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Why America Needs India’s Rockets

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Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#71

Post by dingo_bat »

perfectstorm wrote: post #46
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISRO salaries straight from glassdoor: Scientist/Engineer ₹802,100 Scientist/Engineer ₹798,473 So, 800k rupee is about $12,000 USD. NASA's avg engineer salary is 10x that. edit: NASA employees also get generous government benefits like pensions and such. Federal employee benefits are the envy of the nation. Not sure why you people are arguing against basic facts here. Salaries, cost of living, etc are a fraction in I…

the cost of living is much lower in India. $12,000 is a good chunk of money if you live in India.

Actually, $12k (INR 800k) is a good salary in Bangalore (ISRO's main office), but only for an entry level position. If you are in your 30s, you would need at least double this to live nicely. This is quite less compared to the salaries of people working in multinationals in Bangalore.

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#72

Post by fdsaaf »

Use IRSO and we all lose. India's government is subsidizing these rockets. SpaceX, on the other hand, is developing technology that really makes space travel cheaper. Only the latter will move us forward in the long term.

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#73

Post by Florin_Andrei »

madmax108 wrote: post #17

Multiple friends who moved to the USA for their higher education (MS/PhD) in fields such as Aerospace Engg complain about the very tight regulations in the field. For many people, even being top of the class means coming back home, because companies like Boeing/ SpaceX etc have very tight US citizens only rules imposed on them. This is almost completely opposite to the Comp Sci. graduates who assimilate almost immedi…

> Why is there so much country-based regulation in these fields?

Because same rocket technology could be used to either put a robot on the Moon, or a nuke in someone's backyard on another continent.

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#74

Post by zeusk »

bzbarsky wrote: post #67
actuator wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know on what you are basing the destabilization threat on. India has a no first usage policy on nuclear weapons [1] and has shown no intent of using the weapons. Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...

> Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. That's a bit of rewriting of history right there. I suppose you will claim that India's involvement in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Dadra_and_Nagar_... was simply connivance and instigation by the government, not active participation by the Indian military? But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India wa…

So, would you count the civil wars and the war of independance as wars in which USA was the first aggressor? Oh nvm, that won't make a dent to the size of that list.

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#75

Post by Animats »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #31
phkahler wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> This is because any mature rocket technology can trivially be adjusted to be a nuclear weapons delivery platform. There is also the issue of maintaining the capability domestically. If someone else is too cheap it would destroy the local capability. Imagine the US losing the ability to launch it's own satellites - like it lost the ability to launch people. That said, there needs to be a way to make domestic launch…

> like it lost the ability to launch people. The US has not remotely lost the ability to launch people in the context you're suggesting (lost knowledge, lost budget, lost political will). Its literally between launch systems. No knowledge or budget has been lost. On top of it, its doing what no other nation seems able to do, spark a space race between corporations with their own goals and cost-cutting measures. That'…

The US has not remotely lost the ability to launch people in the context you're suggesting (lost knowledge, lost budget, lost political will). Its literally between launch systems.

NASA has failed at how many launch system projects since the Space Shuttle?

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#76

Post by kchoudhu »

danielweber wrote: post #37
aq3cn wrote: post #5

As much I know ISRO has less failure rate and they get the job with little budget in comparison to NASA or any other space agencies. This alone is the reason, one might be tempted to use Indian technology. > India's Mars mission, with a budget of $73 million, is far cheaper than comparable missions including NASA's $671 million Maven satellite that is expected to set off for Mars later in November. Source: http://www…

MOM and MAVEN were just about simultaneous (arriving at Mars two days apart), but they weren't comparable. MOM's primary mission objectives were things like "navigation." MAVEN would be NASA's 3rd orbiter at the time, to say nothing of the 4 or so previous orbiters, and so they weren't trying to just repeat earlier things. Now, if you compare launch costs, you get a better feel for the differences. Those were about $…

The difference being, of course, that the Falcon 9 Full Thrust hasn't actually left Earth orbit yet.

Mark to market applies as much to space technology as it does to credit default swaps.

