India is "The Mouse on the moon"

[Space_Coyote]

When we talk about nuclear weapons, you hear 4 countries that show up on that list.. Namely America, Russia, China and India.

 

Well, now we have a new Space Race between America,  (Both NASA and Space X), China, Russia and now we can throw India into that same list of  lunar Landings..

 

This proves one thing in spaceflight.. Even up and coming Countries do have the right to land on the moon. Not just an exclusive few...

 

It sort of reminds me of that old Comedy film called The Mouse on the moon. Where a small country like the Duchy of New Fenwick get to the moon first..

 

But as was pointed out in the movie , it's not who gets to the moon first, but rather the first to get home.. To get the Prestige.

 

But at least now we know one thing.. We now are starting to get a community started on the moon. I'll be only a matter of time when we have actual bases up there.. Who knows? We might just see it happen.

[steve9728]

No offence, or like the DPRK in For All Mankind

"Guess what, we are the first who made it to Mars!"

But, yeah, congratulations to India!

[DDE]

9 hours ago, Space_Coyote said:

Not just an exclusive few...

Granted, the most populous nation on Earth is indeed "one of a few". The club hasn't become that much less exclusive, it's the players that are rising or falling.

[SunlitZelkova]

I strongly disagree and think you are underestimating the countries achievements.

India has already discovered water on the Moon and was the first Asian country* to send an orbiter to Mars. They are very much “up there” as a major space nation.

*Assuming the USSR is excluded as an Asian country despite including republics considered to be Central Asian.

[Hannu2]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I strongly disagree and think you are underestimating the countries achievements.

I fear that this is common problem for all western countries. Our politicians see space tech as futile money sink or excuse for subsidizing their hometown's high tech companies and do not take especially India's and China's space programs as serious competition. I do not know what prime minister of India said in his speech after successful landing, but if their highest politicians think that space tech and utilization of extraterrestrial resources is important for their countries development in foreseeable future there may be nasty surprises for western countries in next decades.

[SunlitZelkova]

4 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

but if their highest politicians think that space tech and utilization of extraterrestrial resources is important for their countries development in foreseeable future there may be nasty surprises for western countries in next decades.

Along with utilization of space resources, space based solar power was a major focus of some Chinese planning documents a year ago or so, so it will be really interesting to see if they go through with that.

As far as the Western focus goes… I’m not sure if it is comparable. Unlike basically every other country, the US is rapidly entering an era of entirely commercial spaceflight. The ISS will soon be replaced by a commercial space station, and with commercial crewed lunar landers (I really think we are living in the future when reading that phrase) it is only a matter of time before SLS and Orion go bye bye. So the thing to watch is the private sector, not the actions of NASA or Congress.

[darthgently]

17 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Unlike basically every other country, the US is rapidly entering an era of entirely commercial spaceflight.

Given all the ongoing and planned scientific NASA missions with a lot of gov budget involved for years to come I'm not sure about "entirely", but decent point. 

 Commercial leveraging turns space exploration from rare and mostly being primarily PR and secondarily science driven toward a self-sustaining primarily human colonization and science gathering/applying process driven by the longer, and stronger, legs of expanding economic feasibility involving all of civilization via the market.  More jobs will be directly space expansion related.  More retirement and investment funds will rely on space industries directly.  Nearly everyone will have skin in the game.  And eventually "average joe" humans like you and me will live and be born off-world, as well other terrestrial species within homeostatic hybrid natural/technical ecosystems required for thriving. 

The big AI app will not be winning Go matches, writing scripts for movies, or making up citations for imaginary research papers, but will be advising balancing and maintenance of hybrid habitat  ecosystems. Invest wisely now, lol

Edited August 26, 2023 by darthgently

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Along with utilization of space resources, space based solar power was a major focus of some Chinese planning documents a year ago or so, so it will be really interesting to see if they go through with that.

As far as the Western focus goes… I’m not sure if it is comparable. Unlike basically every other country, the US is rapidly entering an era of entirely commercial spaceflight. The ISS will soon be replaced by a commercial space station, and with commercial crewed lunar landers (I really think we are living in the future when reading that phrase) it is only a matter of time before SLS and Orion go bye bye. So the thing to watch is the private sector, not the actions of NASA or Congress.

As for private space stations I see that as an smart move of NASA, they have an very high overhead cost and most of the work on the IIS is to keep the station working. 
Share that cost with businesses and tourists and have someone else do the ship and hotel services so they only do science and training. 
So you get an larger station who is cheaper to run because more users and cheaper to run, but NASA also guarantee partial funding for the station.

Same for private moon missions, NASA is paying companies to  come up with landers they will pay for just like the army buys cars or planes from companies who can sells to others. 

[DDE]

On 8/25/2023 at 12:32 PM, Hannu2 said:

I fear that this is common problem for all western countries. Our politicians see space tech as futile money sink or excuse for subsidizing their hometown's high tech companies and do not take especially India's and China's space programs as serious competition.

Is this really the case, though? The amount of money that still gets allotted that way is rather impressive, and the space race rhetoric is clearly there.

