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Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

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Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#111

Post by chdir »

someperson wrote: post #85

(I posted a similar comment a few months ago.[1] To be clear I have nothing against the India, its space program or its achievements, but it's impossible to discuss the low price of the mission without discussing the elephant in the room) There is clear lack of sterilization techniques being used on the ISRO spacecraft. This is clearly visible in the public photos and videos. NASA spend a great deal of time and steri…

@someperson : Disagree with you again as in the comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7964499

You are making vague assumptions and supporting with unscientific proof. Using phrases like "there is clear lack" or "clearly visible" etc. doesn't make your assumptions true. What's funny is that you are picking up random pictures from media and using that as evidence. There's

The official word from ISRO is that they comply with 'planetary protection' requirements. "ISRO said the spacecraft was built according to the planetary protection implementation requirements specified for ‘orbiter’ category of missions." SOURCE : http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/mom....

Some articles speculate about the rigorousness but can't confirm. Implying it doesn't exceed them doesn't equate to skipping the sterilization. Besides, it's carrying satellites from developed countries (France, Germany, Canada & Singapore), which I doubt would be complicit in creating an international controversy.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#113

Post by noselasd »

pravda wrote: post #41
zizee wrote: post #24

Why do people always pass judgment on spending on things they don't agree with as if the money is destroyed. It's not like they pile all the cash onto the rocket and send it to space. Let's just forget for a moment that valuable skills and infrastructure are being created for India in this process and look at where the money is going. A large proportion of the expense of this mission goes to paying the wages of domes…

>A large proportion of the expense of this mission goes to paying the wages of domestic scientists and engineers in India. >This money will in turn get taxed and spent by the recipients and pumped back into the local economy. Your fallacy is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

If you're equating that to the broken window fallacy, you're saying that this space mission is among the worst use of the money that was spent - I don't think many would agree with that.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#114

Post by donw »

tcheard wrote: post #77
donw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Projects like this generate huge amounts of value for a country -- not only because they help to push money around the economy, in terms of salaries and invoices paid to rocket-building companies -- but also in terms of the skills gained by everybody that works on the project, as well as the international capital of being a spacefaring country. Right now, launching satellites in the US is a pain in the ass,…

Do you mean ITAR ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_R... )?

Ah, yes. Brain-keyboard interface appears to be a bit wonky today.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#115

Post by cbeach »

anigbrowl wrote: post #107
bmmayer1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there's no zero sum here Government spending via redistribution is absolutely zero sum. Every dollar spent by the government into the economy is one dollar taxed out of the economy. Money that is given to some has to necessarily come from others. Just because the benefits are concentrated and the harm is spread out doesn't change the fact that you've only taken money from A and given to B. No additional wealth…

Government spending via redistribution is absolutely zero sum. But you are mistakenly assuming that all government spending is redistributive, as if the only thing the government did was transfer payments. Government also provides services (sometimes by contracting out to the private sector) and invests in physical capital (likewise).

-Everything- that the government provides is paid for by taking money out of the real economy.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#116

Post by ptaipale »

kesava wrote: post #55
r00fus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like they scored a goal for humankind.

The wrong world cup. In India, it means the Cricket World Cup.

But unfortunately, nobody (outside the British Commonwealth) understands the scoring anyway.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#117

Post by mattlutze »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #72
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of astonishing to call it perpetual motion, when there really is an enormous multiplier at play. Money is not like mass: it can be created and destroyed; one of the primary roles of central banks is to create and destroy money to stabilize the economy. Moreover, 'zizee is talking about something even more powerful. Space programs can act as huge multipliers on an economy. A country's economy is sort of a cl…

> But there's no zero sum here Government spending via redistribution is absolutely zero sum. Every dollar spent by the government into the economy is one dollar taxed out of the economy. Money that is given to some has to necessarily come from others. Just because the benefits are concentrated and the harm is spread out doesn't change the fact that you've only taken money from A and given to B. No additional wealth…

I'm not sure whether the parent commenter meant "zero sum" in a pure fiscal sense or as a descriptor of productivity/capability/something-not-money.

Yes, a dollar taken from someone and given to another is a net null. But when we consider scale and efficacy of large organizational actors, perhaps we notice the potential of these tax dollars. It's not just the individual line A to B that must be considered. It's A to Gov to B.

I can't fund high-capacity battery research the same way the government can. I'd need to find, say, 10,000 other folks to throw $100 into a pool that we could give to a researcher to fund her experiments. She hires help, does work, maybe something comes from it. But,

How do we know she's using our money as intended? How do we know she's producing results, and the quality of those? How do we select her from all the other applicants?

Well, let's hire an auditor to check that the money is being used appropriately. Then, we need other folks in her field to confirm for us that her research is productive. We'd also need those experts (or others) to help in the technical review of her proposal against other proposals to select the most beneficial one.

Interestingly, it all starts to look like a bureaucracy. Because that's ultimately what a government, in all its spite, ends up providing -- a shared set of resources through which a society can effect greater change as a whole on itself than it could individually.

I'm sorry that your experiences and epistemology lead you toward contempt for such an apparatus, but please recognize the benefits and net-positive effect, particularly to science and engineering, such an organization has demonstrably provided.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#118

Post by [deleted] »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #72
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of astonishing to call it perpetual motion, when there really is an enormous multiplier at play. Money is not like mass: it can be created and destroyed; one of the primary roles of central banks is to create and destroy money to stabilize the economy. Moreover, 'zizee is talking about something even more powerful. Space programs can act as huge multipliers on an economy. A country's economy is sort of a cl…

> But there's no zero sum here Government spending via redistribution is absolutely zero sum. Every dollar spent by the government into the economy is one dollar taxed out of the economy. Money that is given to some has to necessarily come from others. Just because the benefits are concentrated and the harm is spread out doesn't change the fact that you've only taken money from A and given to B. No additional wealth…

[deleted]

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#119

Post by Sven7 »

kamaal wrote: post #97
sid1992 wrote: post #87

Go to ISRO's website and look at the starting salary for an engineer. Even for the most paid fields there it is not more than 40000 rupees per month or roughly 650 dollars

I was downvoted very badly yesterday for just saying ISRO engineers were paid less. Actually comparatively even compared to many Indian IT professionals salaries of these folks is actually low. Most people don't realize how low it is until you start comparing yourself with people of your same age some 10-15 years in to your career who are working with other software companies. Any decent IIT grad joining something li…

And yet they have reached Mars :)

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#120

Post by gorekee »

zizee wrote: post #24

Why do people always pass judgment on spending on things they don't agree with as if the money is destroyed. It's not like they pile all the cash onto the rocket and send it to space. Let's just forget for a moment that valuable skills and infrastructure are being created for India in this process and look at where the money is going. A large proportion of the expense of this mission goes to paying the wages of domes…

The question is: will the society as a whole benefit more from money spent by scientists and engineers or from a better health and education system. I think this is a "win win win" situation for a specific range of wealthy people and not the society at all.
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