121–130 of 167 posts
On the other hand, India's Mars Orbiter Mission has been the lowest cost successful Mars mission to date, so they are not exactly slouches.
Another reason is that, with respect to the rise of China, the United States is committing to investing in a rising India to challenge China economically, politically, and militarily. Somehow the article fails to mention the burgeoning defense relationship between India and the United States, and the US imperatives to build out regional challengers and opposition to a China that is growing in power.
The article also fails to mention the existing defense relationship between Pakistan and the United States, and the United States' imperative to make sure that India and Pakistan both fear the other enough to not do anything rash.
This is pretty common in the US press, and leads many of the people inside the country both to evaluate criteria with highly theoretical economic dogmas and to assess their country as both apolitical and unstrategic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does Indian government financing ISRO have anything to do with the cost of the rocket? ISRO is wholly owned by the Government. Would the cost of building the rocket be substantially higher if it was a private company? Nope! SpaceX is developing technology that makes "space travel cheaper" not "deploying small satellites cheaper". Both fall into different categories altogether.
ISRO doesn't appear to pay competitive salaries for engineers. The Russian space program had a lot of challenges when engineering wages went up a lot. India's success with outsourcing and other engineering is the cause. It will be interesting to see what ISRO's costs look like when increased salaries ripple through their workforce. BTW there are several startups targeting small satellites. One is the Electron rocket…
Hence I believe you are seriously mistaken about competitiveness of pay in ISRO. It is not feasible for the government to pay at the same scale as large multi national private companies to all it's workforce. India is just not rich enough.
Even top level bureaucrat jobs like "Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India" don't get paid a lot compared to what salaries are like in the West.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
(Assuming you learn from your failures)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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_o…
By this definition is Ukraine the aggressor in eastern Ukraine?
By the latter, if country A is arming/training/providing insurgents in country B with no previous attacks by B on A, then A is the aggressor. So in the eastern Ukraine case Russia would be the aggressor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's the decades of arms reductions, the diplomatic relations, and the lack of a highly disputed border area which periodically erupts into violence? But no... it must just be a double standard... if you squint hard enough.
As opposed to decades of proxy wars, sponsoring terrorism, election-dependent schizophrenia on the part of the Department of State, and much larger weapon arsenals? The decades of arms reductions still put the arsenals of either the US, or Russia at ~10 times that of India and Pakistan combined. At least India has a no-first-use policy. I'm not saying things are better in that conflict, but this is the pot calling th…
It does at least tell anyone with a scrap of skepticism though, where you're coming from. Equivocation is at the heart of apologism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're also one of the two countries still in a nuclear deadlock with their fingers on the "button". Lets be realistic about this.
> nuclear deadlock with their fingers on the "button" So much sensationalism in this comment! It's like watching a sensationalist news channel. Anyone who follows India-Pakistan politics know that nuclear war is unlikely. Neither of them can afford another war. The "realistic" situation is that unless nuclear weapons end up in the hands of terrorists in Pakistan, there is no real nuclear threat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
So, India fighting to regain parts of the remaining colonial territories cannot be matched to the war of Independence? Of course I never claimed you did, I just made a clever remark.
It's a hard call. For example, is it more of an analogue for the fighting in New York, or more of an analogue for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Quebec_(1775) ? Would your answer be different if the Continental Army had managed to hold on to Quebec and it had become part of the United States?
Or, given the time lags involved in both cases, is it more like the US invasion of Canada in the War of 1812, which I view as a US war of aggression? Again, that invasion failed, but had it succeeded would that make it less a war of aggression?
Note that there is a significant difference here in that the US that was invading Canada in 1812 had no reasonable claim along the lines "we are all one polity that was just colonized by different people and should be a single state" to justify its attempt to annex part of Canada. But that same issue applies to the rest of the war of independence too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does Indian government financing ISRO have anything to do with the cost of the rocket? ISRO is wholly owned by the Government. Would the cost of building the rocket be substantially higher if it was a private company? Nope! SpaceX is developing technology that makes "space travel cheaper" not "deploying small satellites cheaper". Both fall into different categories altogether.
ISRO doesn't appear to pay competitive salaries for engineers. The Russian space program had a lot of challenges when engineering wages went up a lot. India's success with outsourcing and other engineering is the cause. It will be interesting to see what ISRO's costs look like when increased salaries ripple through their workforce. BTW there are several startups targeting small satellites. One is the Electron rocket…
ISRO pays competitive salaries for engineers. At least as per Indian pay scale. Most ISRO scientists/engineers lead a comfortable life. You can't compare the pay scale of a SpaceX/NASA employee with that of ISRO employee because the economies of both countries are vastly different. Also, SpaceX/NASA wouldn't hire Indian scientists/engineers in bulk to make it competitive anyways. So where is the question of competitive salaries?
"It will be interesting to see what ISRO's costs look like when increased salaries ripple through their workforce."
It won't make any difference. ISRO is a completely profitable enterprise for the Indian government. So even if the salaries are increased it won't make any impact on profits.
"BTW there are several startups targeting small satellites. One is the Electron rocket from Rocket Labs. There's also the European Vega rocket, and Japan's Epsilon rocket. SpaceX has already had one launch purchased by a company that groups together small satellites to launch together.[1]"
Yeah but these companies don't have the same track record as ISRO does. I checked the companies you mentioned and the launches range from 1-15 in the past decade with quite a few failed attempts. ISRO on the other hand has had 56 launches with only 8 failed launches. I'm only talking about launches from "Satish Dhawan Space Centre" and not even considering ISRO and Arianespace collaboration which launched heavy payloads.
"All in all, small launches are a very active market."
ISRO is not just focusing on small launches. It recently tested a Reusable Launch System: RLV-TD. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzxe6q60R70 Of course there is no brouhaha or chest thumping involved as the ISRO team is pretty modest about whatever progress it makes. Hence you won't find this featuring on your Western news channels. This reusable shuttle will be used for sending a manned mission to Moon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As opposed to decades of proxy wars, sponsoring terrorism, election-dependent schizophrenia on the part of the Department of State, and much larger weapon arsenals? The decades of arms reductions still put the arsenals of either the US, or Russia at ~10 times that of India and Pakistan combined. At least India has a no-first-use policy. I'm not saying things are better in that conflict, but this is the pot calling th…
That's a whole lot of red herrings there, which have nothing to do with nuclear policy or not wanting to empower one side of an ongoing nuclear standoff with superior tech. It does at least tell anyone with a scrap of skepticism though, where you're coming from. Equivocation is at the heart of apologism.
While the odds of nuclear conflict between them may be lower then the odds of one between India and Pakistan (And this is an arguable point), it will be incredibly more devastating.
As such, it's incredibly disingenuous to claim that New Delhi has it's thumb on the doomsday button, but that Moscow or Washington don't.