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India to launch Mars mission this year: President

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#31

Post by kamaal »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #29
kamaal wrote: post #27

For all those curious in this thread. And For those wondering what benefit this can possibly serve. There is no cold war like situation here in India. Also US and Russia have already been there. There is also a huge problem of poverty, corruption and every other social evil known to man exists in India. So why go to mars? For a country of India's size, you will never ever go to space if you wait till all other proble…

Wait, 454 crore is 83 million dollars? That _is_ amazing! That's like 8 pebble watch projects on Kickstarter. "An engineer is someone who can do for $1 what any damn fool can do for $2". India has a ton of great scientists and engineers, and I agree this is a mission the nation should be proud of.

Chicken Feed ain't it.

What's more the moon mission(Chandrayaan-1 http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/faqs.htm) cost just $76 million.

Its sequel Chandrayaan-2 is budgeted to cost around 425 crores(News sources).

Here is one more link, ISRO's total budget is JUST 3% that of NASA - http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-03-03/india...

Next time around you will be hearing US government outsourcing its space projects to India :) [That was a joke, obviously]

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#32

Post by [deleted] »

kamaal wrote: post #31
xyzzy123 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, 454 crore is 83 million dollars? That _is_ amazing! That's like 8 pebble watch projects on Kickstarter. "An engineer is someone who can do for $1 what any damn fool can do for $2". India has a ton of great scientists and engineers, and I agree this is a mission the nation should be proud of.

Chicken Feed ain't it. What's more the moon mission(Chandrayaan-1 http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/faqs.htm ) cost just $76 million. Its sequel Chandrayaan-2 is budgeted to cost around 425 crores(News sources). Here is one more link, ISRO's total budget is JUST 3% that of NASA - http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-03-03/india... Next time around you will be hearing US government outsourcing its spac…

[deleted]

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#33

Post by jacquesm »

I'm a little skeptical here. It's easy to announce a Mars mission, it's a little harder to actually achieve the goal.

For a country that has not yet achieved manned spaceflight at all Mars seems to be picked for publicity reasons more than practical reasons. It's good motivational stuff but that usually backfires when the goal is eventually not achieved. I hope they will do this, I believe they will not, and the dates mentioned reinforce that belief.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_human_spaceflight_progra...

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#34

Post by InclinedPlane »

jacquesm wrote: post #33

I'm a little skeptical here. It's easy to announce a Mars mission, it's a little harder to actually achieve the goal. For a country that has not yet achieved manned spaceflight at all Mars seems to be picked for publicity reasons more than practical reasons. It's good motivational stuff but that usually backfires when the goal is eventually not achieved. I hope they will do this, I believe they will not, and the date…

Did you read the article? This is an unmanned Mars mission. I believe India is more than capable of pulling of Mars orbiter mission.

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#35

Post by rikacomet »

jacquesm wrote: post #33

I'm a little skeptical here. It's easy to announce a Mars mission, it's a little harder to actually achieve the goal. For a country that has not yet achieved manned spaceflight at all Mars seems to be picked for publicity reasons more than practical reasons. It's good motivational stuff but that usually backfires when the goal is eventually not achieved. I hope they will do this, I believe they will not, and the date…

see, the point is why send humans for missions that robots can do, what is the point of sending humans+oxygen+supplies for them, when you can have a lifeless machine perform whatever you need. See this is one of the reasons, manned missions are only being done by those approaching space for colonization. India's objective is not that.

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#36

Post by rikacomet »

Pretty old news for me, I first heard of it (and I reckon ISRO doesn't make announcements if its not already sure) after the chandrayaan mission a year or so ago.

But what is funny is the view of people towards ISRO's space missions. See a lot of trolls would start talking about poverty, malnutrition, etc etc in India, whenever such news is announced.

The two point they don't see is:

1. Technology is not a object that you can go out and buy, investment always comes at price and a risk, but you never know what you will find, and what are its applications, if you think of it otherwise.

2. Similarly, India, is just another country, racing towards socio-economic development, and people are not happy with meeting 10 year old benchmarks. So, when we will achieve certain standards, others (developed countries) would have already moved ahead, and in this race we would be both driving at same speed. This is where scientific discovery/research comes in. Until and unless we device a way to cut short the chase, we will never come par with the developed countries.

This is what estonia understands, being a african country, its both behind, developed countries like US, and developing ones like India. So it recently decided to go 2 steps ahead, and go fully electric for its car industry. Sadly, which is something India doesn't understand. But you get the point.

What is being spent on India's space program, is only a fraction, compared to what is being spent on these real problems people are talking about, so stop complaining or go back to stone age!

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#37

Post by rikacomet »

Tichy wrote: post #13

Is there any point in countries doing that alone, rather than global cooperation?

Who said, ISRO's missions are completely cut off from the world, if you search a little, there is a lot more of cooperation in space fields today, than any other field.

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#39

Post by InclinedPlane »

spraveenitpro wrote: post #2

what about educating children in the vast slums of Mumbai... what about water supply to the villages afflicted with famine..

There will always be some excuse to avoid exploring, avoid scientific research, avoid creating art. There will always be a hungry mouth to feed, a diseased body to cure, a cold and lonely person with no home. And it makes sense to put a lot of resources toward such things. But it doesn't make sense to be consumed by them. To stop advancing, stop exploring, stop learning, stop growing, stop having fun, etc. India will only be spending something like 0.04% of its annual national budget on this Mars mission. That seems like a small price to pay for the benefits to national morale and inspiration it's likely to bring.

Re: India to launch Mars mission this year: President

#40

Post by test001only »

kamaal wrote: post #27

For all those curious in this thread. And For those wondering what benefit this can possibly serve. There is no cold war like situation here in India. Also US and Russia have already been there. There is also a huge problem of poverty, corruption and every other social evil known to man exists in India. So why go to mars? For a country of India's size, you will never ever go to space if you wait till all other proble…

Yes and India needs to balance the expectations of the poor and at the same time the middle class youth. These kind of stuff hopefully might inspire and prevent brain drain.
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