Indians ... iiiinnn ... spaaaaace!

[unixronin]

India has become the newest player in space beyond Earth orbit.  The Indian designed and built Chandrayaan-1 successfully launched today carrying 11 scientific payloads, destined for Lunar orbit.  India's future plans include launching Chandrayaan-2 by 2012 to land an automated rover on the Moon, launching a manned mission by 2015, and a manned Moon mission by 2020.

Do I hear any bets India has astronauts on the Moon before the US makes it back there?

Comments

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

I don't take sucker bets. The cafeteria at Moonbase 1 will be serving either Indian or Chinese food.

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

considering that NASA is still stuck reverse-engineering the Saturn-V rockets, trying to recover the design knowledge it *DESTROYED* when they adopted the Space Shuttle and decided to be glorified LEO bus drivers....

no bets.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I remember reading something very interesting a couple of years ago about having to reverse-engineer the design of the Rocketdyne F1 to figure out what made it work, because nobody knew any more...

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

interesting. Mind you, it's only hearsay (though believable for NASA), that the Space Shuttle people actually shredded/destroyed the plans for the prior rocketry programs after becoming the primary space venture for NASA...so we're now trying to re-engineer everything we had 50 years ago.

Maybe there's backups on a 9-track reel-to-reel somewhere, if anyone still has a tape drive to read it...

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

Sucker bet.

Back in around 1978-1979, an Indian programmer I was working with at the Directorate of Statistics in Bahrain told me that "In 25 years India will be the world center for programmers. We will have hundreds of software houses operating out of tax-free zones in places like Bombay and Bangalore. We have the people. We work for less than you overpaid Europeans and Americans. Economic necessity will send the business to us." He was almost right, there aren't hundreds of back street COBOL programming shops, but they've got the tech support and customer service business sewn up.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Can you say "Firefly Universe"? Sure you can.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

I declare this post title WINS

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't bet on NASA, but if someone figures out a way it is profitable to go there, I'll bet on an American company making it first.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Not impossible, but going from manned sub-orbital flights and orbiting unmanned instrument packages to a manned moon landing and return is a pretty big project, and making it profitable in business terms is a big "if".

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

It is too depressing to bet. This is one of the issues that I really care about in politics. I remember the Apollo moon missions. All of them. Given the economic voodoo going on right now, I doubt the Orion missions will make it by 2014, the current target date. It slipped from 2012 late last year. The original Orion project was canceled. That makes me very nervous about the current project of the same name. I try not to think about our space program anymore.