Cowboys and Indians

This was a game we used to play when we were young, whooping and chasing each other around with toy guns and bows and arrows my father had made out of willow from the nearby spinneys. I always wanted to be an Indian because they were more glamorous and I was concerned that all the westerns on television showed them as savages who deserved to be killed as soon as possible.

Roll forward to 2008 and a different kind of Indian. India is sending up an umnanned rocket to explore the moon in the name of science. This may also be glamorous and an exciting element of the country's national identity. No Indian is being sent up with it so perhaps they don't now deserve to die quite so quickly.

But haven't the cowboys already done this? Is there really much that NASA doesn't know about the moon that the Indians are going to discover - or is that not really the point? They are talking about future collaboration which I suppose is the ultimate camp fire resolution of different cultures and intents. But if they're going to do that, why spend a mere $80 million, that could presumably have transformed the lives of so many Indians, in order to get to a 'level' playing field?