Amerika

SRIHARIKOTA, India (Reuters) – India launched its first unmanned moon mission on Wednesday following in the footsteps of rival China, as the emerging Asian power celebrated its space ambitions and scientific prowess.

Chandrayaan-1 (Moon vehicle), a cuboid spacecraft built by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) blasted off from a southern Indian space center shortly after dawn in a boost for the country’s ambitions to gain more global space business.

India’s national television channels broadcast the countdown to the launch live. Some scientists thumped their chests, hugged each other and clapped as the rocket shot up into space.

Greeted with patriotism in the media, the launch appeared to have distracted India from an economic slowdown, collapsing stock prices and outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence.

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India and China, two countries which can’t afford to feed their respective populations, are somehow finding money (likely from the US in the form of borrowed, soon to be worthless dollars and foreign investment), and have now made the jump into space.

This is a perfect symbol of our dystopic future: money being spent on insanity like space missions while people starve. I’m all for learning as much as possible about the universe, but first we should fix the problem with our over-regulated, pseudo-capitalist democracies around the world. Since the US has stuck their nose in everyone’s business, it’s the unfortunate reality today that news like this affects us all. If the US reined in its empire around the world, we wouldn’t discuss socialized medicine and inefficient, bureaucratic social welfare programs.

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Tags: control, democracy