Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 221 posts

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#71

Post by easytiger »

suyash wrote: post #68
easytiger wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the country already acquired all that via globalisation. This isn't 1952. There are few walls up on many technologies. India has acquired most of its know-how by undercutting developed nations and getting them to teach them how to do the work.

Lol, you must be joking, in fact it's the opposite. It's majority of Indians who are doing cutting edge research and innovating just look at what's going on any day in Silicon Valley or any top Universities. Now they are starting to do the same in their country while being creative with lost cost solutions.

And the acquisition of those skill sets come from the west working with them. Science isn't a closed shop anymore.

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#72

Post by sidlls »

saagarjha wrote: post #13
tanakachen wrote: post #5

I’ve been to India, and seeing the catastrophic living condition of the majority of its citizens makes me question if going to the moon is the right priority.

The United States had plenty of homeless people when we went to the moon, perhaps we shouldn’t have?

I don't have a strong opinion about this, but your comment isn't really comparing apples to apples. The levels of poverty and poor living conditions in modern India are worse than we had in 1950s America.

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#75

Post by voxadam »

Kaiyou wrote: post #59
marmada wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why will going to the moon make it harder to improve people's standard of living in India? I wasn't aware that it was such a zero-sum game.

It's an effort in spending wealth, instead of creating wealth. Since the country has a problem with poverty, effort should be directed towards creating wealth. It's mostly an issue with perception.

The US has a problem with poverty; should they eliminate NASA?

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#76

Post by astazangasta »

lewisjoe wrote: post #36

Folks who suggest dealing with poverty before launching machines to space: the economy doesn't work like that, FYI. If a country acquires deep technical know-how on engineering, it means the country can use it to spin out new industries and export that utility. That is how a country makes money. After world war II, Germany didn't give away all the remaining money to war survivors. They built rock-solid airplane engin…

Space enthusiasts are always trying to sell their fetish with this line, but the fact is that technology development is not some generic facility; if you develop technology devoted to getting things up into orbit, it will basically give you the expertise to do that. It doesn't, say, develop your semiconductor design, biochemistry, medicine, agriculture, or whatever else your country might need. It basically helps you build weapons, the main reason people get so excited about rocketry. This is the last thing India needs.

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#77

Post by Tialco »

sidcool wrote: post #65
Kaiyou wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day what is needed is to create wealth, not to spend it. Spending wealth while lots of people in the country are living in poverty in a way, that doesn't directly address this problem may come off as having the wrong priorities. This is about perception.

Space is an excellent opportunity to create wealth and provide employment. So your argument is still wrong.

Are you joking? Have you seen the amount of space ventures that have gone bankrupt? Try and start a rocket company and go look for funding. It's a terrible opportunity to create wealth in the short term (10/20/30 year timespan). However, in the 30-50 year timespan, it seems like a terrific opportunity to create wealth (perhaps rivaled only by nuclear fusion) if we can work our way up to sustainable/reusable rockets and colonies on Mars/Moons. If we can get asteroid operations set up and start exploring the rest of the solar system (and eventually the galaxy) then we can have a society without scarcity.

The main problem is, we will all probably die before we see the benefit (instead we'll see losses). So, how do we value the lives of posterity in comparison today.

I find it ironic how the same people who use the "think of the children" argument the most are also the most against investing in space exploration.

My bias is also that we should value posterity the same as we value humans alive today. But then again, we still can't even agree on the basic question of whether a life in Africa is worth the same as a life in the United States.

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#78

Post by easytiger »

sanxiyn wrote: post #69
easytiger wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the country already acquired all that via globalisation. This isn't 1952. There are few walls up on many technologies. India has acquired most of its know-how by undercutting developed nations and getting them to teach them how to do the work.

Some knowledge only can be learned by doing. Also, space technology is, due to its close tie to missile technology, one of those few modern technologies with walls up.

What are you talking about? India has Nuclear weapons and self made 12k km range ICBMs already

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#79

Post by rronalddas »

sidcool wrote: post #65
Kaiyou wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day what is needed is to create wealth, not to spend it. Spending wealth while lots of people in the country are living in poverty in a way, that doesn't directly address this problem may come off as having the wrong priorities. This is about perception.

Space is an excellent opportunity to create wealth and provide employment. So your argument is still wrong.

Also I would like to add, the govt has now a made a private corp called New Space India Limited, which will help in commercialization of tech developed by ISRO

Re: India is sending a rover to the moon, and the country is pumped

#80

Post by tanakachen »

tanakachen wrote: post #5

I’ve been to India, and seeing the catastrophic living condition of the majority of its citizens makes me question if going to the moon is the right priority.

Note to the downvoters: They automatically assume I said it’s not worth it. But actually I simply said we should question it, meaning consider it from all sides.

Is analyzing things before during and after making decisions no longer an acceptable thing to do in 2019?

Post reply on HN