BS: India moon landing

Subject: BS: India moon landing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Sep 19 - 11:45 PM

They were soooo cloooose!

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 12:10 AM

Links usually help a thread gain some traction.

India Loses Contact With Chandrayaan-2 Moon Lander During Its Descent

The country will likely have to wait for a future mission to join the elite club of nations that have landed on the moon.

‘The most terrifying moments’: India counts down to risky Moon landing

If touchdown is successful, Chandrayaan-2 will be the first lunar mission to explore the south pole.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 04:34 AM

Instead of wasting huge amounts of money on pointless vanity projects, wouldn’t they do better to use that money to help alleviate poverty and disease in their country?

They need to think about their priorities, IMHO.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Iains
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 04:57 AM

Science goes it's own way. The technology spin off from a lunar landing project is immense. Science brings benefits and drawbacks and advances knowledge. Nuclear bombs, microwave cookers, cellphones, etc,etc. All fallout from WW2. Britain's TSR2 and Bluestreak were projects initiated when the UK was still subject to post war rationing.
Would we have our present knowledge of climate change without tools and techniques derived from wartime research?
Should Europeans and Americans have such a high standard of living when millions starve in the third world?
It could be argued there are misplaced priorities all over the planet, but conversely without prioritization we would likely still be rubbing sticks together to start a fire.
It is not a binary answer and how do you know it is simply a wasteful prestige project?

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 05:41 AM

I think one should worry more about the antics of the emerging far right in the UK than the "poor" in India, who get along just fine.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 06:03 AM

Ever been there Bonz? And, if you have, did you go anywhere other than the Tourist Trail?

Thought not.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 06:37 AM

as i remember, John Pilger pointed out at the time of the USA moon landings - a third of American citizens were living below the poverty line.

I think maybe its a matter of national identity. Like Ireland India has lots of millionaires.

I suppose in England we had a sort of day of reckoning with 1945 and the setting up of the welfare state. I think it was Donleavy said, the Irish love and believe the myth of their poverty. We love and believe in in the myth of our caring society. For a lot of people - it must seem like a myth - but I think its a healthier myth to try and live up to - rather than the acceptance of the fact 'the poor will always be with us'.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 09:51 AM

If the theory that Hitler and a team of his most fanatical followers escaped to the moon is true;
that there actually is a technologically highly advanced n@zi colony existing under the surface
and in the shadows of deep craters...???

That might explain why moon missions from non aryan races/nations
seem to be failing to land successfully...??????

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 10:28 AM

India area is the last place I would want to visit.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 10:40 AM

I wouldn't want to go anywhere infested with flies and mosquitoes, midges, etc..
I've never been to Scotland...

But moon n@zis might make me have second thoughts about being an astronaut...

That'd probaly be even worse than walking into a pub full of ukip supporters...!!!

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 12:00 PM

I have spent months in India... Whole families living in a cardboard box or on one bicycle, sure. But having a human rover on the moon would have been stellar. Hahahahaha...

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 12:23 PM

I prefer Argentina, there is a different kind of poverty there, much of it hidden by a railing alongside the motorway between the international airport and Buenos Aires, miles and miles of shanty town! but then you can leave it behind. Anyway, I much prefer to hear castillano Spanish than any Indian language.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 12:40 PM

Oh, and Stilly, thanks for the links.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 01:21 PM

I'll easily accept that the space race accelerated new technology that has benefitial spin offs...

Obviously, competition played a massive part in this during the cold war.

But, in 2019 I seriously disagree that Nationalist pride should still play a part.

Modern Space exploration NEEDS to be a cost effective collaberative joint co-operative effort
between nations of equals,
and aspiring equals...

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: robomatic
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 02:11 PM

Didn't Jesus say:

"The poor you will always have with you. . . party in my pants!"

or something to that effect?

Meanwhile . . . did the India effort include anything living... after all, the Israelis managed to dump a bunch of tardigrades on the Moon for way less money.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Iains
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 02:28 PM

Modern Space exploration NEEDS to be a cost effective collaberative joint co-operative effort
between nations of equals,

Best not look at the Galileo Project as providing a role model then!
(although I agree with your sentiments, in a polarised world it is not going to happen)

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 02:40 PM

If Earth were invaded by hostile space aliens tomorrow..
which nation would most likely be first to offer to join the invaders as allies...???

