India Plans Moon Mission

The country of India is finally moving from being the outsourcing power of the planet earth to become a bona fide space power. They are going to go to the moon. Their first mission, named Chandrayaan-1, is an orbital mission designed to work in cooperation with the European Space Agency to map the chemical composition of the lunar surface, among other things.

Interesting. It was not long ago that I ran into an article about China's plans to put people on the Moon themselves. You see, there is a similarity between the two nations that strikes me: they both have millions of citizens and overcrowded cities that make NY City look like a country lane. In fact, India is going to have a population in a few years that will actually overtake China's. Well, they will unless India has another of their famous train accidents or two. That sets their population back a few thousand at a time. What India has in people it really does not have in terms of land. So the real question becomes "just how does a country move millions of people to the Moon?"

They must realize by now that the old method used by the USA just will not do. Three people at a time would mean that they would be moving people until the sun explodes. The shuttle approach is a little better, but that has not been better than low earth orbit so far, and if the Chinese get there first they will have the same problem with them that they do now. Huge armies of heavily armed Chinese Moononites just over the mountain range, and both powers would naturally take some of their nukes in case the Pakistanis decide to go to the Moon as well. I have seen pictures of the trains in India and China,though. They have people crammed inside, people literally crawling on the sides and tops of the train cars and folks clinging to the undercarriages. I figure they can use that methodology and where one rocket gets four Russians in space they could easily accommodate fifty. The nations have similar staying power. Both have huge populations that are used to getting by with three grains of rice and a fishhead a day. They can carry four weeks rations in their pockets. As to safety, well, there is safety in numbers I suppose. If you shoot enough rockets at the Moon, some of them are bound to get there.

The ramifications for planet Earth are enormous. What, for example, will Microsoft DO when their outsourcing moves to the Moon? On second thought, if you have ever tried to use their help line perhaps things won't change that much after all. The additional time delays will hardly be noticeable. However, with an international shortage of cab drivers and convenience store operators there will be an economic impact felt around the world. The United States and the UK will have to actually educate and hire their own native populations for programmers and engineers. Elephants will be in unemployment lines for the first time since the last Ice Age. But, on the Moon, it will be a cinch to get a Cab and buy some Slim Jims and a pack of cigarettes.