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."
Hellooooo, the U.S. never landed on the moon. I strongly doubt India will ever have any success either.
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.
I'm sure this is just the first step to outsource NASA to India.
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 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.
Not for a long time... India and the UK had a bit of a rocky divorce, true, especially with the whole partition thing, but they've got on very well since then. Have you seen how many fighter jets the Indians buy from the UK? And how many vindaloos the English devour?
ESA is separate from Arianespace, so European missions fly on rockets of all nations. Mars Express was launched on a Russian rocket, Huygens piggybacked on an American probe... A lot of European satellites do fly on Ariane rockets, Ariane being a very cost-effective option, but there's no exclusive contract going on.
You're probably right that the EU and India might be interested in closer cooperation, though... India wants to become rich, and an increase of trade with the EU would certainly help; meanwhile, the EU is already enormously rich, but doesn't have the global influence to go with it in the way the USA does. Alliance between Europe and India would certainly help both.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.