The space race in the 21st century

On October 22, 2008 India launched an unmanned spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, to the moon at the cost of $100 million.  On August 29, 2009 mission control lost all contact with Chandrayaan-1.  On August 31 after all attempts to reestablish contact with Chandrayaan-1 failed ISRO (The Indian Space Agency) abandoned the mission.

Is it right for the country with the highest number of undernourished people in the world (230 million)embark on such a costly adventure?

This is debatable.  In his article published by BBC News Pallava Bagla the Science editor for New Delhi Television (NDTV) and author of the book Destination Moon - India's quest for Moon, Mars and Beyond lists some very impressive achievements of Chandrayaan-1.  One could argue that a country like India shun all such adventures and devote all resources to feeding and developing its people.  On the other hand one could argue that the preceding sentence is a rather limiting one keeping India's undernourished people undernourished for decades.  One could argue that India as a developing nation by launching such satellites as Chandrayaan-1 which produced some impressive results before it failed, actually gets India and its capability for leading edge science and technology credibility which can be translated to accelerated economic progress which could translate to earlier liberation of its hungry population from their suffering.

So what does all of this have to do with the title of this post "The space race in the 21st century?"  It sets the context.  Two things in Mr. Bagla's article set me thinking:

1. "Did India ride on the shoulders of earlier successes (of other nations)?
   
   Certainly not, since the know-how and technologies to go to the Moon are just not available for the asking. Each nation has to learn on its own. India experimented and did that with complete success."
   

2. "The mission  ..... also permanently placed India's flag on the Moon.

   Having done this, India became the fourth nation to have done this after Russia, America and the European Space Agency.

   This is hugely significant because, if ever the Moon's resources are to be divided, India's rightful share can be claimed having achieved what others have not been able to do."

So let us analyze this in a global context:

1. Do we all people of earth need to share the resources of the moon (let alone resources on earth!) equitably or does that depend upon who plants a flag where?
2. There are 203 sovereign countries on earth. Does each country have to spend approximately $100 million each to place a flag on the moon in order to get a fair share of the moon's resources, duplicating work done by all countries before them?
3. Other countries like N. Korea and Iran claim to pursue ambitions of launching satellites while the world fears they pursuing intercontinental ballistic missiles.  Are we not encouraging them by parochial thinking and behaviour that promotes a race into space by individual countries?

There is only one answer to the problems that plagues us.  That answer is a Global, democratic, representative, elected government above all existing governments.  As I stated in http://www.weonepeople.com this is not going to happen by itself or by existing governments embracing each other.  It can only happen if people of earth - you and me - make it happen as described in the post "One World Government."