For my part, it isn’t what the US did, either.
As I understand it, before the Brits took it over India was the richest country in the world.
<chilly>And just what, precisely, is WRONG with being a Heinlein fan, **elucidator ** ?</chilly>
Thank you ex-president Clinton - this is but one reason you will go down in history as one of the worst (if not the worst) president in history.
If it’s so available how come it took Clinton to give the Chinese orbiting technology before they could construct a space program? Before this everything they sent up came crashing down.
(from the Straight Dope Message Board Archives, October 21, 1968)
The USA wants to send a man to the moon HAHAHAHA! And they can’t even handle the Viet-Cong. They cities are on fire, MLK and RFK get shot in practically the same month, their political convention in Chicago ends in a riot, they have a choice between LBJ’s lackey, Nixon, and George Wallace…and THEY want to go to the moon! WTF???
They are wasting their time, they have abject poverty in Appalachia, half their cities are combat zones, their campuses reek of tear gas, some of their adult citizens can’t vote without armed escorts…and they are going to plant their flag on the moon!!! WHAT A JOKE!!!
SHADDAP, you hippie freak!
That’s it, you’re going on my “Enemies List”.
And get a haircut!
Gordon Sinclair?
The whole point of the OP is that, news flash, it’s been done, and it ain’t that big of a deal to replicate it. Remember those big rooms of technology you’ve seen in old news reels of the day? I carry around more computing power in my briefcase. Sure, there would be technical challenges to face on sending people into space/to the moon today, but so what? It’s kinda like being the 20th guy to screw the easy chick in high school. Yeah, it’s good for a few giggles, but it’s nothing you brag about. When the US/Russia did it, it was on the cutting edge of technology. Now it’s old hat (although admittedly not a piece of cake).
And when we did it, there was nobody to look down their noses at us, as we were (and are) one of the most prosperous nations the world has ever known. When a significant number of people are living in filth and starving, it’s not the right time to go chasing after some pipe dream that is fairly certain not to pay off any real, tangible benefits to the citizens of your country.
[sub](I mean really, he was not the singlehanded Agent Of Evil In Our Time. And his Evil Masterminding was mostly frittered away at how to sneak new p|_|55y into the Oval Office 
) [sub]
Because getting certain key systems, that are better than what you’d get off 35-year-old blueprints, through The Ways of The Weasel, is quicker, easier, likelier to result in something PC-compatible, and likelier to give you something over which to blackmail your partner. Moon Programs being political power plays and all that. Anyway it’s not like they had stole/bought illicitly their whole dang program from the ground up…
…nor like there is a requirement anyone develop anything from jack scratch to begin with (hey, we did give asylum to Vom Braun & Co.) If you take a look at the Shenzhou spacecraft and launcher, it’s remarkably like a souped-up Soyuz (another 30-year-old basic design); there’s a lot of people selling stuff both above and under the table to the Chinese Aerospace sector.
Anyway their stuff “came crashing down” over the previous years about as consistently as US, Soviet and ESA stuff did during the early development years. We tend to forget how big a crapshoot it was to send something up in the early days – Vanguard, anyone? – and how freakin’ lucky both manned programs were. It IS, after all, rocket science.
I was about to get truly pissed off and unload on gobear, but Kimtsu did a better job of expressing pretty much exactly my feelings about India better than I ever could.
Actually Kimstu appears to agree with what gobear said except toning down the extent of impoverishment a tad bit.
There is nothing to be outraged on hearing the fact that India is an impoverished country. It is. Sure, if you live in the cities and are one of the middle or upper-middle class, your difficulties would be restricted to power cuts, telecommunication, traffic etc, but for a large percentage who live in rural areas, electricity and safe drinking water is hard to come by. Throw in the 300 million+ who struggle for a single meal and you do have a largely impoverished country.
As to the OP, it depends on the resources this thing will take. But, the race with China seems to be ill-advised and unnecessary.
Hey, Miltost, you can puff and get outraged but wehy? Inidia is a poor country, that’s just a plain fact. A large segment of the population lives without access to clean water or adequate food. Sure, there’s a burgeoning middle class, but the mass of people lead impoverished lives, and their government is more interested in twisting Pakistan’s nose than in ensuring a decent standard of living for its citizens.
Uh-oh, You literally clubbed me with MilTan.
My apologies.
Yeah, how foolish. They should start a war with Iraq instead.
Yes, and each of those citizens has a vote, and more of those citizens exercise it than in the US. If they feel their government is wasting resources, they can vote them out. Wonderful thing, democracy.
It’s not like India is investing massive resources in this. There’s already a large space program, with many satellites already launched. The resources are already in place, the only thing required was the decision to go forward with this.
Now excuse me, I’m going to get on my elephant and go to my job as a snake charmer. :rolleyes:
I always find it fascinating that the supposed “liberals” are always the first to drag up ugly racial sterotypes in a conversation where they have not been introduced.
Sc913, you’re a racist. India is a nifty place once you get out of the cities–ever been to Gujurat or Rajasthan? Didn’t think so. The “get on an elephant” comment is fucking bigoted. And Hazel-rah, I’m with you on the Bush -Iraq thing, but what the fuck does that have to do with this topic?
India is poor, and its resources can be used in better ways than in a moon mission whose sole purpose is to intimidate Pakistan. Does anyone dispute this?
Yes, I’ve been to both Gujarat and Rajasthan. Both of them have some cities which are doing quite well. I read about some ambitious modernisation plans for Jaipur recently, and Gujarat has a very healthy economy, though they’ve had the really terrible problems with religious violence recently. Like most of the rest of the country, both these states have some big problems in the rural areas. What does that have to do with anything?
Do you understand the difference between local, state and national governments? The problems faced by Gujarat and Rajasthan are for the local and state governments to solve. That’s what they’re there for. If needed, they can get resources from the central government. The space project is a national project. Prove that resources have been diverted from any vital, rural development projects into the space program. Got any cites showing this?
India is not North Korea, which spends 31% of its GDP on defence while the nation starves. Like I said, there’s already a huge space program. The resources spent on this will be a very small fraction of the GDP. The space program already generates money for the country by launching satellites for other countries. A moon mission would increase international exposure for the space program, resulting in more customers for satellite launches.
My elephant remark was directed to people like the OP, because this thread really pissed me off. In retrospect, it was a stupid thing to say, and I apologise. It’s just that threads like this about my country make me as angry as the regular “Ignorant Americans” threads seem to make you (judging by your posts in those threads).
Then I had better go stand in the bread line with most of the rest of my country, now, hadn’t I?
After all, black market razors are only getting more expensive ever since the US government decided to produce more tanks to counter the Warsaw Pact.
But look on the bright side, Joe: We have the freefall endurance record!
Uh, oh … I go mine salt now …