
Mythbusting India's Mars Mission - denzil_correa
http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Mythbusting_Indias_Mars_Mission_999.html
======
jlgreco
One thing that space exploration detractors seem to have a difficult thing
comprehending is exactly what happens to money spent on a space program.
Seemingly, they are under the delusion that all that money gets stuffed into a
rocket and blasted into space, never to be seen again.

Of course the _material_ cost of the rocket stages and probes/satellites is
quite small, the _vast_ majority of money spent on space exploration is _spent
on earth_. Paying earth engineers earth dollars that they will in turn spend
on earth. That 25 Billion USD Apollo program? That money didn't get sent to
the Moon, damn near all of that money was spent _in America_.

Hell, think of it this way: India needs satellites, so they can either dump
money into another country that will build and launch those satellites for
India, or they can dump that money back into India and develop those
capabilities themselves. How could you possibly fault India for keeping their
space money domestic?

~~~
bcoates
How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a
good thing _in and of itself_?

There's an argument that it's the best possible thing they could be doing, or
that India's space program is extremely cost effective, etc. But an
expenditure is a loss not a gain--otherwise we could make ourselves rich by
breaking all the windows in the world.

~~~
jlgreco
> _How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a
> good thing in and of itself?_

Well, I didn't say that it is, I just argued that it wasn't a negative thing.
Wealth was not destroyed or sent away to some far off land, just shuffled
around within the same country.

I will say that it is now though: One of India's greatest assets is their
production of quality engineers and scientists. The more money they can dump
into engineering and scientific endeavors, the better. Unlike breaking windows
and then replacing them with identical windows, programs such as these
_actually create something_ : experience and expertise.

In evoking the broken windows parable, you are mistaking a rocket for a
window. Space programs do not destroy wealth to move money around. Perhaps if
we senselessly knocked down a few buildings every time we built a rocket, you
might have a point; space programs aren't "cash for clunkers", we aren't
destroying wealth (old cars) to encourage the exchange of money (buying new
cars).

~~~
mikeash
Wealth _was_ destroyed and sent to some far off land, specifically to space
and to Mars.

The wealth is not the money, it's the spacecraft.

The return may well be worth the cost, but it's wrong to say that wealth was
simply moved around within India. _Money_ was moved around within India.
_Wealth_ was concentrated into a small package and then blasted into space,
never to be seen again.

~~~
jlgreco
_" the vast majority of money spent on space exploration is spent on earth."_

The wealth, or money, represented by the physical spacecraft is a rounding
error. The thing isn't made of gold bullion. Wealth was used to develop and
exercise engineering talent. Wealth was _converted into_ talent, not a
spacecraft. Those engineers were not sent to mars, some largely
inconsequential piece of metal was. The wealth remains on earth, in India.

If I spend money to take a bunch of CS classes at community college, then at
the end of that do `rm -rf ~/files/school/cs`, did I just delete wealth? _Of
course not._ The wealth was not concentrated into that directory, it was not
lost or destroyed when I sent it off into oblivion.

~~~
auctiontheory
_did I just delete wealth? Of course not._

Exactly. Because you were well-trained to protect yourself with aliases.

Now if you'd done '\rm <etc.>', it would be another story.

~~~
jlgreco
Who uses aliases to prevent the deletion of directories?

The directory of source code created during my education is not something that
wealth was poured into. Wealth was poured into _my brain_ , that directory is
just a byproduct. If I, and all of those engineers, technicians, and
scientists, gave ourselves brain-damage, _then and only then_ would all of
that wealth be destroyed.

~~~
quinnchr
Well, you could argue the labor theory of value, and since that directory
consumed your labor it theoretically has value. Does it have value to anyone
but you? Probably not.

~~~
jlgreco
It would have _some_ value to me, but not much in the grand scheme of things.
I don't look at that directory and think _" Welp, that was [X]-grand well
spent"_, because just getting that directory wasn't worth many thousands of
dollars to me. That's not where the wealth represented by all of those
thousands of dollars went, so the wealth represented by all of those thousands
of dollars cannot be destroyed by deleting it.

~~~
quinnchr
I agree, I'm really just arguing technicalities here. The majority of your
labor went into acquiring the knowledge, not writing the code in that
directory. But that directory still holds value, however minuscule it may be,
and it is still being destroyed.

If I deleted that directory I would think "Welp, that was [x]-hours of time
well spent," which is where it derives it's value* not from the money I spent
on my education.

*That is, of course, if you ascribe to the labor theory of value.

