India Moves To Put Its First Man In Space By 2016

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from the International Business Times: "India plans to launch its first manned space mission in 2016, moving to become the fourth nation to put a man in space. Space scientists and senior officials of the state-run ISRO are preparing a pre-project report to build the infrastructure and facilities for the mission, estimated to cost a $2.76 billion. 'We are planning a human space flight in 2016, with two astronauts who will spend seven days in the Earth's lower orbit,' Radhakrishnan told reporters at ISRO headquarters in Bangalore. In September, India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite discovered water on the moon, boosting India's credibility among established space-faring nations"

Re:First call center in space scheduled for 2021

[Anonymous Coward]

While in geo-synchronise orbit over every major continent, call center employees will be available to answer your computer questions both day and night.

Ha ha. Let's make fun of the Indians and run through the usual 'call center' jokes because nobody has ever though of that before, huh?

This announcement comes on the same day that it has emerged that the US administration has no intention of going to the moon, in a time when the US national debt clock has needed an extra digit added to it, when the US is still recovering from the diplomatic and geo-political catastrophe what was the Bush years, and all you can do is crack jokes about Indians because they have started turning a hugely populated and impoverished country around using the latest opportunities afforded to them by technology. Hmmm.

Enjoy your inflated sense of superiority while it lasts, because it isn't gonna as long as people like you sit back on the Apollo moon landing's laurels and fiddle while Rome burns. The developing world is emerging onto the world stage. The EU is already the world's biggest economy. China and India have poverty on the run and are making in-roads into LEO. What's the USA doing? Still putting out fires in Mesopotamia, trying to catch up to the rest of the industrialized world in figuring out how to treat people when they're sick, and figuring out how to stop consuming a quarter of the world's resources.

Yup, you go right on cracking your jokes. Ha fucking ha. You won't be laughing so loud when you see the red flag of China over the Sea of Tranquility.

Not to rain on your party or anything, but the instrument that found evidence of water on the moon was designed and built by NASA.

Juggernauts . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"The word is derived from the Sanskrit Jaganntha[1] (meaning "Lord of the Universe") which is one of the many names of Krishna from the ancient Vedic scriptures of India." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut [wikipedia.org]

Seems like a perfect fit to me.

In other news, Greece has reconfirmed its plans to send men into space, choosing to call them Argonauts. However, critics cite that their plans are "a few thousand years" behind schedule, and technical experts are skeptical of the viability of sheep skin space suits.

Re:Rather a sad, sad contrast...

[BJ_Covert_Action]

You know, I have seen the American Third Position touted around slashdot a couple of times now so I looked into it because, from the way it has been discussed, it seemed like a reasonable, rational new political movement to make a grab at ousting the powers that be. So I clicked onto the A3P website, looked through some of their policies, and found this, regarding immigration:

To safeguard our identity and culture, and to maintain the very existence of our nation, we will immediately put an indefinite moratorium on all immigration......To restore, with civility, the identity and culture of our homeland, we will provide incentives for recent, legal immigrants to return to their respective lands.

Emphasis mine. So, while I may agree with the A3P position regarding space and fiscal responsibility, it appears that this party wants to take an isolationist attitude regarding the American culture. Never mind the fact that some of the greatest minds in America were immigrants. Nevermind the fact that Werner Von Braun was a German born rocket scientist, turned American immigrant, turned leader of the Saturn V program that got our boys to the moon. Never mind the fact that jazz, one of our greatest cultural movements in America, was started by immigrants. Nevermind the fact that Einstein, one of the best known scientists in the world, that contributed significantly to our nuclear supremacy was also a foreign born immigrant. Nevermind all those pesky historical facts that show, time and again, that legal immigration both enriches and strengthens America as a nation. Nah, forget all that, A3P is going to put a ban on ALL immigration. What's more? They are going to start paying legal immigrants to return to their own country. Goodbye knowledgeable Indian, Japanese, and Chinese scientists, programmers, engineers, and technicians. Goodbye Mexican immigrants that provide California with one of its most delicious and plentiful types of food. In fact, goodbye all non-native American people as you, in fact, have descended from immigrants yourself. We real Americans don't need you here.....

Oh wait...

So no, sorry, I am not going to give any credence to a political party that proudly declares white nationalism as one of its creeds and mission goals. The hypocrisy evident in the quote above with regards to immigration and the historical contribution immigrants have made to American technical progress is as thick as it is nauseating. Take your political astroturfing somewhere. I, for one, would rather spend my vote writing in a candidate with absolutely no chance at election (and thus adding one more vote to the count that reduces a possible majority of ANY party) than support that kind of bullshit that A3P is peddling.

Re:Ignorant American culture

[oatworm]

When looking at the growth rates of developing countries, please keep in mind the raw numbers we're talking about here. For example, in an economy with a GDP of, say, $1 billion, a $100 million project would grow the economy by 10%, while the same project would only grow an economy with a GDP of $10 billion by 1%. A $100 million gain in a $1 billion economy isn't magically more valuable than a $200 million gain in a $10 billion economy because a 10% gain is bigger than a 2% gain, nor does that gain get the smaller economy any closer to the value of the larger economy. To help illustrate this, using 2008 GDP figures [wikipedia.org], India's 7.3% gain in 2008 corresponds to a roughly $880 million gain in their economy. By comparison, the same $880 million gain would only account for a 0.6% gain in the US economy, which isn't that far off from the 0.4% gain that the US actually reported in 2008.

Percentage gains in GDP are certainly important, of course, and are very helpful when talking about economies of similar sizes. However, when one economy is over an order of magnitude bigger than another economy (the US' economy is more than 10x larger than the Indian economy, even with the latest economic contractions), the percentages really don't tell the whole story. In terms of nominal dollar amounts, emerging economies aren't really growing that much faster than the US.

Last but not least, I'll point out that claiming that all Americans are ignorant is just as stale and tasteless as claiming that all Indians work at call centers or convenience stores. Just because some non-Americans have some exposure to some of the ignorant politicians and entertainers in the US, they have extrapolated it into this whole stereotype for an entire hemisphere. I guess that's just ignorance.

Re:First call center in space scheduled for 2021

[praSAD2407]

That said, I'd like to point out that the ONLY reason China and India have anything like a real economy at this point is that US (and to some degree EU) consumers went into heavy debt to buy all those US-branded, Indian/Chinese-made toys, electronics, textiles, etc. Should the US and/or Europe decide that unfettered globalization is not in its best interest after all (already happening), both China and India would be cut off from by far the largest market in the world (US=14 trillion, China=4 trillion)

What you say might be true for China, but Indian economy is mainly driven by internal consumption. It is not an export driven economy.(India is a net importer).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India#External_trade_and_investment [wikipedia.org]
India's economy is mostly dependent on its large internal market with external trade accounting for just 20% of the country's GDP. In 2008, India accounted for 1.45% of global merchandise trade and 2.8% of global commercial services export

So US/EU stopping trade with India wouldn't be catastrophic for the Indian economy.

Re:Ignorant American culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be pedantic, but 7.3 percent of 1.2 trillion is not 880 million. Instead it would be around $80 billion. Another thing for you to know about is the power of compounding. An far smaller economy consistently growing at 7-8% annually will overtake a far bigger economy growing at 2% in long run .. so go figure out.

Re:Ignorant American culture

[bloodhawk]

your maths is horrendeous. 7% of 1.2 trillion is NOT 880 million, it is about 88 BILLION. secondly percentages tell EXACTLY the right story here where as raw numbers do not, they tell us how fast and by how much the economy is growing which when it comes to where you want to invest is usually far far more important than the overall size of the economy.