Slashdot Mirror
Indian Moon Mission to Have Landing Component
Anil Kandangath writes "Last month, it was announced that the Indian moon mission Chandrayan I would have a component that would land on the moon to function as an impactor. For all those who complain about India spending big bucks on its space program, The Scientific Indian has a list of updates about the space program's plans for this year which includes two cartography satellites, a satellite based 'total disaster management system', a few communication satellites and a satellite launch for the European Union."
Why is EU paying india to do it when they could use the Arianne rockets in france and keep the money at home..
Will code a sig generator for food
Plenty of people in the US have no job, no home and no health insurance. One could use a similar argument to advocate shutting down NASA until all US citizens reach a decent standard of living.
Personally I think space exploration is a worthy cause for mankind and see no wrong in diverting a reasonable level of funding toward it.
"How about putting the big bucks to help your own people?"
How about looking ahead a few years?
"Derp de derp."
Bleh. Why do people always argue the "big picture" concept against the allegedly "small picture" argument? It'll never get traction - it isn't ignorance stopping people from agreeing with you, it's indifference. How tangible is the notion of a "better" society? Bleh.
No, the argument is people starving and money spent on a space program being wasteful so address it as such. A NASA engineer requires a lot of expertise, and is employed, therefore the Indian equivelent very likely requires a lot of expertise and is employed. Said expertise requires higher education - you've just employed a professor or five. Said expert's income can go towards housing and food - you've just employed a carpenter and a farmer... yes. Noone is going to eat a space module, but the persons responsible for mining the materials to construct it are, as are the people who constructed it, support it...
Great Depression in the US was at an impasse because economic thinking before then was the immature cognitive process that produces the fallacy of immediate needs spending. Sometimes you gotta borrow money to make money ("You gotta spend money to make money." well if you've got no money...) - and on the scale of an economy, borrowing money is national jobs no matter how "crazy" - artists on government payroll, eccet.
the USA sent men to the moon in the middle of one of the most tumultuous decades in our nation's history.
"Think about when the UK finally gave up India as a colony. This left India in a very hard way economically"
The relationship between Britain and India is SO much more complex than this it's laughable. There's virtually nothing that India cannot do alone if it wants to, but they are pragmatists above all.
That was classic intercourse!
Not sure if you pose this as a straw man or not. But if NASA was closed down etc ,,, it would make NO difference. I don't know why people persist with this delusional thinking. That is not the way the world works, if you close down NASA the money will not go to social programs, and even if it did they would almost certainly be poorly thought out and be effectively useless. One could argue that these claims of mine are just supposition, but if you look at the last 50 years you see that it is pretty much the typical outcome. BTW, remember at the end of the Cold War and all the talk of the Peace Dividend? So were the 90s a golden age? Was world poverty cured? Q.E.D.
Bitter and proud of it.
Bollywood would do it better.
That was classic intercourse!
Wait a second, this is 101% wrong. India does spend money on poor. But as you know for spending money you need to generate it first. And no indian satellite program is used for "educational" purposes unlike western countries.
Now coming to Western countries, well in the name of free trade agreement all the western countries have done is to ensure that the latest technologies are so costly that developing countries are forced not to use it. The whole Drug patent thing that India had to subscribe to made our generic drugs costlier than what a person would earn in a whole months of work.
In terms of technology transfers it is pathetic even mundane things like a microwave oven is a thing of luxury for many Indians.
Talk about environment we have all the players like Mercedes, Chevvy, Hyundai, Toyota none of the companies give clean cars to India. If they do its cost is equal to 20 years of a common mans salary.
Moral of the story If the western counrtries dont help us we help ourselves.
I have had enough of crap about India.
It is time you all woke up to and figured out that USA is as bad as any other country.
We may have more illiterates than any other country in the world, but you forget that India also has the largest number of engineers. More Indians can speak English than there are people in the entire USA. Think about that.
We are not poor due to our stupidity. We are poor by design. Just a 100 years ago, we were the richest nation on earth. Then we were split up into two countries and made to go at each other's throat. The Indo-Pak cold war has cost us an entire civilization.
Our political system is bankrupt. Most politicians are plain goons. But we also have the vision to elect a woman to rule us. Every second President of India is from the minorities. How many black presidents, how many women presidents has USA had? How about a Jew for the Prez?
I find it very surprising that most of the posts talk about Indian Poverty. It certainly points to the assumption that money according to American values is what defines a person. That is simply not a simple truth for many places in the world.
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
Wow! All this concern for the welfare of the poor starving Indians on Slashdot! And yet, when an Indian programmer gets an outsourced tech job, supposedly "stealing" it from a good ol' American programmer who is thereby forced to live a slightly less affluent lifestyle, he's pure evil.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
It's great news that India is developing the next stage of their space program beyond simple payload to orbit missions. Soon Iran, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea will cut the legs out of that sector of the business so NASA, the ESA, Japan, India and Russia will have to find new venues for their space programs. Scientific missions to the moon as proof of concept programs for new technology are a great first step.
And yet, when an Indian programmer gets an outsourced tech job, supposedly "stealing" it from a good ol' American programmer who is thereby forced to live a slightly less affluent lifestyle, he's pure evil.
No, it is the executive who pockets the difference in salaries who is pure evil. The American gets to live the "slightly less affluent lifestyle" of being unemployed, an Indian gets a well paying for India but not so great paying for here job, and some person who is already wealthy beyond either employee's dreams gets another million dollar bonus for saving the company money.
My problem with outsourcing has nothing to do with Indians getting tech jobs. My problem with outsourcing is that it is just another way for money to be siphoned away from the lower classes into the hands of the extremely rich.
Concentration of wealth is what is hurting us, not offshoring. Offshoring is just the symptom of a system that we know is killing us but we can't seem to do anything about. Getting mad at the cheaper labour that replaces us is just misplaced anger.
The enemies of Democracy are
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Actually a moon program is not like building white elephants, unless of course one picks really hard places to build the elephants in. A space program of any degree requires engineers to face and defeat some of the toughest environmental engineering challenges around. Said engineers are then the best and brightest at a lot of tasks that do make good money (like oh say, making commercial airliners, designing communications satellites, building better cell phones, etc. The design challenge of making an electrical device capable of providing high quality sensor data on a bitterly frugal power budget with a reliability capable of operating months or even years without service in an environment of high radiation, large temperature extremes, and total vacuum gives an engineer design tools he can employee forever. It provides a foundation of talented, trained technicians able to work to the most exacting standards which then can go on to design and build far more mundane objects with the object lessons learned. And the mechanical, electrical, chemical, and process information you learn or create from doing this kind of work can have serendipitous application as well (Teflon being one of those oft quoted examples) Plus the prestige contributes to national pride and self confidence which translates to a positive to the consumer confidence factor which leads to stimulation of the economy through more buying. Big, showy achievements tend to create better press then simple small advances regardless of the actual merit of the achievement (Call this the P.T. Barnum rule of economics) Bookkeepers and beancounters may quibble about the actual merit, but these classes can not lead a nation to greatness, they can only sustain the status quo. I congratulate India on their program and wish them the best of luck, perhaps the competition will push my own country to get serious again with it's space program. GO India!!