Why can't countries be honest? China recently announced it has a moon landing in the works for a few years from now, and today India, yeah...India, says it's shooting for the moon too. Be honest guys, you are just testing your long-range missle capability. And we all know what a country does THAT for.
Uh, and didn't we do the same thing? but actually accomplish both?
As it stands, it essentially means that China and India are stepping into the vacuum created by our deflation. Welcome to the new world!
That's why those bad ol' right-wingers wanted a missle defense system.
India could just about throw a nuke at Pakistan anyway. What do they need more than that for?
Do the Indian rockets go anything like a Polish battleship?
"...didn't we do the same thing? but actually accomplish both?"
I guess the real reasons this bothers me are:
Yeah, "been there, done that...what's left"
AND, because of BTDT, do 2 countries known for having economic problems, really need to spend their money this way? India (supposedly?) has worse problems with insufficent infrastructure than the U.S. And even barring that small detail, I doubt we would undertake such a massive project with our current economic situation.
Ah, but you're applying Western logic to their actions. They are not Western countries.
The fact is, the first people who can gain control over the moon and establish a clear lead in space technology will be sitting pretty down the road.
fiat22turbo wrote: Ah, but you're applying Western logic to their actions. They are not Western countries. The fact is, the first people who can gain control over the moon and establish a clear lead in space technology will be sitting pretty down the road.
Isn't this what we and the Russians believe in the 60s/70s? Look where Russia is sitting now minus their gobs of money in mining and refining metals. Look at where we are...two arseclowns running for president, economy going nutz, and mass hysteria.
Yes, then we lost our direction or changed our minds, depending on what you believe from studying history.
The fact is, the government and NASA among others changed their focus and moved away from the space exploration that we started in the 50's and 60's. Specifically we moved away from manned exploration to more automated solutions and the wonder and excitement the public at large had with the space program was lost.
I believe that if we had continued pushing things we could have a base on the moon, space stations and even a better solution to the energy crisis we're in now.
As always, The Onion is there
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/china_launches_first_willing
What you're missing is that space programs lead to a boom in the science industry, and in compelling students to acel in math in science. It worked very well for us in the '60's, but now we're lagging far behind to the point of being scary. These programs have real and tangible results for nations that use them.
But just like all things with governements, when you back away from the them, you can watch a downward spiral. The enrollement in math and science has tappered off with the "disapperance" of NASA, or like a friend and PhD for NASA said when they asked for a slogan for their 50th anniversary, "50 years of NASA, 15 years of excellence."
The US seems to be considering India and China to be "emerging space powers"
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/intel-report-us.html
If there were any real chance these things were nukes (or any long range hurty-devices), the US would be all over them like a racist cop on a black dude in a nice car.
The notion that India or China would attack us at all is the same logic of an Arby's manager shooting all of there customers in the face. They hold a ton of our debt, and we buy all their crap. There economies and they very funding of those programs come from your hard earned cash dropped at Wal Mart. Belive this is about pride and taking an economic, technological, and cultural lead in the barve new world.
Remeber when the Brits ran the world? Yeah, in a few decades us old military folks will sit in bars and lament when America was the most feared nation on Earth. The upside is now the world can hate them instead of us.
I got one word for all of you.
The whole thing is gold but it the Mars reference is at 5:47.
F' space, it's all about time travel. I'm going to start working on my second generation Flux Capacitor. One that can be used in another vehicle besides a Delorean and the magic number is still 88mph.
You'll need to log in to post.
