes the cost of going to a developed country for treatment. The space program does contribute to Indian social needs, not just pride.
    And about the nuclear proliferation stuff, India needs nukes simply because its neighbours have them. Just apply the same arguments as for gun control on a far larger scale. (I don't agree with those either).

  • In Related News . . . (Score:3)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @05:40PM (#969422)
    That Crazy Rocket Guy [nwsource.com] decides that he must one-up India by altering his light plans. No longer will he launch himself thirty miles through the atmosphere (and back down), but he now plans to rocket himself clear to Uranus!

    Then again, who knows... Maybe there entire program consists of hiring the crazy rocket guy and blasting him to the moon. After all, the guy is crazy, and he's already had some training. It'd save the Indian project much money!
    ---
    seumas.com

  • You can take the upper stage of an MX missile, increase the size of the tanks and use its rather exquisite guidance system to achieve all sorts of interesting missions, including geostationary orbit, lunar landing (with a few hops left over) and an interplanetary flight. I worked out the basics of one mission (lunar landing/hops) while at E-Prime Aerospace [eprimeaerospace.com] back in late 1991.

    But all of this is moot. As long as pioneer stock Americans see governments as their ticket to the new frontier, the long-term prospects for all of terrestrial life, human and nonhuman, are going to continue rapidly deteriorating.

  • Really, what are they going to learn from an unmanned mission to the moon? All the really interesting stuff these days is around Mars, or the Space Station. Wouldn't India be better off just pooling their efforts with the US-led and funded International Space Station effort, or maybe collaborate with NASA to get some working gear out to mars?

    +---+

  • pens vs pencils (Score:3)

    by IronDragon ( 74186 ) on Thursday June 29, 2000 @02:33AM (#969430) Homepage
    pencil tips break. On earth, this isnt that big of a deal, but in space, these things could cause problems. Graphite dust or pencil tips getting sucked into the computers.. or facing the threat of getting a piece of it lodged in your eye or throat. <br>
    Admittedly, it may not be the most cost-effective thing in the world, but NASA doesnt like to take chances with its people.
  • not really. i tend to take it personally when someone calls me a biggot, be it on slashdot, or in real life.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • By "French" you mean "European"?

    Kinda - I'm not very well informed on this, but as far as I know the Ariane rockets were created, developped and funded by France, as an evolution from the first French rockets in the 60s. Nowadays Arians IV and V carry some other European nations flags, because some other nations are participating in the program, but ArianeEspace and the CNES are still French agencies, and still have a majority of French staff and the rockets are launched from French territory (and the countdown is in French too I think).

    So in regards to these elements I guess one could call it a "French" rocket.

    what rockets / market share are you speaking about?

    Market share in term of incomes from private companies for space launching (100% of the times it is satelites). ArianeEspace has over 50% of that market (last time I checked some hard numbers it was even over 70% !!).
  • I suppose this could have been predicted as early as last year. If I recall correctly, India has been pursuing a rocketry program, which most people have assumed was to launch those lovely nuclear bombs they've been testing. If they do this, then they get even better experience, without the international complaints.

    I would not be at all surprised to see Pakistan make a similar statement within the next year (Although I doubt their economy is in good enough shape to handle the strain of a serious space program)

  • >Have they fought an all-out war, or has it been >that kind of push-pull border conflict?
    I was under the impression that at least some of the conflicts with Pakistan were at the level of full wars. I don't remember any exact dates, durations and numbers (which would be interesting to know), but I am fairly sure that there have been some straight on toe-to-toe battles fought over control of the border and Kashmir.
    As for the Vietnam reference, the politcol will would definately be different. There are years of enimity built up between the two, dating from the partition- much different than the US (I had a history teacher that claims that the US faired the way it did in the war was because the army couldn't get hyped up about trying to kill Ho Chi Min, who looked "like an Asian Santa Claus"). However, my main point was that despite the inequity of numbers, the ability to slip guerilla forces into the other teams camp and launch attacks from within can be devastating. Combine that with the fact that the odds are good that Pakistan could count on the support of certain radical Islamic groups inside India (which isn't to say that there aren't plenty of radical Hindus and Sikhs to go around too), India could have a real mess on its hands.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • Wasn't Bruce Sterling in "Islands in the Net" who wrote about a Singaporean mission to space in a time when the superpowers have lost their faith in astronautics?
    __

