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

Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

nextbigwhat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 162 posts

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#71

Post by mknits »

iamshs wrote: post #41
kamaal wrote: post #26

Those people claiming ISRO does it at a shoe string budget, because they reuse yes they do. But we are talking of a factor of more 10 here. Let me put facts on ground. Go and visit any ISRO campus in India. See the kind of offices they work in, they kind of food canteens they eat lunch at, they kind of buses they travel in and take a look at how much they are paid. I assure you will be shocked. In fact shocked will b…

To be frank, nobody is really complaining in the comments. Btw on twitter three trends are for this mission: MissionMars, SriHariKota and ISRO.

One more - #Mangalyaan

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#72

Post by barrkel »

bolder88 wrote: post #30
pavs wrote: post #19

Every time India space programs discussion comes out a group of people will bring up India's poverty and other problem that should be fixed instead of investing on space program. I used to be one of those guys (I am from Bangladesh), then I looked at the actual cost of this space program and realized that its not a lot of money (~$70 Million) even by India's standard. For example, in india's domestic cricket tourname…

One of the bigger questions is international aid. "Since 2007 India has been the world's largest recipient of recorded remittances from abroad. In 2010 these inflows were worth $54bn (£35bn). UK foreign direct investment in India is considerable, reaching £1.8bn in the same year." You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at bein…

I need to start making a note of the assholes on HN so I can avoid them in future.

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#73

Post by golergka »

kamaal wrote: post #26

Those people claiming ISRO does it at a shoe string budget, because they reuse yes they do. But we are talking of a factor of more 10 here. Let me put facts on ground. Go and visit any ISRO campus in India. See the kind of offices they work in, they kind of food canteens they eat lunch at, they kind of buses they travel in and take a look at how much they are paid. I assure you will be shocked. In fact shocked will b…

Russian space program was in similar conditions for the past 20 years. I have a couple of former classmates who graduated from one of the best math high schools and math universities in Russia, got great grades, won programming competitions and now work as low-level embedded C hackers, writing firmware for space chips. (It seems like the two of them are making every career decision together — they even played wow with characters 'malloc' and 'calloc' side by side.) They earn about a third or a quarter of their "market value" and do php web development on the side to get some money, but have no desire to change their jobs, because they love what they do.

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#74

Post by pavs »

bolder88 wrote: post #30
pavs wrote: post #19

Every time India space programs discussion comes out a group of people will bring up India's poverty and other problem that should be fixed instead of investing on space program. I used to be one of those guys (I am from Bangladesh), then I looked at the actual cost of this space program and realized that its not a lot of money (~$70 Million) even by India's standard. For example, in india's domestic cricket tourname…

One of the bigger questions is international aid. "Since 2007 India has been the world's largest recipient of recorded remittances from abroad. In 2010 these inflows were worth $54bn (£35bn). UK foreign direct investment in India is considerable, reaching £1.8bn in the same year." You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at bein…

As everyone has already mentioned, remittance is not international aid. This is very weak. Last time I checked, India asked UK to stop giving them aid (I could be wrong).

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#75

Post by pavs »

discardorama wrote: post #57

Every single time India does something in Space, the bigots come out from the woodwork: but India is so poor! Let them solve poverty/hunger/education/water/toilets/ice-cream first, and then worry about space. When JFK pledged to put a man on the moon in 1961, the US did not even have the Civil Rights Act[1]. Millions of blacks lived in poverty, and were denied basic rights. Schools were segregated. In large areas of…

I don't think most of them are intentionally bigoted they are most likely poorly informed.

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#76

Post by stevoo »

xmonkee wrote: post #46
anupshinde wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, I would have simply agreed with what you said. (and what you said is true) But! Stop complaining at this one moment. And take a look at the achievements of this country's people. They don't have world's best food, world-class infrastructure and not enough money to hire world class talent either. Probably they have world-class corruption in the country. How many countries achieve this after having these man…

>They don't have the world's best food Strongly disagree. We really do. But yeah I generally agree with your post.

