(The Space Review) India has long shunned manned spaceflight, given its expense and limited practical applications, the only exception being the flight of Rakesh Sharma on a Soviet-era Soyuz mission in 1984. However, in November a panel of Indian scientists and other officials (among them Sharma), endorsed a proposal to develop a manned spacecraft that could be launched by an upgraded version of India’s existing Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). The program, according to an ISRO statement, would cost 100 billion rupees ($2.2 billion) over eight years: a not-insignificant sum for an agency whose current budget is around a half-billion dollars a year.
India probably realizes that unless they seriously consider sending their own citizens into space, there will be no emotional attachment to the stars, at least enough to justify the program.
With other nations drawing up plans to colonize the final frontier, it would be silly for India to simply focus on "robotizing" the cosmos that surrounds us.
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You can either visit the stars or watch them from afar.
But if you choose the former, you'll definitely get a better view.
~Darnell Clayton, 2007
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