  • It makes sense.... (Score:4)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @05:56PM (#969466) Homepage Journal
    It's history repeating itself. If you consider the political climate in India and the cold war they are caught in with Pakistan, the situation closely mirrors the one between the US and USSR in the late 60's. India has detonated it's first H-bomb in the past two years, and Pakistan still reserves the right to do the same. Both countries are scared of China, which is also engaged in an effort to build a nuclear arsenal. That region of the world is de-stabilizing. India needs to show they are technologically superior. Given the right incentive, you may see the Indian government get on board with this moon mission.

    We went to the moon for the very same reasons.

  • You aren't being paranoid enough.

    India announces rocketry plan for a moon mission, Western reaction: mmmmm, interesting, those backward people are finally getting into the space age.

    India announces non-descript rocketry plan, Western reaction: Hell no, it's gotta be all about nuclear weapons. Go with sanctions and all that other fun crap. Better get Pakistan too.

    So maybe the Indians are using this supposed moon mission, which is really just (score -1: redundant) to cloak their real agenda; nuke research?

    +---+

  • The Indians who migrate to Jamaica seaking employment ( mostly medical staff ) say they love there homeland and will even return home for aranged wedins. Most are brutaly honest and will tell both the good and the bad.

    Good: Indians are geting educated to high levles at a rapid rate.

    Bad: It's taking a long time to overcome a long history of large impoverished pesant populations.

  • Pakistan and India have fought eachother to a standstill before over borders and the like; the population difference hasn't really played in. Militarily, I'm not convinced that Pakistan is that much worse off than India. And India has do deal with much larger infrastructure and support issues than Pakistan, if only because of the geographical concerns. Pakistan has also been very effective at getting guerilla fighters across the border and behind the Indian lines. I seem to recall a certain small Southeast Asian nation throwing the US for a loop with similar capabilities. So the Pakistani threat doesn't start with nukes for India. Pakistan has also received a lot of military aid (including a lot from the United States during the cold war).

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

  • Re:It makes sense.... (Score:3)

    by Spasemunki ( 63473 ) on Thursday June 29, 2000 @03:48AM (#969505) Homepage
    China is very concerned about a rise in Islamic nationalism within its borders. The history of the treatment of the Hui and Uighers by the PRC is rife with examples of moves made soley for the purpose of keeping Islamically-inspired uprisings or protest movements from gaining ground. The recent policy in China has actually been one of appeasement towards the Muslim minorities in a lot of areas. Chinese Muslims are offered special consideration educationally (lower admissions scores for Hui and other ethnic Muslims to top universities), and in some cases special funds so that they can eat a halal diet (pork is the cheapest and most readily available meat in China). Right now, they're worried not so much about Pakistan, but about the Taliban and other ultra-conservative, ultra-nationalistic strains of Islam. In previous years, it was Iran that had them scared, but that has eased as Iran has moderated its stance a little (witness Pres. Khattami's recent visit to China, where he was invited to visit mosques in Beijing). Pakistan itself is being increasingly influenced by Taliban-like groups (interesting article here [nytimes.com]), which makes it an indirect threat, but less of a direct problem for China.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • Erm...perhaps I'm just ignorant (and that's usually the case), but aren't there a whole bunch of starving, poverty-stricken people in India? What makes more sense: spending millions (billions?) of dollars on kicking off a space program for no real reason other than peer pressure, or spending those same millions (billions?) on feeding the starving population of your damn country?

    You tell me.

