Absolutely true -- India and Russia have *loads* of talent that could be happily put to work doing this kind of thing. But, in aerospace realms, tech transfer issues always get very sticky. It's a sure bet that exporting a hypervelocity gun to India, for example, would be a major headache. So would exporting the technology for fabricating hypervelocity impact-resistant sheilding. See what I'm getting at?

I know that comparisons between the aerospace and semiconductor industries are often overdone, but I really think that one is in order here. America would NOT be the current world-leader in computer technology, if their manufacturing (and even some of their R&D) hadn't been exported to places like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. There's absolutely NO reason why we shouldn't do the same for space technology. The paranoid will argue, as they already have, that "rockets can kill people; computers can't." Which is a big load of BS. It takes rockets AND computers to kill people, and computers are the hard part. :-)

Cheers,

Nathan.