Mangalyaan Successfully Put Into Mars Orbit

knwny writes: India's Mars satellite Mangalyaan was successfully placed into orbit around Mars early on Wednesday following a 10-month journey from Earth. India thus joins the U.S., the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union in having successfully completed a Mars mission. It is, however, the only one to have done so on the first attempt. Headed by the Indian space agency ISRO, Mangalyaan was made in 15 months at a cost of just around 74 million USD — the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken.

Comments

Need to point this out

[Taco Cowboy]

I have nothing but admiration to ISRO for what they have achieved

My only problem is what you wrote:

If anything, the brain drain consists of India's best and brightest relocating to the US after having studied in the near-free subsidized taxpayer funded colleges and universities in India. They typically go to the US to do their masters and PhD and then some of them join NASA

I do have business dealing with India, and I do regularly meet my business acquaintances in India, and I know, for a fact --- that so-called brain drain has actually benefited India

How, you might ask?

Those who emigrated abroad and working in America / Europe do accumulate knowledge / experience in whatever they do there, and, --- this is very important --- when they go back home, for visit (many of them still have families back home), most of them do pay courtesy calls to their own friends working inside India, and when that happened, technology transfers happen, and that event happens very very frequently in India

Many of the "tricks of the trade" that have been picked up by the Indian industry (including ISRO) came from the courtesy call from their friends / former classmate who work abroad

Of course, what I have described above isn't limited only to India, the same thing happens in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and even in Russia and China as well

The "brain drain" in a way, do offer a "reverse channel" that enables knowledge to flow back to home countries