While I'm a big supporter of international co-operation, remember that the US has been striking a number of technical deals with India, as a part of a long-term political investment in bringing up a large democratic power to balance China. I think this has as much to do with that goal as it does with sharing technical information.
that and our current "partner", Russia, isn't so reliable anymore. This can be simple acknowledgment of who else will be a viable when it comes to space exploration and exploitation.
I have a dumb question. What's a large democratic power, and how does it differ from China? I'm not implying China is in any way democratic, but rather inviting someone to further explain what the goal of the US is.
Is it likely that this is simply empire expansion rather than an altruistic goal of balancing China? Mainly I'm just wondering what the concerns might be if a large democratic power (and I'd still like to know what exactly that is, and how it differs from other modern powers) isn't brought up in the region.
Forgive my ignorance. I probably should have taught myself these things long ago rather than invested all of my time in programming and other pursuits.
Also, just to clarify, I am aware of the textbook definition of "democracy," "republic," etc, but it seems like those names are more of a flag for people to fight under than a definition for a state of being in the modern era. So I'm quite curious to understand the issues at play here.
Exciting news but is it an unqualified positive for both?
Sometimes Constraints are what drives breakthrough innovations.
India's ability to Manage Significant space exploration programmes on a Shoe string budget is driven in part by the need to innovate on a "ShoeString" budget. What we as a race desperately need is low cost access to Space - which perhaps may not become such a priority if NASA is allowed to influence ISRO.
On the other hand maybe ISRO will influence NASA & wewill get the best of both - super low cost missions with super advanced payloads :)
NASA had a "go cheap" program to try crazy stuff on a shoestring that just might work. There were good results like Pathfinder ($150M) which tried the crazy idea of landing using an airbag.
The problem is that the Powers That Be were not understanding about the failures inherent in trying crazy ideas out. So we went back to expensive spacecraft which were less likely to fail.
This is exciting but makes me nervous. India is re-imagining "space travel on a budget", but if all of a sudden they have to play by NASA's rules and standards, their ability to innovate at low cost might be hampered.
Hopefully whatever form of cooperation they come up with lets India continue to operate mostly independently.
NISAR is a very interesting mission from a technological point of view. It will have two radars, at least one of which gives 10m resolution, and they will be obtaining global coverage. The data rate is huge, larger than any Earth remote sensing mission to date (many TB/day).
Earth scientists are already having problems dealing with contemporary data volumes, and NISAR really raises the stakes.
I've been hoping for a while for more international cooperation on space exploration. Going to space is not cheap, and if several countries pool their resources, under ideal circumstances the result should be more science for everyone.
But politics has kind of prevented that. For governments, space exploration seems to be more about showing off than about advancing science.
I hope that in the future, different countries cooperating on missions will become the norm rather than the exception. I know I'm being somewhat optimistic, but this article shows I am not being completely naive. Nice.
I'm pretty sure there is a significant amount of cooperation when it comes to space exploration. Space missions often carry instruments from different countries. For example, the lunar probe that discovered water on the moon, Chandrayaan-1, carried instruments from different countries. Curiosity carried instruments from other countries too, if I'm not mistaken.
It's just that you don't read much about this in the newspapers, because newspapers would rather make it look like there's a space race going on.
I would consider technical collaboration in this space (pardon the pun) to generally be a great thing. Missions to Mars have historically been very difficult:
...it wasn't like NASA was about to do something huge and cooperation with India puts that goal at risk...
Your nested counterfactuals are a little hard to unpack, but if I understand you correctly, it is somewhat the contrary, at least with NISAR. (Oops, I added another counterfactual.) NASA was about to NOT do something huge and the collaboration enabled it happen.
That is, before it became NISAR, the Earth-observing biomass/seismicity SAR mission was called Desdyni (http://decadal.gsfc.nasa.gov/desdyni.html). This mission was referred to as desirable in a 2007 National Academies decadal roadmap (covering the next 10 years), but there were too many other even higher-ranked missions in the pipeline. So it seemed like Desdyni was not going to get on the NASA roadmap any time soon.
The Indian contribution seems to have (for the moment) been enough to get it going, because in February NISAR entered "Phase A" which is NASA-speak for "we are starting the mission". There are later decision points depending on how ready the overall concept proves to be.
I wrote this on the WSJ comments several hours ago but it's worth repeating here. I believe that it would be valuable if the US invested more basic research money in India. We might be able to greatly increase our research output in the basic sciences. Start small then increase the budget as research in India matures.
Why do you say that? The techincal goals of this mission are fairly modest, and do not seem to bush the boundaries of launch technologry or involve technology that would be useful for human survival in space.
The agreement and mission are both good things, but I do not see how they will have much of an effect on human spaceflight.
As usual, action speaks louder than words. This co-operation would probably not take place if India's mission did not take place or very few would listen their Indian counter parts if such agreement were signed without the mission.
