India Brings Back Orbiting Satellite to Earth

bharatm writes "In a pathbreaking event heralding its arrival as a space power with capability to recover an orbiting satellite, India today successfully brought back a spacecraft to earth, giving a new impetus to the proposed manned mission to space in the next decade."

Comments

Serves that satellite right

[Merkwurdigeliebe]

for having such a lofty attitude... Anyway, what did they mean by "home-built" rocket when they said:

A 550-kg recoverable space capsule that was launched by a home-built rocket on January 10 returned to earth's atmosphere

Does it mean "home" as in homecountry=India, or home as in someone's backyard?

Priorities

[udderly]

I was in India last year; the poverty and malnutrition in the outlying areas is simply heart-breaking. Worse than anywhere else that I've been. Call me old-fashioned, but before a gov't starts acting on all of their world-stage aspirations, shouldn't they feed their citizens?

I guess that one could make the case that India's space program is an investment in the future, but I wouldn't want to be the one to try to sell that to people who don't have enough food.

Re:Priorities

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Money is definitely not a zero sum game. Infact we have been manufacturing money for many centuries now. Manufacturing money without creating underlying wealth leads to inflation. But we know that we have been creating wealth, whether you measure it by current dollar, rupee value or by constant dollar/rupee value or in non monetary terms like square feet of constructed building, miles of roads or acres of irrigated fields. No sir, money/wealth is not a zero sum game.

Your argument about misplaced priorities, spending resources on space/nuclear program when millions of Indians are starving, has been around for a long long time. Even USA's NASA program came under the same criticism. It has its roots in the old socialistic ethos where equal distribution of poverty was desired more than unequal distribution of prosperity. Glad finally India is also coming around the view, that prosperity is better than poverty.

India has to become the leading edge on a few fields. No one country can dominate all fields, and definitely not India. It can even play cricket well or win an olympic medal. But if India finds a few niches where it can thrive in the global economy and bring home the moolah/bacon/bread/dough it will benefit all, including the poor who everyone is claiming to be sympathetic to. So you should see the investment in space program as an investment to find a tech niche in a growing field, the nuclear program as an investment against the invaders who have been pillaging India for centuries. India has suffered enough investing it all in butter and nothing in guns. In India v2.0 it will do well, I hope.

Re:Priorities

[mdwh2]

What is it about space stories (whether it's the US, or elsewhere) that always brings out the "Won't somebody think of the poor?" comments?

I knew I'd see something like this as soon as I saw this article - and indeed, two comments in the top ten posts.

Why do people not make the same charitable "Think of the poor" suggestions for other things? Most notably military spending, but Governments spend all sorts of money on things other than helping poor people. No one complains then. Indeed, usually you get the opposite response - "Why should I have to pay for poor people?"

Re:Priorities

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Improving communications is so important for the agriculture sector. So many poor Indian farmers harvest their perishable crop and bring it to the market to sell at market price manipulated by the local agents/middlemen. Knowing what is the price in the town 15 km to the south vs the price in 14 km to west will mean a difference of 30% in revenue to the guy tending a half acre plot growing eggplants.

One of the interesting side effects of the cell phone explosion in rural India is that these farmers negotiate deals with big city wholesalers directly and skip one, two or sometimes even three levels of aggregators. Savvy farmers are cutting out the commissions to the middlemen by a large extent.

Of course weather prediction is another huge factor for Indian agriculture.

Re:Priorities

[Cervantes]

I was in India last year; the poverty and malnutrition in the outlying areas is simply heart-breaking. Worse than anywhere else that I've been. Call me old-fashioned, but before a gov't starts acting on all of their world-stage aspirations, shouldn't they feed their citizens?

I guess that one could make the case that India's space program is an investment in the future, but I wouldn't want to be the one to try to sell that to people who don't have enough food.

You know, I was in the USA last year, and the poverty and malnutrition were heartbreaking. Millions of people with no health insurance, 1 in 10 citizens below the poverty line, hundreds of thousands of people living in the streets across the nation. Isn't it about time the gov't got their act in gear, and started taking care of their own citizens instead of acting on their world-stage aspirations?

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

The Indian space program has been pretty active since the past 50 years. It seems to me (and I have no concrete proof of this), that the focus of this program has been:
1) To develop the technology and to build satellites first. Starting with communications satellites, and expanding to weather and remote sensing (used to map resources of a geographic area).
2) To develop the technology (rockets) to send these satellites to space
3) To develop the technology of reentry vehicles (manned capsules etc.)
I am inferring this on the basis of the investments being made first in developing satellites (which were till recently launched, at great cost, on Russian and French rockets ), and are now launched on Indian rockets at a much lower cost.

To answer your statement about 'feeding the people', I think that the satellites are helping to do that. Communications satellites are used to broadcast educational programs, weather satellites are linked to storm warning systems and shelters and the remote sensing satellites monitor the resources (land and ocean) in the country.

At first glance, it may seem that money spent on such systems are a waste of valuable resources. It is only when we calculate the cost savings and the benefits in the long term, does the actual value of such investments really become visible.

I hope this small explanation helps.

Reentry Technologies

[quark1943]

Wikipedia has a pretty good page on reentry technologies. Not that trivial to get all the systems perfected! A developing country like india needs this impectus to excite younger generation about science and space.

Re:Katrina Re:Priorities

[nomadic]

Shouldn't US have rebuilt New orleans and Missisippi devastated by Katrina before jumping into the Iraq War?

Yep. I think most people here are not going to argue that the Iraq war is worth the expense.

Each nation has its own priorities, and while you spout an altrustic question, the same was true in 1969 when UJS landed a man on moon.
The poverty in US at that time was high enough.

No, it wasn't. I think parent's argument isn't that you have to completely wipe out poverty, but that the level of poverty in India is so bad that a space program really is a waste of money. The poverty in the US in 1969 is still exponentially less than in modern-day India.

Re:Regarding Outsourcing

[peragrin]

You missed the point. I shall attempt to point it out to you.

Today Japanese manufacturing is top of the line, with high quality low cost components. Japanese cellphones are two generations more advanced than anything you can buy in the States.

In the 1970's japanese cars were a joke. by the 1990's japanese cars were the top selling vehicles.

It's the year 2007, indian products are considered a joke. What will those products be like in 10-20 years? it might take india longer than japan, but it is coming.

Re:Sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is originally from India and she works in the IT field. We know many, many people "back home" who are earning annual salaries of well over a million rupees. It's ridiculous (considering the overall cost of living) the money IT companies are willing to throw at an experienced professional.

This is anecdotal evidence based on people I know, but if you want something empirical just google "salary survey bangalore" ... it's not hard.