[Hannu2]

21 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

As far as the Western focus goes… I’m not sure if it is comparable. Unlike basically every other country, the US is rapidly entering an era of entirely commercial spaceflight. The ISS will soon be replaced by a commercial space station, and with commercial crewed lunar landers (I really think we are living in the future when reading that phrase) it is only a matter of time before SLS and Orion go bye bye. So the thing to watch is the private sector, not the actions of NASA or Congress.

Commercial operations can work on very limited applications in mature areas of technology. Now satellite launching and services are practically only enough mature space tech companies (and their investors) believe profitable in reasonable timescale and predictability. It seems that basic crew transportations and station services on LEO may be next but most customers will be public roganizations, like NASA or ESA. There is not much profitable business humans can do in space. If there will be "commercial lunar lander" it will be tailored project for NASA payed by state and it will never have any private customers.

I can not imagine that there will be any commercial motivation to manned Moon research or asteroid mining in foreseeable future. Especially mining will probably be profitable at some day in very distant future, but it takes clearly many decades, if not centuries, and unpredictable amount of money to develop any profitable production infrastructure. No investor dare to put significant money on such things.

 

 

[Hannu2]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Is this really the case, though? The amount of money that still gets allotted that way is rather impressive, and the space race rhetoric is clearly there.

Money is very small compared to budgets of USA or European states. And public money is used very inefficiently to support high tech companies near top politicians. USA has SLS, ridiculous pork project, and ESA has even worse bureaucracy to force ESA order components from certain countries based on their payments - and not even working satellite launcher currently.

Space race rhetorics is from space organization's leaders and officials who wants to lobby more money for their departments. Not from ministers or members of parliaments who has actual power to decide funding and is it used for results in space or political support for certain companies.  I was impressed how Indian prime minister used his time to celebrate achievement. There has not been anything like that after Kennedy's speeches in 60's in western countries. Space is not an argument which gives votes in elections or funding from economic supporters.

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

I can not imagine that there will be any commercial motivation to manned Moon research or asteroid mining in foreseeable future. Especially mining will probably be profitable at some day in very distant future, but it takes clearly many decades, if not centuries, and unpredictable amount of money to develop any profitable production infrastructure. No investor dare to put significant money on such things.

The thing is though, that interest in space resource utilization does not exist in any other country either.

2 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

Space race rhetorics is from space organization's leaders and officials who wants to lobby more money for their departments. Not from ministers or members of parliaments who has actual power to decide funding and is it used for results in space or political support for certain companies.  I was impressed how Indian prime minister used his time to celebrate achievement. There has not been anything like that after Kennedy's speeches in 60's in western countries. Space is not an argument which gives votes in elections or funding from economic supporters.

The reason for this isn’t dedication in space, but rather that India and China are playing catch-up to the OG great powers (US-EU-Russia) in basically every sector of their society.

Once China lands a man on the Moon, I would expect their space budget to begin to decline or at least stay at a level comparable to the US rather than climb higher. Same for India.

Note that a lot of these lofty plans for space exploration, like China’s SPS plans, come from the organizations themselves. Historically the design bureaus of the USSR had huge plans for economic expansion into space and resource utilization, as did NASA, but each side was shot down.

The same may very well happen in other countries, especially in the event of disastrous events out of the control of space engineers.

And note that while each nation is playing catch-up, it is unclear to what extent they want to surpass the OGs beyond pure economics. I.e. we won’t necessarily see a Chinese or Indian man on Mars unless the US does.

And this post is getting long but one more thing- as China and India seriously start to catch up with the US, by doing something very visible like landing a man on the Moon, the US will notice and start to invest more. The only reason we haven’t seen that yet is that the holders of the purse currently have a view that in every sector of society, the US maintains superiority and is not yet in danger of being surpassed.

But when they are surpassed, I don’t think it will take long for the US to even the score again. “American ingenuity” still exists IMO.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The thing is though, that interest in space resource utilization does not exist in any other country either.

It does in Luxembourg, but they're essentially trying to ride coat-tails that may or may not exist.

[steve9728]

On 8/27/2023 at 12:23 AM, DDE said:

It does in Luxembourg, but they're essentially trying to ride coat-tails that may or may not exist.

They did. Last year if I remember correctly, it was smashed on the moon by the third stage of the CZ-3C G2 Y12 rocket which was launched the CE-5/T1 - the lunar return tech validator for CE-5.

Edited August 28, 2023 by steve9728

[magnemoe]

On 8/26/2023 at 1:54 PM, Hannu2 said:

Commercial operations can work on very limited applications in mature areas of technology. Now satellite launching and services are practically only enough mature space tech companies (and their investors) believe profitable in reasonable timescale and predictability. It seems that basic crew transportations and station services on LEO may be next but most customers will be public roganizations, like NASA or ESA. There is not much profitable business humans can do in space. If there will be "commercial lunar lander" it will be tailored project for NASA payed by state and it will never have any private customers.

I can not imagine that there will be any commercial motivation to manned Moon research or asteroid mining in foreseeable future. Especially mining will probably be profitable at some day in very distant future, but it takes clearly many decades, if not centuries, and unpredictable amount of money to develop any profitable production infrastructure. No investor dare to put significant money on such things.

Multiple want to do an commercial space station. Yes they want an NASA contract as NASA will run multiple modules but they will also be open for other actors and they will have scientists in orbit you can pay to do experiments on your stuff, typical zero-g and space exposure I guess.