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Indian Mars Probe Successfully Enters Sun-Centric Orbit
New submitter palemantle writes with this excerpt from The Hindu, updating our earlier mention of the successful launch of India's Mars-bound probe: "In a remarkably successful execution of a complex manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) fired the propulsion system on board the spacecraft for a prolonged duration of 23 minutes from 0049 hours on Sunday. In space parlance, the manoeuvre is called Trans-Mars Injection (TMI). ISRO called it 'the mother of all slingshots.' Celebrations broke out at the control centre of the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore from where the spacecraft specialists gave commands for the orbiter's 440 Newton engine to begin firing. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, is designed to demonstrate the technological capability to reach Mars orbit. But the $72m (£45m) probe will also carry out experiments, including a search for methane gas in the planet's atmosphere."
Countdown to a flood of unfunny, racist Indian call center jokes...
This is in now way India-specific; but "I'd better shore up my battered sense of importance by getting my foot on the other guy's neck" seems to be the response that crops up to the sensation of vast, cosmic, insignificance as often as some nobler sense of kinship with your fellow gravity-well-dwellers.
I don't exactly like the fact; but when being better in some absolute sense isn't an option, we frequently turn to finding somebody to be worse, as though that's a substitute.
If all countries wait to end poverty, corruption and inequality "issues", before researching space or anything else, it won't ever be done. India does a LOT of things wrongly, but in this it is on the right track, unlike US, which keep cutting funds from NASA in name of trying to fix social problems that strangely keep getting worse and worse the more money the government apply on them.
This project cost 70M$. that is 5.8c per Indian.
If this rocket inspires 20-50 million Indian poor children to study harder at school, learn Math and be an Engineer, then this project has a FANTASTIC value for the country of India.
I suspect this is money extremely well spent to inspire masses of children to take destiny in their own hands and rid themselves and their family of the poverty trap, by believing that an ordinary Indian child can do something extraordinary in the village, town, city, state and planet
I just ran 3 IT seminars in 3 Australian cities - all three had 50% participants from India - why, because Indians aspire to Math, Engineering, and Australians aspire to be sport heroes, lawyers and slackers, while their government wins an election on "Turn back the refugee boats" and "Kill the Carbon Tax". Where are their inspiring projects?