PEN-L message, [Pen-l] Central planning?

To be honest, I do not fully understand the meaning of the term "central planning". Is NASA central planning? What if they sourced their parts and even research from diverse entities? Confusing stuff (to me).

A long time ago, on LBO talk, Doug noted (and I paraphrase, no doubt very badly) that while Indian and Chinese development was built on a serious techno-scientific base, Russia had nothing of that sort but instead its recent wealth (at that time) was purely based on oil. I will not spar with the man on the data: he is undoubtedly right about the oil factor. But what I did point out to him was that I could hardly agree with his idea that [the status of] India's science and technology was superior to that of Russia/Soviet Union. As children, only when we were done solving the problems in our school-mandated mathematics or physics textbooks and similar Western texts, would we even consider approaching the lovely Russian equivalents that no Western Iron Curtain could block from us.

And as a reminder of what was accomplished by this giant, I offer this bit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144

The Tupolev Tu-144 (NATO name: Charger) was the world's first supersonic transport aircraft (SST, with its first flight preceding that of Concorde), constructed under the direction of the Soviet Tupolev design bureau headed by Alexei Tupolev.

A prototype first flew on 31 December 1968 near Moscow, two months before the similar Aérospatiale / British Aircraft Corporation Concorde. The Tu-144 first broke the speed of sound on 5 June 1969, and on 15 July 1969 it became the first commercial transport to exceed Mach two, and it was at the time the fastest commercial-type airliner.

Maybe central planning doesn't work for call centers and "BPO"? ;-) (I kid because I can... its like using the N word).

--ravi

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