Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 297 posts

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#71

Post by coldtea »

nafey wrote: post #15
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We’re different groups of people with different interests, different values, different ideas principles cultures histories views of the world. It’s good for us to be competing to explore space (and in trying to develop technological advantages in general). For countries like India it’s critical to develop their own technologies on this front. Otherwise they’ll remain eternally dependent on America, etc., for acce…

Well let's revisit this statement in 500 years. Every decade has brought the world closer. Even the recent developments (brexit, trump) are reactions to increased pace of integration. You can find kfc, coca cola in socities as diverse as Mongolia and Madagascar. It will be extremely difficult to turn the clock back on this and this will only keep on intensifying in my opinion.

>Every decade has brought the world closer.

Well,

(1) there are more sovereign nations now than ever,

(2) all the big empires (from Babylonian, to Alexander's, to Roman, to Byzantium, to Persian, to Incas, all the way to the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, British and French colonial empires, USSR, and more) -aside from the Chinese and Indian who are more homogenous racially/culturally - have collapsed

(3) there is way more infighting that on any time in the previous 40 years

(4) nations that were held together for half a century as a single country have nonetheless split at the first chance, often under fierce wars (e.g. Yugoslavia), and even centuries old countries like Canada, Belgium, UK, Spain, etc, still have infighting, and even votes to break up...

(5) a worsening of climate change and economy will more than likely see every-nation-for-itself than some unity, even if there's a coordinated effort to reduce emissions and so on, there will also be huge pressure to ascertain certain resources, safety, etc at a country by country level (sharing is only good for those that need it. For those that have the power to avoid it, or even grab from others, it just gives you moral points)

>You can find kfc, coca cola in societies as diverse as Mongolia and Madagascar.

Yeah, that's a huge cultural (and dietary) destruction...

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#72

Post by hos234 »

dragonsh wrote: post #7

It's a good effort by ISRO and it's scientist. Just can't understand why so many countries reinventing the wheels. Space missions should be multi-country efforts continuously as it belongs to all. We should not extend our tribal nationalistic thinking to space. Best scientist can be in any nation and more diverse the group and experience the better chances of success. I know I am just dreaming, but hopefully we can c…

Things are moving in that direction - https://www.globalspaceexploration.org/wordpress/?p=940

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#73

Post by [deleted] »

Shikadi wrote: post #64
rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post I’m responding to went beyond international cooperation to address the concept of exploring space as a “single human race.” As to your second point—no government today is as large in scope as say Rome, the British Empire, the Persian empire, etc. The long-term sustainability of the EU and US are also far from certain. As we saw with both, federalism doesn’t work. As soon as you have a single voting polity, p…

I don't think "a single human race" implies a single government, considering we are already a single human race and always have been...

[deleted]

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#74

Post by ekianjo »

JohnStrangeII wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We’re different groups of people with different interests, different values, different ideas principles cultures histories views of the world. It’s good for us to be competing to explore space (and in trying to develop technological advantages in general). For countries like India it’s critical to develop their own technologies on this front. Otherwise they’ll remain eternally dependent on America, etc., for acce…

Your post has "false dichotomy" written all over it. Of course, space exploration is an international endeavor and most space missions are highly international. Planning international space exploration missions doesn't force anyone to give up their nation, just as global trade does not imply that. Moreover, if mankind ever expands into space, it would be rather naive to think that earth's nations would play a role th…

> It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence.

To think that in one hundred years any outer space colony will be self sufficient compared to whatever is produced and available on Earth is highly unlikely even in our wildest dreams now. We have literally no pathway for complete self sustainability on other planets in sight, and as long as this remains true space colonies will have no power to break out from whoever they depend on.

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#75

Post by ineedasername »

rayiner wrote: post #48
ineedasername wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collaborating on scientific endeavors is not the same as a single world government. It also doesn't account for way we and other countries do collaborate on large scientific projects, such as the LHC. Then there are the technologies that India and other countries have not developed themselves, but instead acquire or license and avoid having to reinvent the wheel, and come to understand themselves much faster than sta…

I don’t disagree with that concept, but note that a lot of international cooperation that exists presently doesn’t help countries like India develop their own technology. Putting Indian astronauts or experiments on American space missions, for example. Taking their own shot at going to the moon, independent of US efforts, is an important step forward for India.

That current cooperation may not be geared towards knowledge transfer doesn't mean it couldn't be. For example the US helped Great Britain extensively in the 60's and 70's on the space front and other areas, not to the extent that the UK was unable to do it themselves but to successfully boot strap their efforts.

