In a technical milestone for the world's largest democracy, India launched an unmanned moon mission today. But but by joining the very few nations that have taken this leap, India severely undermines its claim to be a "rising nation," and thus subject to lighter burdens for emissions reduction than other developed nations.

While it may be easy to view tougher carbon emission reduction targets as an unfair burden on a nation that still struggles to keep social services up to speed with its economic growth, escaping the Earth's atmosphere and going to the moon open tremendous opportunities for clean energy production. The space race led to massive developments in fuel cell technologies during the 1950s, while orbital power plants offer dramatic increases in the reliability and amount of energy produced by solar.

Additionally, future expansions in India's manned space flights will allow refinements in technologies for sustaining life and creature comforts with a minimum of power consumption. The lessons learned outside the atmosphere can be transferred to ensure life below it remains possible.