    --

  • ISRO needs to talk to NASA (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @06:19PM (#969525) Homepage
    One of NASA's major criticisms is that the American taxpayers basically pay to do a lot of very interesting but socially useless things when the money could better be spent on helping social programs like welfare and Medicare (whether or not you agree is beyond this argument; the fact that it is a criticism is fairly well known). With ISRO this is even /more/ so. If you think you've seen poverty in the Western world, wait til you see poverty in India, and then realize that there's a lot more of it. India is overpopulated, under-industrialized, in a state of almost constant conflict in Kashmir with Pakistan, and reeling from a set of natural disasters. ISRO would be better off, like the article says, commercializing and, like what the article doesn't say, solicity foreign investment and support for their mission. Unfortunately, their main reason for doing this isn't scientific (which, honestly, a proposal to orbit the moon for several years could actually be quite beneficial to understanding how the moon changes over time), but rather, for Indian pride, just like the nuclear weapons detonations two years ago and just like nearly every other major public undertaking.

    A long time ago, the world learned that moon missions were like drinking after a bad day: they hid the problems, but they didn't fix them. We turned away from nuclear proliferation, wasteful manned missions, and 'just for the sake of doing it' public spending and instead focused on understanding and making our own world better. Maybe India needs to get over it's inferiority complex and utilize the vast social and economic resources it has squandered thus far, and think about doing things with the rest of the world that will benefit its people, not its image.
  • I see a couple of things wrong with some of the reasons they want to go to the moon

    First, one reason is to explore the possibility of water in the moon. Didn't NASA just send up the Lunar Prospector at a cost of $63 million, and it discovered water? Yes it did. See the story hereABC News:Theres water on the moon [go.com]

    Another suggested activity, the unexplained levitation of dust in the airless lunar environment. Can you say gravity? Micrometeors make it to the moons surface and spray up dust, and since there is less gravity they appear to float.

    One of their strong points is to show that they are on the cutting edge of technology. Is doing something that was done 30 years ago on the edge of technology?

    Lets get serious, if they want to prove cutting edge, why not join the effort for the International Space Station?NASA ISS Homepage [nasa.gov]

  • Is this reminding anyone of the game Civilization? I wonder who's going to get that space colony up and running first.

  • Re:Not a moon mission (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @06:47PM (#969544)
    Yes, that Mars probe that slinked off into the great inky depths certainly offered great ROI.

    If you believe that NASA's contribution to the bottom line of the government ledger is success or failure of it's constituent projects, we have a serious problem. NASA caused, both directly and indirectly, millions, possibly billions, of dollars worth of return from aerospace technologies. Technologies that can be found in most automobiles, in modern airplanes and jet fighters. Not only that, but it's scientific advance. Science has improved our quality of life, told us how the universe works and how to harness its energies. Geez.. to simply limit yourself to adding figures on the bottom of a ledger as the sum contribution of NASA is at best, a misinformed and limited view.

    Congress is about politics, not economics or technology. Comeon - you wouldn't let an auto mechanic work on your computer any more than he would let you, as a computer geek, work on his car. Give these people some credit - they're the best qualified people to give you an answer about how this is helping people.. without all the econo-political crap that comes out of congress on a daily basis.

  • Cheap, cheap, cheap (Score:3)

    by ajdavis ( 11891 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @06:52PM (#969547) Homepage
    This is where it's at, folks--cheap space travel. The article claims that the ISRO claims they can launch a moon-orbiter for Rs 350 crore (a crore is 100,000, so 350,000,000 rupees ~= $11 million), which is cheaper than I would have thought possible. Even guessing that they'll go over budget by a factor of three, it'll still be phenomenally efficient.

    Of course, the space sation is already five years overdue and over budget by a factor of something like ten, without being more than a quarter completed. But the situation with that was politically and technically quite different.

    Sure, the superpowers may say 'been there, done that', but one advance this mission might show us (as well as crazy rocket guy's mission) is how to do space travel cheaply and on short notice. If NASA could do missions this cheaply, they could just send up three at a time to boost their success rate. =)

    Reliable, cheap, turn-key space travel is what will bring the future here. Like computers: moving from ENIAC to the Vaio laptop.

  • You know, they used to think the Moon was made out of cheese...