There's other examples too: Despite a chilly relationship and very different values, the US and Russia have worked together for two decades on the ISS. The world is littered with current projects or their results that involved significant international cooperation and shared expertise.

The argument that it shouldn't happen, or isn't in countries' best interests, or not with India in this case-- those might be interesting ideas to explore, but that doesn't mean it can't or doesn't happen successfully. Practically no country has independently built all of the technology that it both uses, fully understands, and can now produce on its own. What we're really talking about here is teaching-- teaching another country how to do something. I don't need how teaching necessarily disadvantages the student country. It doesn't replace their own initiative to learn and internalize the material, but it does bootstrap the process.

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#76

Post by ajonit »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #28
nithinm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are unnecessarily making this political. Even if India was successful at landing i dont think the government would count it as 'their' achievement rather would be counted as an achievement of the whole nation. And even 'non-blind' followers would celebrate, given how everyone were on edge of their seats yesterday. Also no one is bashing Nehru because he started ISRO. Calling the moon landing a government…

Considering the recent occupation, house arrest, and disabling of all cellular communications of the entire region of Kashmir, it’s worth considering the possibility that this scientific effort was made for political ends.

Reading a lot of nytimes or bbc editorial these days? Do you have any idea about the history of Kashmir and how it is infested with Pakistan trained terrorists.?

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#77

Post by ekianjo »

nafey wrote: post #15
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We’re different groups of people with different interests, different values, different ideas principles cultures histories views of the world. It’s good for us to be competing to explore space (and in trying to develop technological advantages in general). For countries like India it’s critical to develop their own technologies on this front. Otherwise they’ll remain eternally dependent on America, etc., for acce…

Well let's revisit this statement in 500 years. Every decade has brought the world closer. Even the recent developments (brexit, trump) are reactions to increased pace of integration. You can find kfc, coca cola in socities as diverse as Mongolia and Madagascar. It will be extremely difficult to turn the clock back on this and this will only keep on intensifying in my opinion.

I love the fact that people always bring stuff like:

> hey you can find McDonalds and Starbucks even when you don't expect it, so it means the world is closer than it has ever been right?

You could find pottery exported in multiple places even in antiquity, that did not mean they had a single culture or single belief system in place. Do not equal exchange of goods with the assumption of a mono-culture.

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#78

Post by rayiner »

geofft wrote: post #68
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We’re different groups of people with different interests, different values, different ideas principles cultures histories views of the world. It’s good for us to be competing to explore space (and in trying to develop technological advantages in general). For countries like India it’s critical to develop their own technologies on this front. Otherwise they’ll remain eternally dependent on America, etc., for acce…

> We’re different groups of people What sort of groups, precisely? Historically, the concept of a "nation" (as the "nat-" root implies) is a people born of the same ancestry, a people native to the same land. Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and so forth - sharing an ethnicity, a language, and a culture. Yet the first two "nations" to reach space, the US and the USSR, were hardly that. Sure, each had a majority ethnic…

“Groups of people” doesn’t need to mean “ethnicity.” There’s a lot of political conflict in the Us, but it’s not primarily along ethnic or religious lines, for example. But there are groups of people, and they are different. Farmers in Iowa are different people than programmers in San Francisco. Having government necessarily requires those groups of people to make decisions about the lives of other people under the same government. That becomes exponentially harder as the group becomes more heterogenous with respect to the things governments do.

Re: India Loses Contact with Probe Just as It Prepares to Land on Moon

#80

Post by nilsocket »

dragonsh wrote: post #7

It's a good effort by ISRO and it's scientist. Just can't understand why so many countries reinventing the wheels. Space missions should be multi-country efforts continuously as it belongs to all. We should not extend our tribal nationalistic thinking to space. Best scientist can be in any nation and more diverse the group and experience the better chances of success. I know I am just dreaming, but hopefully we can c…

When situation is out of hand, people suffer a lot.

MasterCard and Visa have stopped there services in several countries, in-order to be complaint with American law (Laws which are specifically made, to hurt certain countries).

When a Democratic government is controlling private companies, when needed let alone your suggestion of believing in government companies.

In 1999, during Kargil War (between India and Pakistan), it's an unexpected war from Indian side. When Indian government asked help from American government for GPS, they have outright denied it. When it's needed the most.

As a country we had our fair-share of setbacks from several countries, I think we need to learn from our mistakes and try to be independent.

In the need of the hour, every country/state/person has it's own preferences.

Post reply on HN