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 03:21 PM

me - they can use my garage for their spaceship.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Neil D
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 06:46 PM

Backwoodsman asked: Instead of wasting huge amounts of money on pointless vanity projects, wouldn’t they do better to use that money to help alleviate poverty and disease in their country?
Many said the same about the U.S. race to the moon in the sixties, including Gil Scott-Heron

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 06:01 AM

The inhumane inequality in India I witnessed in 1988 sadly remains and may have got worse; my poem from WalkaboutsVerse on "China and India in 1988"

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 08:29 AM

They found the rover, on the moon. Still no communication but at least they didn't miss...

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 09:14 AM

I’m sure the poverty-stricken, sickness-ridden millions will be thrilled. What a huge difference it will make to their miserable, subsistence-level lives.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 03:46 PM

I suppose its not much worse than England building castles and palatial mansions for the bigwigs when half the country was dying with bubonic plague, the black death, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 05:40 PM

..so basically.. what's changed in England...?????

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 05:55 PM

My poem, from WalkaboutsVerse, "Pie in the Sky?"

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 06:35 PM

No nation that has sent spacecraft to the moon has, prior to or simultaneously with the project, solved the problems of poverty and inequality, and it's a silly reason to pick on them for making the effort. These science programs are usually helpful in the end.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 10:23 PM

Maybe so, I just think poor people have a greater moral right to the basics of survival than boffins have to their intergalactic toys.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 12:43 AM

But they *are* thrilled. As were poor Americans in 1969. Woodstock, you know.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 02:43 AM

”Maybe so, I just think poor people have a greater moral right to the basics of survival than boffins have to their intergalactic toys.”

Well that is something we can definitely agree on, Al.

“But they *are* thrilled. As were poor Americans in 1969. Woodstock, you know.”

Panem et circenses.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Iains
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 05:56 AM

Capitalism, the most important cause of the Industrial Revolution, allowed the brand new generation of inventors and scientists the investments and income needed to develop their new technological advances. ... Capitalism allowed those inventions to be created and developed through loans and funds.
If not for such advances we would still be living in a peasant society entirely dependent on beneficial summers to prevent starvation.
I know which side of the coin I prefer.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 08:44 AM

As a very skint 1st world westerner,
with an impending uncertain and very finacially bleak old age ahead of me...
I'd welcome a space exploration program as a far more exciting and optimistic tonic
for the depression of poverty,
than any arms race and probable/inevitable world wars...

I was a small town council estate schoolboy in the 1960s who's imagination and intelligence
was stimulated by the space race and it's promise of a bright shiny techologically advanced future...

Panem et circenses....???

if that's all Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Lost in Space, and Star Trek ever were...
then brilliant.. gimme more of that fantastic spirit raising escapist delusion...

Last night I watched a dull disapointing pretentious Sci Fi movie "IO",
that made a botch of tackling big ideas about humanity being faced with a choice
of either escaping our polluted poisoned Earth to search beyond our sun for a new home,
or staying here and trying to fix the mess...

A stark choice of funding and resources..

It should have been a good movie, but turned out just another Netflix dud...

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Mr Red
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 04:26 PM

India's poverty is not helped by a burgeoning population. But they tried to address that and it didn't go well. Having sufficient offspring to guarantee having at least one to survive, prosper and look after you into your old age is an investment. In short: a pension.

India's GDP is enhanced by having a technologically competent society, in sufficient quantity. Vanity projects, like moon landings, is one way to inject momentum into the economy. Global kudos, national pride.

Choices, all too easy, if all you have is a telescope on the facts. The whole picture may be blurred, but it is wholly, instead of holey.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 04:40 PM

There should be some inequality so that people have the incentive of an economic ladder to climb, but the level of inequality that capitalism produces is inhumane and revolting; and, yes, as Mr Red says, India suffers badly from "Congestion"

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Sep 19 - 09:59 PM

India developed their nuclear capability when they were poorer than they are now. And the leader of Pakistan said: "We will eat grass, but we will get that weapon." And they did. And then they proliferated. Shooting for the moon is a bug improvement.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 03:26 AM

As a once avid Sci-fi fan (until I became old enough to know better), I was fascinated by the idea of conquering space, but when I began to calculate the drain of money and human resources the Space and arms race was having on countries unable to feed, house and keep healthy their people, it struck me as an utter waste - it is most certainly the case with India, but it also applies to 'wealthy' countries like Britain and the U.S. where the wealth lies in fewer and fewer hands while the conditions of the 'have less' deteriorates at rates of knots
For all its faults and problems, I was a great admirer of The Soviet Union's achievement in turning a massive, ungainly Empire, much of which was semi-feudal, into a modern State, set on a path of equality of opportunity for all.
That dream was betrayed by its leaders getting involved in what was little more than a one-upmanship space race
It came out pretty well as a front runner in that, but what a waste on what hes proved little more than filling space with unnecessary garbage
   
