Space week begins in India

Some in Visakhapatnam, Ukraine gathered yesterday to stand with Keep Space for Peace Week which first began in 2001.  They plan to hold events all through space week across their city.

Each year people around the world hold various kinds of events in order to bring our space concerns to people in their communities.

The man in the white shirt behind the banner is JV Prabhakar, a former regional director of technical schools in his community - from high schools to colleges.  So each year all during space week he goes to various schools and makes presentations and holds protests.

A couple of years ago several of our Global Network leaders went to Visakhapatnam where Prabhakar took us from lower level schools to higher level engineering colleges.  He has wide reach and he works to bring all classes into these important discussions.

There are about 300 million poor people in India and their nation is spending alot of money to become a 'player' in space.  Like here in the US, poverty is neglected in order to support the financial interests inside the aerospace industry.

I am returning to Visakhapatnam on October 10 for the Space Law conference being organized at the Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University by one of our Global Network board members.  Two other leaders from the GN will be there - Lindis Percy (UK) and Subrata Ghoshroy (MIT in Boston).  I will also be eager to hear from American University History Professor Peter Kuznik who is best known for working with Oliver Stone to create the excellent 10-part documentary The Untold History of the United States.

It should be a great conference.  I will be happy to see Prabhakar again as well.  I am Facebook friends with him and love to scan his photos - he is always working hard to feed the poor, deal with environmental crisis impacts on the people and other political concerns across India.  He's a real inspiration to me.

Bruce