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#77

Post by ChuckMcM »

pm90 wrote: post #2

On the one hand, its rather interesting to see the US, champion of free and open markets, enforce a policy so against that very principle. If I'm not mistaken, not only is US policy meant to assist the private space industry in the US, but to also avoid indirectly assisting the Indian missile/ballistic missile program. Although in India's defense the agency that develops/manages/deploys satellites (ISRO) is separate…

The discussion here is a good look at some of the complexity. I disagreed with some of the innuendo of the article but basically the notion of helping fund external space capability is complex. The goal of the Regan administration appeared to be to enable commerce with countries that already had a certain level of technology without risking destabilizing their own industry.

So imagine that what you're trying to achieve is this:

Allow companies that want to use rockets for their business purposes to buy capacity from other countries when your local capacity is maxed out, but don't take money off the table of your local capacity which is using that revenue to drive development and research. That is what the treaty was all about, can you imagine what would happen if the Chinese (for example) subsidized rocket launches for third parties like they have solar cells, or rare earth materials? Nobody would pay full price for launches locally, there would be no local business, and local rocket companies would shut down. (We've already seen this in other businesses) Now China decides to no longer sell those services or raise the price astronomically? (remember they did that with rare earth materials?) Now you are in a really tight situation. The whole RD-180 engine issue is exactly this problem.

Challenging indeed. So India could "fix" this by signing on to the treaty and agreeing to the restrictions. They choose not to it seems (I have no idea why) and so they are excluded. Is that a US policy failure or an India policy failure?

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#78

Post by bzbarsky »

zeusk wrote: post #74
bzbarsky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. That's a bit of rewriting of history right there. I suppose you will claim that India's involvement in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Dadra_and_Nagar_... was simply connivance and instigation by the government, not active participation by the Indian military? But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India wa…

So, would you count the civil wars and the war of independance as wars in which USA was the first aggressor? Oh nvm, that won't make a dent to the size of that list.

> would you count the civil wars and the war of independance as wars in which USA was the first aggressor?

Civil wars are hard to classify in terms of "who is the aggressor", but none of my examples were civil wars.

The American Revolution can plausibly be argued to be a US aggression, but it doesn't really match any of my examples either.

Of course I would never make the totally daft claim that the US was never the aggressor in a military action, since that claim is quite obviously and demonstrably false.

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#79

Post by bzbarsky »

AkshayGenius wrote: post #69
bzbarsky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. That's a bit of rewriting of history right there. I suppose you will claim that India's involvement in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Dadra_and_Nagar_... was simply connivance and instigation by the government, not active participation by the Indian military? But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India wa…

How can you possibly compare the Indian armed action to regain occupied territory and her sovereignty back from the Portuguese to anything else? It was the only time India had to resort to military action, and it was shortly after her independence.

> How can you possibly compare the Indian armed action to regain occupied territory and her sovereignty back from the Portuguese to anything else?

Quite easily. The claim was that India was never the aggressor, not that all the aggressions were justified by some extenuating circumstance or national interest or whatnot. The "never the aggressor" claim clearly doesn't hold for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India. I'm not saying that India shouldn't have done it, note, just that India has in fact used military aggression when it felt its national interests warrant it, which is perfectly normal for nation-states.

We can have a long discussion about whether we expect such situations, where national interests are judged to warrant military aggression, to arise in the future. But that's a discussion that should be had, not dismissed by appealing to untrue claims about history.

> It was the only time India had to resort to military action

Did you stop reading halfway though my comment?

Seriously, I think India has done a quite good job, as nation-states go, at not attacking its neighbors. But claiming things like "it was the only time India had to resort to military action" just doesn't look like it's supported by the facts to me. "One of the few times", yes.

Re: Why America Needs India’s Rockets

#80

Post by rajathagasthya »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #39
rajathagasthya wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By assisting India you're paying for their ICBM development India is now part of MCTR (Missile Control Technology Regime) that limits ICBM development. So that's no longer a valid concern. Also, India has done well without the assistance of the US in space technology and will continue to do so. So if the US doesn't want to assist in technology, it's not going to be a show stopper for India. It will continue to eat…

> India is now part of MCTR (Missile Control Technology Regime) that limits ICBM development. So that's no longer a valid concern. That's regime sounds like a great intent, but the simple fact is that taking a satellite launching rocket, replacing the satellite with a nuke, and aiming it back at the ground somewhere is trivial.

But India has already done that. They're not at a nascent stage that they need help, they already have a fully functional nuclear program with working ICMBs.
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