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

101–110 of 221 posts

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

#101

Post by lewisjoe »

easytiger wrote: post #61
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…

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.

Is it? Agriculture is the country’s major occupation, yet it imports rice polishing machines from switzerland.

Indian market is one of the fastest growing smartphone market. Yet the biggest players are Chinese, Korean or American.

Railways has been the primary source of connection across the country and within cities. Yet metro trains are made by Japan and european companies.

In the cities IT services are the main source of economy, yet India never shipped its own microprocessor until very recently.

I can go on, but you get the point. Having a vague idea of how to do something vs shipping a world class product are two different things. What’s happening with the moon mission is the latter, though at a very beginning stage.

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

#103

Post by kmallen »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #93
tanakachen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect your perspective, but based on your answer I’m assuming you are not living in poverty?

Neither are you.

I think the poster's point was that NONE of us here are poor, hence this is a very different discussion than if we involved that poor part of the population. Not only is the poor fraction of the population huge, they would also have a very different take on whether the space program is worth it.

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

#104

Post by Gys »

Something in the line of 'Making America|India| Great Again' I guess.

Good for them. Personally it helps me (living very comfortably in an European country) not to feel any guild reading articles like https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/asia/india-water-cr...

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

#105

Post by wozniacki »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28
Robotbeat wrote: post #8

Awesome. The more the merrier. India will become an economically powerful nation just like China is today. Just a matter of time.

> Just a matter of time No, it’s not. The middle income trap is treacherous. I am optimistic for India. But there will be struggles and sacrifices; ascendency is far from inevitable.

Could you elaborate on this middle income trap?

Have other nations fallen victim to this trap, in the recent past - say 30-50 years or so?

I fully agree that ascendancy or primacy is far from inevitable and am generally far less optimistic than you , in these things.

But could you shed light on what sorts of factors prevented a nation similar in its growth spurt from continued growth?

What kneecapped them?

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

#106

Post by denzil_correa »

Chathamization wrote: post #83
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…

This reminds me of the excuses for spending billions of dollars hosting the Olympics. "All the infrastructure improvements will help the locals!" Well, yes, but if infrastructure is your goal there are a lot less costly ways to go about it. I'm sure a country that decided to build an underwater amusement park would end up acquiring some technical know-how on engineering, but that doesn't make that a practical goal.

Life is not linear. You have a proportion of your budget to spend on moonshots (literally). Developed countries can spend more while less developed countries spend a lesser proportion on such moonshots. It’s up to the respective country to decide where they’d like to spend their proportion on. In this case, India decides this mission.

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

#107

Post by easytiger »

lewisjoe wrote: post #101
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.

Is it? Agriculture is the country’s major occupation, yet it imports rice polishing machines from switzerland. Indian market is one of the fastest growing smartphone market. Yet the biggest players are Chinese, Korean or American. Railways has been the primary source of connection across the country and within cities. Yet metro trains are made by Japan and european companies. In the cities IT services are the main so…

The UK used to know build how to most those things, indeed invented them; they now buy them from abroad. Globalisation and the economics thereof dictate that.

India to some degree skipped a step on the way. Much like central and rural African countries skipping broadband and going straight to mobile internet.

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

#108

Post by dahart »

astazangasta wrote: post #76
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…

I wish this comment was less baited. If your argument is true and strong, then you don’t need to dismiss it as fan behavior or call it a fetish.

Your argument is also demonstrably weak. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

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

#109

Post by scotchmi_st »

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…

The thing that irritates me more than anything about the argument that sending people to space is a bad idea is the unique bias people have against space technologies.

No-one ever says "We spend billions on Football; let's spend it on poor people instead", or "We spend billions on the music and film industries, let's shut those down and instead tax everyone for the average entertainment spend and send the proceeds to developing nations". Or defense for that matter.

Hell, you hardly even hear people say that about other, dubiously cost-effective science projects like the LHC.

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

#110

Post by kmallen »

blinkingled wrote: post #94
tanakachen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So how much do you think the Indians are spending on the space mission, how much of it should be taken away and applied towards poverty elimination and how exactly do you see that working? Hand over the money, build toilets, food rationing, power availability - all of that they are doing in parallel to their space program and those aren't things that just magically disappear by throwing more money at them. This is fa…

> So how much do you think the Indians are spending on the space mission, how much of it should be taken away and applied towards poverty elimination and how exactly do you see that working?

All very good questions. I think the act of asking them is more important than merely stating that the space program is either worth it or not worth it.

Post reply on HN