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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."
Allow me to translate:
[...] which includes two spy satellites, a satellite based 'total spy management system', a few spy satellites and a spy satellite launch for the European Union."
Hellooooo, the U.S. never landed on the moon. I strongly doubt India will ever have any success either.
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.
Even a failed mission can function as an impactor.
I'm sure this is just the first step to outsource NASA to India.
"Bangalore, we have a problem..." - "Please describe your problem." - "We are leaking oxygen" - "Try restarting your landing computer" (Yes, I know this mission is not manned)
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
"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.
First it was the 2Mbit/s for $2.30USD now its the Moon landing Mission
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the USA sent men to the moon in the middle of one of the most tumultuous decades in our nation's history.
This article talks about plans to introduce telemedicine through satlellites. This move , if successful could have far-reaching effects in India , especially since even basic healthcare facilities are out of reach for many in rural India. What is also commendable is that organisations using this for social good would not be charged for the service
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.
The real reason people from the US complain about this is that Americans think they own space.
Unemployment in the U.S. holds at a steady 5% (give or take), which is far better than even in the EU. In India, by contrast about 300 million people, or 29% of the population, live on less than a dollar a day. (Note that the entire U.S. population is about 280 million.) These are the people who do have jobs. The government was able to count 40 million workers who cannot find jobs at all. While this makes for an impressive 3.8% unemployment rate, as mentioned above, many jobs pay very poorly. The conditions are so bad that as many as 3,000 Indian farmers in a single state (Andhra Pradesh) have killed themselves over the last six years because of debt and drought.
This is not to say that India should not be building a space program. Indian universities produce more than 1.5 million graduates each year. There are nowhere near enough jobs to employ all these people entering the workforce. India's tech industry employs only 1 million people total. Industry and grand capitalistic vision will help to produce jobs.
Capitalism is not a zero sum game. India's "pie" is increasing rapidly and will continue to get bigger. Its economy is forecast to grow 8 percent this year. India is already home to thousands of millionaires and nine of the world's richest billionaires. By the way, another name for rich people is "employers." That's good news for the lower classes.
The sad reality is that there is no quick fix to India's massive poverty, space program or not. India has more people in poverty (we're talking literally dirt poor) than any other country. It's been that way a long time, and it's not going to get better by scrapping a space mission.
If priorities are your concern, consider this: Indian teenagers spend $3 billion a year on fashion accessories. And you've heard of Bollywood, which churns out twice as many movies per year as Hollywood. But then again, if Indians were to restrain spending on fashion accessories and movies, those industries would shrink, and many Indians would lose their jobs. Consumerism is the engine of wealth.
There are many things hindering India's progress. The people speak hundreds of languages; religions and customs also vary wildly by region. It is like several countries within a country. Its population of 1.07 billion is both a blessing and a curse; it is a reservoir of great potential, but right now, it is dragging the country down because most are uneducated (or undereducated) and poor.
Source: "India Surprises," The Commission, November 2004, pp. 30-35. (printed magazine article contains more information)
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.
EUA has giving more attention to Brazil on the Satellite Vehicle Launching, because the base of Alcântara is so near the Equator line reducing the use of gas to launch the roquets.
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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.
Only in Soviet Russia they own space.
Also only old people in Korea don't launch their own satellites.
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
p0 asks WTF is a crore?
It's from the (older) Indian counting system, A crore equals 100 lakhs; a lakh equals 100,000. So a crore is 10,000,000. In dollar terms, a crore of rupees is approximately $233,000. So a 384-core project is around $90 million. Not a big chunk of change here, but pretty big in context.
To get an idea of the purchasing power equivalent (not the rupee equivalent according to the conversion rate), just multiply a $ amount by 10. So, an outsource engineer earning $6000 per year in India can live like one earning $60,000 in the USA and possibly better.
Thus a 384-crore project would be "equivalent" in cost to a $3.84 billion project here. But NASA would not be able to do a moonshot for that amount.
Drill baby drill - on Mars