The arms race, while pretending to be 'defensive', was a mixture of profiteering and extremely dangerous sabre-rattling, for which it was necessary to devise THIS WAKE UP CALL - we still havent heeded its call yet
The profiteering element for me was typified when Israel tried to encourage largely impoverished and wholely oppresed Aparthied South Africa to develop its own nuclear weapons
That failed because the South African leaders didn't want risk them "falling into the hands of The Bleks"

Probably the only use space exploration can be used for now is sail off to find a new planet when we've finished fucking up this one (not much time left for that one)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 04:44 AM

Actually theSoviet communist dream went down the tubes long before the space race.

The murder of 2 million so called kulaks maybe. Still you weren't alone in buying into the dream. Have you ever come actoss the novels of Edward Up ward? He was a very committed marxist - and at one time WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood's best friend and the undoubted leader of the literary movement they represented.

I find Upward's chronicling of an intelligent man trying to reconcile the mounting evidence of a dream gone rotten, very moving. I guess the trouble is that the world is not an abstract concept.

Christianity, communism, Islam, Capitalism....we just can't be trusted with dreams.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 05:12 AM

"we just can't be trusted with dreams."
Speak for yourself Al - our leaders can't
All those you listed have their place (or have had) - religion works fine for the religious - it's when it over-reaches its authority that the problems arise
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 08:22 AM

Religion does not work fine for the religious, usually, unless ignorance of reality is fine. I, not religious, am not fine with the ignorance of others, even if those others are.

Moon shots are not intended to appease the masses, so neither bread nor circuses.

I sm glad they found their rovrr. At least they didn't miss.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 09:54 AM

It's tempting to indulge in whataboutery in this topic. What about all that money spent on arms? What about the obscene profiteering of oil companies and other big multinationals? What about our wholesale indulgence of taxdodgers? What about the astronomical "bonuses" we pay to bankers even when they're failing? What about me jetting off for my Italian holiday, tripping up over homeless people on my way to the airport and again in the backstreets of Rome? Every country that has ever spent billions on nuclear arms and space exploration is riven by the poverty of millions of its citizens and mass inequality. Not just India. A tenth of the population of the Land Of The Free can't afford healthcare. None of which I'm not using to justify anything. The accumulation of knowledge via science is an irresistible urge of humanity, in fact it defines humanity, and I think that's a good thing.

So what's the answer? Don't ask me. I know you didn't anyway...

And just remember what we were told in the Sixties: but for the Space Race, we wouldn't have WD40...

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 02:45 AM

A somewhat sobering reminder of WHAT WE WILL BE MISSING OUT ON if we don't start takinng space exploration serious
I'm sure the street-starving in Calcutta and Delhi are puuting aside their pennies in order not to miss out
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 02:58 AM

The new kid on the block in this particular entrepreneurial enterprise
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2018/07/11/meet-the-unknown-immigrant-billionaire-betting-her-fortune-to-take-on-musk-in-space/#32938c8b5f0d
(can't blue-clickie)
Revealing insight into her approach to what she is doing to save disappearing wildlife on the planet

Eren Ozmen puts their acquisition strategy in rather unusual terms. "Our guys go hunting, and they bring me this giant bear, which is not fully dead, and say, 'Now you do the skinning and clean it up.' "
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 10:48 AM

Excuse the accidental double negative in my last post.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: leeneia
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 12:33 PM

I don't think there is much connection between space travel and science. No doubt science would proceed faster if funded directly.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Sep 19 - 06:02 PM

Um, it ain't prayer that got anybody to the moon!

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jeri
Date: 15 Sep 19 - 06:18 PM

On the use of money.
People need to dream. The fact that many countries are capitalistic, means that there will always be poor. There will always be starving, and it's not people using money for other things that causes it or will fix it. It's people caring enough to fix it.

Those of you who think spending money on dreams is bad are all typing on a computer. You could have used the money to buy it, or to pay for the internet, to buy food for people who can't afford food. The money you spend on the clothes you think are nice, the money you spent on a concert or a recording or any other unnecessary things could have been used for more important things.

