India Plans Moon Mission by 2008

LPetrazickis writes "According to the Tribune, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has announced today that India will send a spacecraft to the moon by 2008. The Chandrayaan-I mission will showcase Indian achievements in science and technology to the world. Both European and Canadian Space Agencies have shown interest in the mission. SifyNews reports that 2008 was initially mispronounced as 1908. Today is the 56th anniversary of India's independence." Previous talk about this has come from the Indian space agency; this announcement from the Prime Minister seems to have more weight.

Why do individual nations do this?

[John Seminal]

Wouldn't it be better to have a multi-national space station or deep space exploration? If every nation spends the money just to get a ship into space, and see what we already know, then what did we get out of it? I think it would be more productive to pool the resources of many nations and build something that one nation alone could not.

More power to them...

[mpthompson]

I wish India the best of luck in reaching the moon with an unmanned vehicle in 2008. Very ambitious.

With more countries demonstrating prowess in space technology, perhaps it will finally motivate the U.S. to get off our asses, reinvigorate our space ambitions and do something more meaningful than driving a bus three times a year into low Earth orbit to a bloated and finicky station that doesn't seem to be doing much more than Skylab did 30 years ago.

I must be in a grumpy mood...

I'm looking forward to this

[tomakaan]

A little bit of added competition in the space arena is exactly what is needed. The more countries that put their space programs on the map, the more pressure there is for the larger space programs to stay on top of things.

I think this could be a very good thing for even more expansion in space.

And even if the pressure isn't put in other programs, it's still an increase in the space research being done.

Moon competition will be a good thing

[KingRob]

I think it's a good thing that countries like India and China have their sights set at the moon.
The sooner we start mining the He3 [nasa.gov] up there, the better.
For the whole planet's sake, we've gotta start colonising the moon.

386 crores

[RidRash]

that is 96.5 million dollars (assuming 1 dollar is 40 rupees). "Titanic" - movie cost more than twice as much. Lets hope that this does better than the titanic. 1 crore = 100 lakhs. 10 lakhs = 1 million.

Re:India and China are in competion for this

[Anonymous Coward]

"India and China will both make new scientific discoveries"

How will they make new discoveries when this was accomplished over 30 years ago?

Re:More power to them...

[Tablizer]

Sorry, that particular meme is not compatible with reality. Recent events should have been an indicator that our society has challanges that preclude dreams of travelling to space.

The technology is just not ready for useful human space trips. Until we move up from chemical fuels, human space flight is a waste. I would rather see the money spent on unmanned space probes and telescopes.

Re:India that far in technology?

[arunarunarun]

Firstly, what the article mentions is "an indigenously prepared cryogenic rocket". It's the launch vehicle that's a first, not the satellite.

Secondly, India plans to launch "an unmanned mission to the Moon".

RTFA

Besides, the USA will have a hard time getting manned space missions up, given predictable knee-jerk reactions to the Columbia incident. This kind of thing is definitely a bad for any country. We'll just have to see how the space programmmes proceed over the next decade.

Nukes stop war

[zihamesh]

Iraq - no nukes - gets invaded - lots of dead people on both sides. (and counting). N Korea has nukes - no sign of it getting invaded - nobody has died.

Re:Not too bright..

[arunarunarun]

So tell me Einstein, what precisely would they do with the money instead? Airdrop it for everybody? Well, it would be a bit painful if they use coins, but hey, I'll endure anything if it means more money.

The slated budget, Rs. 300 crores, works out to 3 billion rupees. Given a population of 1 billion people, that's 3 rupees per person. That's a lot of people who're gonna get terribly rich.

Of course, there's income tax at 33%, so that leaves 2 rupees. Gives a whole new meaning to taxation at source, huh? And then the obligatory bribe. Lets peg that at a modest 50%. That leaves us with 1 rupee per person.

Yippee! Show me the money!

BTW, the current rate of exchange is about 45 rupees to the dollar.

Re:Maybe india should worry more about planet eart

[CausticWindow]

If you would look at the percentages, you would see a different picture.

1. 35% of the population of the US is illiterate
2. 50 million Americans (25%) live under the Indian poverty line (with 5% under the American).
3. Infant mortality is just 10/100, but cholesterol related deaths involving teenagers, pull the average lifetime way below that of the Indians.
4. annual government revenue last year was $1.946 trillion while spending was $2.520 trillion. A net deficit of $574 billions, financed by high interest loans. The deficit amounts to roughly 2 billion per million American, while the Indian deficit amounts to less than a $100 per inhabitant.

This ought to bolster NASA's plans to go to Mars.

[fleppir]

Mabey this will give NASA som clout to go to Congress with an aggressive plan to conquer the Red Planet before the 2nd tier space nations go where USA has gone before.

This will also be interresting in terms of the tech spinoffs. Remember, the tech had to be INVENTED for the 1969 moon flight. What is possible with todays tech and how will this expand our understanding of the application of todays 'best tech'?