India's workhorse rocket fails for the first time in decades
theverge.com
theverge.com
The response to those arguments, at least here, is simple enough. There are currently about 7000 jobs in the Scottish space industry and in the last two years Glasgow has built more satellites than any other city in Europe. Yet, we have to go to another country to get these satellites launched!
And I suppose the choice of phrase, "space industry", is what makes the difference. It can seem reasonable to say, "this country shouldn't have a space program" but it sounds far less defensible to argue, "this country shouldn't have a space industry".
And so with India. This particular launch was for the Indian government, but the article mentions the previous record-breaking launch of 104 satellites at once. Of those, 88 were for a company called Planet, "a US private imaging company". And the others were commercial launches for various other countries.
Since the space industry is rapidly growing with huge commercial potential, it seems ludicrous to argue that you shouldn't be developing it. It would be like someone 20 years ago arguing that you shouldn't be developing Internet connections when you had poverty issues to deal with. How exactly will avoiding hi-tech industry help that in any way?
The Russians launch into GEO from Baikonur, for example, which requires at least a 51.6 degree inclination. The latitude of a Scottish spaceport would be a bit higher, but not enormously so.
For a less extreme example, there are lots of launches into GEO from Kennedy Space Center, which is at a latitude of 28.5 degrees.
The same rocket will be able to put more payload into GEO if launched from a lower latitude, but that doesn't make high latitudes impractical.
> In 1970, a Zambia-based nun named Sister Mary Jucunda wrote to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, then-associate director of science at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in response to his ongoing research into a piloted mission to Mars. Specifically, she asked how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on such a project at a time when so many children were starving on Earth.
The letter is well worth the read: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html
Hopefully they will find the root cause and get it fixed before serious delays to the Indus lunar rover launch are caused.
With the headline "rocket fails" i was expecting an exploding rocket.
Or is India somehow special?
I despair of reasoning with such people. With attitudes like that, we would never have left the rift valley, the trees, the ocean, or the deep-ocean thermal vents.
So, screw that. Life can both evolve and be imperfect. There's no contradiction between having our feet in the gutters and our heads in the stars: we've basically been like that for as long as we've had feet and heads. And if you're bothered by the "feet in the gutters" (as I am), it's historically and philosophically bankrupt to suggest that the way to solve the problem with the gutters is to get our heads out of the stars. That doesn't work.
I've lived in India, and having had friends in and around ISRO, have gotten into conversations with low-caste rickshaw-wallahs about the space program. They fucking LOVE it. It is a huge symbol of hope and pride for them -- a reminder that given the opportunity, they are capable of anything. (The designer of India's successful Mars mission was a Dalit).
Of course when this anti-space attitude is espoused particularly by white people with respect to brown people, it's not only philosophically bankrupt, but racist. Double plus screw that.
I am asked questions upfront about rape culture. Nevermind the fact that these stories being in news and media emphasis that they are not the norm.
Also, I squarely understand that poor people in western countries hate India. They take solace in knowing that some people in the world are worse off then them. Successful Chinese are labelled as syndicates. Singapore means chewing gums not allowed.
I would say that India does have a rape culture, especially in North India. Except for a few small affluent areas in Delhi and Gurugram, women can't venture out safely.
giving the money directly to the poor is like giving a starving person a fish, having a space agency is teaching your people to make tofu.
It's probably not the single most effective measure against poverty, but it doesn't seem like the worst thing to do either.
The cultural progress in India is very complex, it is nothing like the newly built USA - its histories and personal cultures are old and deeply entrenched - and it is nothing like the Europe that, in many ways, fucked it up with Empire. But we are seeing progress.
It is interesting to find that India is largely western sympathetic, and it is highly beneficial to westerners that it is. We put the geo-politics in western favour by ensuring they have nuclear weapons and advanced science programs, and we try and strengthen the nation and resolve the societal issues with aid money.
I'm not saying India doesn't have massive corruption, and I'm not saying the aid and incentives are definitely applied in the right way, but I am saying that calling out aid as incompatible with nukes and spaceflight highlights an ignorance of what goes on in India and the surrounding nations - and its impact on the west.
one could argue that the entire basis for 'european culture' is empire; for better or worse - and as a simple observation.
I mean, you could say this about literally anywhere. No space programs allowed until everything is perfect!
I could debate you on everything but I will take you up on this.
India has repeatedly requested UK not to donate any money for the last few years http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9061844...
Most of the Western money anyway goes into "Christian Missionaries" in remote tribal areas.
India also donates more money than it receives. http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2017/mar/22/emerging-...
Posting like this will get your main account banned too, so please don't do it again.
Them damn Indians and their shoddy engineering is certainly to blame. It's just stereotyping/racism. Flagging/downvoting would be appropriate here.
Odd. When SpaceX loses a rocket, do you write that off as American technical deficiency as well?
Eventually tho' SpaceX will be as constrained by demands for quarterly earnings figures to start making bad, short-term decisions, just the same as most Western corporations.
But that is unusual and your overall point still stands. Orbital rockets are inherently difficult and failures are to be expected.