So instead of bitching about how India chooses to spend money, think about WHY they choose to spend it on "frivolous" things. Why YOU choose to.

Humans need dreams.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jeri
Date: 15 Sep 19 - 06:23 PM

And "I don't think there is much connection between space travel and science." I don't even understand how a person could write that.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Sep 19 - 06:56 PM

I'm sure you don't need science to get into space. If you had big enough catapult - you could get someone high enough to escape the earth's gravitational pull.

Once you get up there, there are things like Milky Ways to keep you going. Obviously the odd Mars bar.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 19 - 07:51 PM

Well I wasn't bitching about India spending money. I was trying to say that any country which spends huge amounts on nuclear weapons or space exploration (or which indulges huge corporations or tax-dodgers, etc) should have a think about the horrific inequality they simultaneously perpetuate. And that, without exception, is every country that does those things. I'm in favour of space exploration, if the furtherance of scientific knowledge is the motivation. But if a "space race" is the motivation, well I don't want to know.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Sep 19 - 08:38 PM

"I'm sure you don't need science to get into space"
You're probably too young to remember, but The Goons tried a long extending ladder
Jeri
Most people's dreams are confined to having enough to feed their families
Space Travel is a diversion that our society can no longer aspire to that - a diversion - no more
I am old enough to remember the first moon landing being used to divert the attention from the fact that American planes were pouring burning petrol on the Vietnamese People - a prestige exercise in one-upmanship with The Soviets
Didn't work though - we continued to take to the streets and watched with a degree of satisfaction as the helicopters winched up the last of the Embassy Staff a few years later
Happy days
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 02:02 AM

Yes I was there in Grosvenor Square too, in '67 and '68.

Not sure of the wrongs and rights now though. I'm not sure there was a wrong and right. Both sides were pretty nasty, in retrospect.

Nightmare, really when you think back. Unbridled cruelty on both sides.. two great powers - Russia and America being as foul as they knew how.

The pity of it all....that's all you can really see.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 02:14 AM

"Not sure of the wrongs and rights now though"
The charred bodies and rotted lungs of the farmers slaughtered and maimed by Napalm and Agent Orange is enough evidence of who was right and who was wrong for me Al
I'm proud of all the causes I was part of - Vietnam, anti-nuclear, Anti-Apartheid
Never regretted a minute of it and would do it all tomorrow
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 02:55 AM

I dunno. they reckon Ho Chi Minh was a stalinist, who killed a lot of people in the way of political opponents and people he didn't like very much. And dress it up how you like, he was the catspaw for Russian imperialism.

like i say, i did the marches, for better or worse. Even if I did regret, it wouldn't do any good.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 03:31 AM

"who killed a lot of people in the way of political opponents"
Who "reckon" and where do I find it Al
I'm a bu=it tired of all this cold war Gossip - it's about time we all grew up, doncha think
Whatever Ho chi mhin did or did not do, do you realy believe it merits siring exploding missiles that burn the skin of men women and children at farmers, or poisoning their land with carcinogenic chemicals
I'd hate to be held to acount for what our leaders ate doing at theis present moment
Gi'e us a break Jimmie !!
Jim carroll

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 04:27 AM

As a once avid Sci-fi fan (until I became old enough to know better),

What does that mean, Jim? Is Sci-Fi supposed to be just for the young?

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 04:38 AM

" Is Sci-Fi supposed to be just for the young?"
Another joke, I'm afraid Dave - we're obviously on different humour wavelengths
I gave up Sci-fi when I thought I'd got through the classics Assimov, Heinlein et al, and it began to transmogrify into Cowboys and Indians with ray-guns
Brandbury stopped writing but he was more science fantasy thn real Sci-fir
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 05:40 AM

I still don't get it. Is it like a joke but without the funny bit at the end?

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 05:58 AM

I see Boris is taking his testosterone-fuelled hubris over to Brussels again...

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 05:59 AM

Oh gosh, sorry, that should be in the brexit thread.

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 06:32 AM

I dunno, Steve. Maybe we could use a testosterone-fuelled rocket to send thagt sorry shower into space ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Sep 19 - 08:40 AM

We can confidently guess what kind of jokes Boris would make about Indians on the moon...

Subject: RE: BS: India moon landing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Sep 19 - 09:41 AM

"We can confidently guess what kind of jokes Boris would make about Indians on the moon..."
They'd never get past is wall
Jim