India's First Manned Spaceship

Space.com link

BANGALORE, India -The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), with help from Russia, hopes to join the ranks of nations capable of independently launching astronauts into space around 2015 and has revealed the designs for its first orbiting crew capsule.

very interesting, it looks like India is serious about Space. With millions of new highly skilled enginners each year, I just wonder what could stop them? I wish them good luck !

STY

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[edit on Wed Feb 11 2009 by Jbird]

I'd be surprised if the Indian goverment can pull this off in the time frame mentioned. In my ecperience, there are 2 India's. The India that most of it's inhabitants believe in, and that the west has called an emerging nation for decades, and the real India. Real India has a reletivly small middle class, and an educational system that consists of many schools that are litlte more than diploma mills.

This is not meant to bash India- they are headed in the right direction. I mearly mean to say that western media seems to believe they are a little farther down the developmental trail than they actually are.

I was around during the first space race, and I'm loving this one, but about 40 years later.

So far we have the USSR, America, they dominated for years.
China is a new player.

Now there are so many with aspirations of going to space.

India announced their intent today.
Japan has aspirations to be able to access the ISS KIBO facility on their own.
ESA wants to be able to get back and forth without depending on others.
Brazil is also working towards being able to do manned launches and has good facilities.


Then you get to the private sector, and the grants NASA is handing out to companies that show promise to be able to service NASA in the future.

Virgin Galactic should be interesting, but unless they can go orbital it won't be a money maker. People will want to orbit the planet and spend some time playing and looking out the window. A few minutes of zero-g just won't cut it in any long term business plan unless it's cheap and they can fly a thousand people a day.

Lots of other private firms are in on getting to space, wanting to build space hotels, even talk of bases on the Moon.
Long term, and with multi nation support, trips to Mars.

It should be very entertaining to watch it all unfold....