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ID: 169969

Research Viewpoint: India’s Human Spaceflight Program: Underlying Rationales / Reddy, Vidya Sagar

Reddy, Vidya Sagar	Journal Article
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced support for a human spaceflight program during his 2018 Independence Day speech. The target year of 2022 is when India plans to realize its first indigenous human space mission. Human spaceflight is a high risk activity and in many ways unaffordable for a developing country. Moreover, India professes that space technology is best utilized for aiding socioeconomic development and not as a tool in geopolitical competition and prestige. By assessing relevant developments, this paper argues that a variety of concerns and ambitions compelled India to consider a human space mission. The main actors are India’s political and scientific leaders who found support for such a mission in response to China and international prestige factors. Indian political leaders also saw an opportunity for improving their domestic political image. Further, the Indian Space Research Organization views human space missions as providing a new raison d’etre to the organization and helping it retain a skilled workforce amidst industrialization of satellite and launch vehicle development.

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Research Viewpoint ; India’s Human Spaceflight Program ; Underlying Rationales

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ID: 156288

U.S.-China space cooperation : balancing act between the U.S. congress and president / Reddy, Vidya Sagar

Reddy, Vidya Sagar	Journal Article
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There are a growing number of U.S. space scientists and managers calling for reinitiating cooperation with China in space. It is well-known that investigations of the U.S. Congress into various allegations involving China have resulted in a series of laws curtailing space cooperation between these two countries. By surveying the concurrent political developments within the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, this article attempts to reveal the domestic compulsions that propelled changes in the U.S. space policy towards China. The fundamental impetus is the power struggle and differences between the U.S. president and Congress in their perception of U.S. economic interests and national security in the context of space technology that strained these relations. Recent U.S. presidents who inherited this situation added to the discourse based on their own perceptions about outer space and China. These perceptions either found congruence with the policy of the U.S. Congress or led to finding ways to circumvent its legal restrictions. Based on these developments, it is concluded that the view of the U.S. president has alternated between necessary, desirable, and objectionable on the issue of U.S.-China space cooperation, and the U.S. Congress has thus shifted from supporting to restricting and then legally banning cooperation.

Key Words

U.S.-China Space Cooperation ; U.S. Congress and President

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