Maybe not the best, but pretty close ... in my visit to India, i totally loved the food. One of the vastes cuisines both in taste and quantity !

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#77

Post by sateesh »

lmm wrote: post #64
sateesh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> is that space programs everywhere have good luck superstitions, many of them making less sense than a religious ritual. Why so ? How does a religious ritual makes more sense than good luck superstitions ?

Religious rituals tend to have a more developed sense of internal consistency, and a framework or at least a rationale that makes several different rituals fit together. Simple good-luck superstitions tend to be more ad-hoc. (All IME)

As I see it rituals are set of elaborate steps involving a lot of ceremony, where as most of superstitions are usually in form of pithy aphorisms. A lot of ceremony doesn't necessarily mean consistency, though it might give a semblance of being so.

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#78

Post by ithkuil »

bolder88 wrote: post #30
pavs wrote: post #19

Every time India space programs discussion comes out a group of people will bring up India's poverty and other problem that should be fixed instead of investing on space program. I used to be one of those guys (I am from Bangladesh), then I looked at the actual cost of this space program and realized that its not a lot of money (~$70 Million) even by India's standard. For example, in india's domestic cricket tourname…

One of the bigger questions is international aid. "Since 2007 India has been the world's largest recipient of recorded remittances from abroad. In 2010 these inflows were worth $54bn (£35bn). UK foreign direct investment in India is considerable, reaching £1.8bn in the same year." You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at bein…

> You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at being spacemen.

Even if India needed/wanted international aid (see other comments) we are talking about investing 1/1000 of that money into giving jobs to skilled engineers and scientists (and others). Helping poor countries doesn't mean just feeding poor people, it means to give the possibility for development.

I find very offensive treating international aids as if recipients are helpless beggars that deserve that should be grateful and stay put.

I believe this is the bigger question about international aid. It should enable development, not increase assistentialism.

There are similar parallels with internal welfare systems in many countries. Help shouldn't be cut off as soon as someone reaches the limit of poverty, because there is little incentive to cross that barrier.

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#79

Post by arkj »

xmonkee wrote: post #46
anupshinde wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, I would have simply agreed with what you said. (and what you said is true) But! Stop complaining at this one moment. And take a look at the achievements of this country's people. They don't have world's best food, world-class infrastructure and not enough money to hire world class talent either. Probably they have world-class corruption in the country. How many countries achieve this after having these man…

>They don't have the world's best food Strongly disagree. We really do. But yeah I generally agree with your post.

We might have world class food (thanks to FCI's rathouses) but for sure that ain't reaching 600 million. The logic runs thus, they've got no place to shit, so why they need food.

Hat's off to those who stay back in this crazy country and strive hard to lift this sunken ship, and for sure the ISRO folks are among them.

Re: Mangalyaan, India’s First Mars Mission

#80

Post by DanBC »

anupshinde wrote: post #39
kamaal wrote: post #26

Those people claiming ISRO does it at a shoe string budget, because they reuse yes they do. But we are talking of a factor of more 10 here. Let me put facts on ground. Go and visit any ISRO campus in India. See the kind of offices they work in, they kind of food canteens they eat lunch at, they kind of buses they travel in and take a look at how much they are paid. I assure you will be shocked. In fact shocked will b…

Generally, I would have simply agreed with what you said. (and what you said is true) But! Stop complaining at this one moment. And take a look at the achievements of this country's people. They don't have world's best food, world-class infrastructure and not enough money to hire world class talent either. Probably they have world-class corruption in the country. How many countries achieve this after having these man…

> How many countries achieve this after having these many "core" problems.

It is a great feat! It's confusing to me how India can plan something like this, but cannot fix the problem of buying train tickets. I've heard that the queues can be quite long.

But it is exciting to see India sending things into space.

Post reply on HN