    ...I wonder what they thought Uranus was made of? eeeeeeeeeew!

    [Moderators: My juvinile humor does not deserve positive moderation. Thanks.]
    ---
    seumas.com

  • How arrogant to assume that the US is the only company that can make advances in this field! How absolutely horridly arrogant. I, for one, applaud their efforts - for every dollar that was invested in NASA, economists have determined that we average about 6 dollars back in benefits from technology advances caused by NASA. What's to assume India won't experience the same boost from investing in aerospace? If they're smarter than us, they'll pour lots of cash into it and turbocharge their technology sector.
  • you know - it's just too bad, in this day and age, that if you're not "PC" then you're a flaming asshole!

    It seems the world, certainly america, is on the brink of going from one extreme: scathing racism, to another: intolerance for controversy. Your post has to be the most insightful one in this thread - it's just too bad you'll lose karma because you *defended* an un-PC viewpoint.

    oh well...i suppose if i'm not posting what other people want to hear, or at least expect to hear, then i shouldn't be surprised that posts like mine go from +5 to -1 Flamebait faster than a speeding bullet. LOL - i lost karma on the "oily penguin" story too. go figure.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • We learned rather alot from going to the moon.. and when we do finally get to mars and the second mission starts planning, will you be piping up with, "What did we learn from mars? Wouldn't it be better to have an international effort to explore another rock in space -- like Venus?"

    We never really even explored the moon. We have maps of it out the wazoo thanks to the fact that you can take a map-quality picture of it with a backyard telescope (albeit and expensive backyard telescope), but we've only been up there the one time. In fact, in all the time since we've never even bothered to leave a fairly shallow earth orbit. Here we are talking about going to mars (and don't get me wrong here, i wholeheartedly support anything that launches something at mars with at least a 60% chance of it not exploding) and yet we can get neither funding nor interest to go somewhere as close and potentially profitable as the moon.
    Dreamweaver

  • Aspiring superpower seeks prestige (Score:3)

    by idiot/savant ( 142956 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @07:24PM (#969570) Homepage

    Despite the valid scientific reasons for sending a probe, it's clear that the real reason they're interested is prestige. India is an aspiring superpower, locked in a 3-way local arms-race with Pakistan and China. Gearing up their space program is one way of showing superiority over the Pakistanis, and keeping up with the Chinese (who are preparing for a manned launch with their Shen Zhou capsule). The science and technological spinoffs are just cream.

    As for worries that this is just a cover for missile research, I think they're barking up the wrong tree. If the Indian PSLV can put a 1-ton satellite into 1000km polar orbit, it's perfectly capable of lobbing bombs at Washinton or Beijing. The reason the Indians aren't deploying it as an ICBM is almost certainly because they lack an adequete guidance system, not because they lack a decent booster. Throwing probes at the moon probably won't help the quest to get 500-meter accuracy with a warhead...

    Idiot/Savant

  • There is a lot of other crap governments do which would be much better scrapped instead of space programs. Pacticularly because it is quite easy to formulate statistics to show that NASA has actually made the US a lot of money. How much money do you think the DOD spent this year on the upkeep of nuclear weapons? How much on keeping thousands of minor drug offenders in jail and catching more? I'm sure there are many examples in India (including nukes).

    The fact is, this could be good for India simply by pushing along their technology. By showing they can do this, it will certainly help their commercial space operations. Of course it will also advance their military capabilities but that is another issue.

    The sad thing is that in the days of the international space station and numerous other collaborative efforts, India seems unable to cooperate with other nations. I guess they think the US would want concessions on their arms capabilities to help them with rocket tech - god forbid someone stops them making a mistake the US is still living with.

    I'd like to think that on day people will look back on all this stupidity and laugh, but it's not helping the Indian populace at all.

  • Re:Not a moon mission (Score:3)

    by suss ( 158993 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @07:43PM (#969582)
    How arrogant to assume that the US is the only company that can make advances in this field!

    The US is a company now? I must have missed that story on slashdot...

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