Why could they not have agreed to cooperate before NASA spent $650M on the Maven program which does the exact same thing that ISRO's $74M Mangalyaan does?
[+] [-] Naritai|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helium|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falsestprophet|11 years ago|reply
The parent comment, which at this time is the #1 comment, does not contribute to understanding why the United States and India made this agreement.
[+] [-] hkarthik|11 years ago|reply
Or are the scientists of both countries using their government officials to fund their scientific curiosities?
Probably a bit of both, IMO.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|11 years ago|reply
Is it likely that this is simply empire expansion rather than an altruistic goal of balancing China? Mainly I'm just wondering what the concerns might be if a large democratic power (and I'd still like to know what exactly that is, and how it differs from other modern powers) isn't brought up in the region.
Forgive my ignorance. I probably should have taught myself these things long ago rather than invested all of my time in programming and other pursuits.
Also, just to clarify, I am aware of the textbook definition of "democracy," "republic," etc, but it seems like those names are more of a flag for people to fight under than a definition for a state of being in the modern era. So I'm quite curious to understand the issues at play here.
[+] [-] suprgeek|11 years ago|reply
India's ability to Manage Significant space exploration programmes on a Shoe string budget is driven in part by the need to innovate on a "ShoeString" budget. What we as a race desperately need is low cost access to Space - which perhaps may not become such a priority if NASA is allowed to influence ISRO.
On the other hand maybe ISRO will influence NASA & wewill get the best of both - super low cost missions with super advanced payloads :)
[+] [-] cjensen|11 years ago|reply
The problem is that the Powers That Be were not understanding about the failures inherent in trying crazy ideas out. So we went back to expensive spacecraft which were less likely to fail.
[+] [-] peeters|11 years ago|reply
Hopefully whatever form of cooperation they come up with lets India continue to operate mostly independently.
[+] [-] shas3|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swatkat|11 years ago|reply
And, NISAR Earth observation mission looks very exciting as well: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32478.msg12...
[+] [-] mturmon|11 years ago|reply
Earth scientists are already having problems dealing with contemporary data volumes, and NISAR really raises the stakes.
[+] [-] wilsonfiifi|11 years ago|reply
However this is great news and I'm sure the joint effort will speed up the tough task of uncovering the planet's secrets.
[+] [-] krylon|11 years ago|reply
But politics has kind of prevented that. For governments, space exploration seems to be more about showing off than about advancing science.
I hope that in the future, different countries cooperating on missions will become the norm rather than the exception. I know I'm being somewhat optimistic, but this article shows I am not being completely naive. Nice.
[+] [-] chelch|11 years ago|reply
It's just that you don't read much about this in the newspapers, because newspapers would rather make it look like there's a space race going on.
[+] [-] WWKong|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thearn4|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars
Hopefully, this kind of partnership doesn't get weighed down too heavily by the intricacies of international politics.
[+] [-] danielweber|11 years ago|reply
On the other hand, "international cooperation" is often the death of many projects, particularly space projects.
On the other other hand, it wasn't like NASA was about to do something huge and cooperation with India puts that goal at risk.
[+] [-] mturmon|11 years ago|reply
Your nested counterfactuals are a little hard to unpack, but if I understand you correctly, it is somewhat the contrary, at least with NISAR. (Oops, I added another counterfactual.) NASA was about to NOT do something huge and the collaboration enabled it happen.
That is, before it became NISAR, the Earth-observing biomass/seismicity SAR mission was called Desdyni (http://decadal.gsfc.nasa.gov/desdyni.html). This mission was referred to as desirable in a 2007 National Academies decadal roadmap (covering the next 10 years), but there were too many other even higher-ranked missions in the pipeline. So it seemed like Desdyni was not going to get on the NASA roadmap any time soon.
The Indian contribution seems to have (for the moment) been enough to get it going, because in February NISAR entered "Phase A" which is NASA-speak for "we are starting the mission". There are later decision points depending on how ready the overall concept proves to be.
[+] [-] teamonkey|11 years ago|reply
There are plenty of counter-examples. The ISS is an effort that spans the US, Canada, Japan, Russia and Europe (ESA). Hubble is NASA-ESA.
[+] [-] melling|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anupshinde|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] privong|11 years ago|reply
The agreement and mission are both good things, but I do not see how they will have much of an effect on human spaceflight.
[+] [-] tauslu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ps4fanboy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrianLee24|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] innguest|11 years ago|reply
I demand a refund.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|11 years ago|reply
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-key-differences-between-NA...
[+] [-] talltofu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nether|11 years ago|reply
dean of harvard
ceo of microsoft
ceo of pepsico
ny ag
1/3 of mckinsey
[+] [-] tn13|11 years ago|reply
Very likely US is going to put sanctions on Indian space research as soon as India declares its ASAT capabilities.