OUR NEW WORLD
India’s star rising
The recent announcement - mentioned in a previous blog (Dec. 16/13) - that India
has successfully launched a probe to Mars was covered in a detailed segment on
WNED Buffalo TV PBS news this Saturday evening.
The notable points:
1. India has had a space program for almost half a century,
building and launching India made rockets and state of the art weather,
communication (and military) satellites for decades.
2. India’s space program budget is a mere $1 billion dollars US and
represents less than 1/3 of one percent of the country's total budget.
3. The probe to Mars mission cost a mere $72 million dollars US and
this is a small fraction of what similar probes cost in the West.
4. The probe to Mars is a purely scientific exploration activity and it
is hoped the new technologies and skills used in the mission will benefit Indian
scientific and technological industries in general.
5. India has first class engineers and scientists and is adding
thousands more to their numbers through its extensive university programs.
6. The mission has been a great source of national pride and raised India’s
prestige and technological reputation throughout the Far East, Asia and beyond.
7. India’s space exploits put it on par with neighbouring China --
as the two competitors rise to become world leaders in space and modern
technology.
So, with the Russian and American space programs in decline due to
budget cuts, with the two superpowers relying on ‘past laurels’, the real
future of space exploration seems to be in India and China's courts -- with
their far lower costs for the production of rockets and space technology, and their
determination to be the number one nation on the planet: not only in population
but in technology and scientific progress.
Put simply, the East is rising while Russia, Europe and the USA are treading
water.
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