Off it goes.......











(Courtesy: NASA)

Well.. Well.. Well..NASA after a looooong and costly investigation of the failed Columbia mission, successfully launched Space Shuttle Discovery and it has also successfully docked with the International Space Station. For the past two days, it has been fun to watch NASA Live TV where the action is shown live right from the chatter talk between the Shuttle crew members and Ground Control, and some knowledgable commentary by NASA PR people. It is literally awesome to see earth from the perimter of the Space Shuttle. Good job NASA for the great images..
Well, after all the ravings lets start the ranting. The mission is not without its grey area. In contrast to NASA's overconfidence on the external fuel tank's insulation, a chunk of insulation did fall off. This has severly dented NASA's confidence with the safety of the tank and so the safety of the Shuttle crew, thus ground the future (foreseeable) missions to a screeching halt. It is highly surprising that even after NASA knew that it wont be able to completly correct foam shaving problem from the external fuel tank, all it did was to just patch up the faults in the foam coating design and not totally re-design the entire fuel tank. Its easy to say that it all boils down to dollars, as the tank is reused and it is cheap to just refine what we have than redo from scratch. But if NASA doesnt fix the foam problem, it is highly unlikely that the Shuttle program would continuue or would be used to its fullest extent before retiring it in 2010.
Coming to the next point, has the Shuttle program lived upto its expectation in the last 25 years. If one compares the overhyped Shuttle with clanky Russian Soyuz, it would be crystal clear that Soyuz has a better safety record and much cheap mode of transport between earth and space station. If that is the case, why NASA still sticks with its risky Shuttle design? First EGO, that Americans always design a better product.. Its bullshit.. Even a first year Mechanical Engineering student would say that during renentry path the lesser the amount of space area exposed to heat, the better chance of shielding from it and returning to earth safely. Soyuz fits as a glove to do the job of shuttling the astronauts and supplies back and forth and safely bring them back home.. It is clunky, small but due to its compact nature has less area to be shielded from renentry burning. While, the US shuttle are beautiful to see and has large space, but it is one of the most complex thing ever built by human being and most flimsiest. Most people dont know that the tiles used in space shuttle are so flimsy that it cant even land back on earth when it is drizzling.
The ISS program is being boasted as a joint collabration program involving a dozen countries. For the success of the program and for the advancement of science, let hope that NASA put some logical thinking and be rational in whatever it does.

Statesmen in India - Do they need a quick visit to an eye Doctor?

Well. I should first thank my friend Sowmya for instigating to start blogging again and it was also great to read her painstakingly written blog on Saivaite saints. Bravo !!
As I was thinking about a topic to blog on, two prominent things came on to my mind. The first one on issues about occupation and profession. I am saving on to that for now, as I think I still have to read some more papers to have a indepth understanding of the concept. The second one that flashed across is about China and India.
In the last 1 year every news paper, journal article or magazine article seems to be incomplete without allotting a single column on the topic of India vs China. For example, in the latest Forbes magazine article on Oil prices projects India and China to be the reason behind the increase in Oil Prices. "The bullish case for oil stems from a growing world economy - you know, china and India - that will ensure increasing demand and stock propelling earningss". It seems true on the base level to say that both India and China have been growing tremendously. For true, they have been growing at 7-8% for the last decade. But the issue which most of us seem to forget that it is an unreasonable comparison being made between them. Even though, the growth rate is comparable, are we talking about comparable economies. No we arent. Take for instance, China has forex reserves to the amount of 750 Billion US dollars and India just 110 Billion US dollars. In order to have a 8% growth like China, India has to grow at a rate of 20% per annum , which is impossible and unthinkable. But how come 2 countries which were comparable in 60's have become totally incomparable in the span of 40 years. I would say the majority of burden lies on the lack of visionaries in India. Unlike China, whose premier has the foresight to see his country in long term, India has been plagued by more of short term rusted politicians than visionaries. Even though India greatly benefitted from visionaries like MS. Swaminathan and Vallabhai Patel in 50's and 60's; it came to a screeching halt then. We lost steam and locked ourself in cucoon for the next 40 years. It had to take a luminary like Manmohan to kick start in 1991 and a global disaster like dot com bust to take the Manmohan initiative to the next level. But if we think that India is in a perfect position to take on China now, I would suggest you to think 20,000 times before it. Right now everyone in India thinks India is doing great because of the BPO boom and all. But the ITES sector just contributes in single digit percentage to Indian GDP. Whereas Chinas GDP is fuelled by wide rage of sectors right from IT, ITES, manufacturing and all. On the onset of the 21st century I think the Indian think tanks have realized the old adage "Dont book all your eggs in a single basket". It is visible from the heavy dis-investment work going on in India and the opening up of markets right from Aviation to retail sector. But does it suffice to just open the sector. Once, again the lack of foresighted visionaries handicaps India here. Whats the use of have aviation pact with countries and having mushrooming low-budget carriers without having proper infrastructure. I think all Bangloreans would endorse to the state of Bangalore International Airport. It still is in the drawing board 2 years after being awarded the contract. It is shame to know that the Airport Authority of India is just now thinking of having an automatic baggage handling facility for 10 top airports. What about other airports in India like Trichy or Madurai or Pune? It would be worthwhile to look at developed nations and how they did it. USA invested lots of money in airport and roads in the 50's and 60's parallely when it the respective sector booming and things were done at rapid pace. In India, the word rapid sticks only with the paper and doesnt go anywhere.
The other glaring example for the lack of foresightedness of Indian leaders is WTO-Cloth export cap. When the developed nations took the cap off in Jan 2005, do you know who benefitted the most? Bingo China. Just for numbers sake, look at this. Their increase in export to USA (in any segment of clothing - underwear, swimsuit, sweaters) rose to 200-400%. This happened within the first quarter of 2005. In the same time, exports from other countries like India rose in very modest numbers. Why this dispartity? Do you think that dumping of clothing from China happened overnight? We all would remember the late Murasoli Maran and his acts in WTO 2002, when he inked the export cap pact. All the nations had approximately 3 years for the D-Day i.e., Jan 2005. But who won? Only China, who used the time wisely to improve the infrastructure and create redundant manufacturing, yarns, shipping facilities and just switched it ON in Jan 2005. Whereas, in India, it seems we started taking note of the banishment of export cap only from Jan 2005 and started building the infrastructure. I was totally apalled by a news article in Hindu (dated 21st July 2005), which quoted an industrialist in Tirupur (manchester of India) being happy about the bank approving his 1 crore loan to buy a new spinning machine in addition to the new one he bought a couple of months back.
Well, the two examples I quoted are a drop in an ocean. What we need in India is someone who can think in the long term and who can lead India without red tape.
Chal..... thats it for today..shall rejoin in the next edition with my thought on Youth in India.