~~~
eru
And the labour-theory (or labour-definition) of value is not all that useful.

~~~
quinnchr
Speaking of not all that useful...

------
speeder
This remembers me of the sad incident of Brazillian Sattelite Launcher
explosion (that killed 21 engineers and flattened the launch pad)

Lots of people around the world (including inside brazil) went: "Oh, brazil
cannot do that stuff anyway, also why it is expending money in that shit
instead of building x, or y"

It made me very sad, for example I bet most of these people don't know Brazil
relies heavily on sattelites to control forest fires, find illegal logging,
mining and farming, find uncontacted native americans that need protection,
and so on...

In a country that is just huge, specially in relation to government resources
and population, it is essential to use cheap tools to manage it, and
sattelites are quite cheap in that regard (or people really think it is
cheaper to fly up and down every square inch of forest with helicopters?)

------
thex86
Someone commented on Reddit that space programs bring us (the human race)
closer. The reaction I am seeing in the international press to India's mars
mission is quite the opposite - instead of praising India or just reporting
the news, all I see is "BUT THEY ARE SO POOR!" and skepticism. I don't want to
say this, but I felt journalists were being almost "jealous" that India
achieved this.

~~~
mayanksinghal
I think the scientists involved would be totally fine with skepticism about
technical decisions that they have made on such missions. I would argue that
they might even appreciate it when it comes from people who actually
understand the subject (instead of having knowledge worth one wikipedia page).
But what might discourage them (and disappoints me, for being a citizen of the
country in question) is the lack of trust that is being put in space
exploration and petty cost-benefit analysis being used. The same analysis that
has been refuted a million other times on hundreds of other occasions in all
countries and continents.

~~~
kamakazizuru
yup - I totally dont understand this - why does no one apply this cost-benefit
analysis when the US goes to pointless wars for years on end - spending
literally TRILlIONS - for something that will have very limited positive
outcomes. Especially given the poverty in the US itself - the number of
homeless people and foreclosures.

------
narrator
As long as we're talking money and priorities: The budget for the film Gravity
was $100 million dollars. Sending this Indian probe to Mars cost $69 million
dollars.

~~~
melling
Yes, but Gravity has earned over $218 million dollars so far so if they had
made Gravity, they'd now have their money back plus another $200-$300 million
dollars. Bollywood should make a few American films every year or so. Where's
the Pixar of India?

A better argument might be that a country needs to develop other industries
and gain certain expertises. There's no point in having all the IIT's, if
people have to leave the country to use their abilities. Space, rocketry,
satellites, etc are upmarket skills.

~~~
DanBC
> Bollywood should make a few American films every year or so. Where's the
> Pixar of India?

What?

Indian cinema gross box office for 2011 was $1.1billion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_cinema](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_cinema)

> India is the world's largest producer of films.[23][24] In 2009, India
> produced a total of 2961 films on celluloid, that include 1288 feature
> films.[25] The provision of 100% foreign direct investment has made the
> Indian film market attractive for foreign enterprises such as 20th Century
> Fox, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures[26][27] and Warner Bros..[28]

~~~
melling
I think that you completely missed my point. I understand that India makes the
most films. What I'm saying is that they should diversify into the American
(or global) market and make another couple billion a year.

Animation is probably the logical place. It's not the quantity of films, but
the quality.

Bollywood does makes some great movies, of course:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots)

Here's what Hollywood makes:

[http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-
hol...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-hollywood-
earn/)

It looks like they get around $10 billion US and $25-$30 billion
internationally.

So, in the big scheme of things, a billion dollars is less than the Avengers
made at the box office.

~~~
r00fus
This kind of reasoning would lead to silly suggestions like that Apple should
invade Microsoft's market and create OSX for non-Apple

Companies and Industries often don't compete with other ones when there's a
significant enough barrier to do so (or not to do so). There's a huge and
rapidly growing market in India, why would Bollywood look elsewhere without
increasing it's take of it's own market?

I posit that Hollywood better look to Bollywood for it's growth potential -
the middle-class in India is growing, while the US middle class is in decline.

~~~
melling
Hollywood is already looking overseas. They get most of their profits from
foreign ticket sales. They are even changing the way films are made to get
into the Chinese market, for example. In short, they are thinking global.

Anyway, if Bollywood doesn't want to think global, I'm ok with that. Someone
else will seize the opportunity.

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230421390...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304213904579090803470556012)

~~~
xerophtye
From what i understand, Bollywood is catering ever more to their own
population as opposed to the global population. There really isn't any global
market for super-human cops is there now? But movies like those are on the
high rise in India. Its because that's the thing the indian people love. And
with one of the largest populations in the world, they feel that there's no
point in catering to the global market at the cost of the money gained from
indian viewers.

Btw, in other threads people are debating whether it's a good idea to spend
money on space research, and here we are telling them to spend money in movies
instead? What gives?

~~~
melling
I originally wrote 2 paragraphs. If you read them both, I also discussed the
upside of space research.

------
jccooper
If anyone is interested in the off-hand claim made in the article about ISRO
being one of the few organizations to return a satellite to Earth:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experime...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experiment)

SRE-1 was launched and landed in Jan 2007. It was a small sat with aeroshell
and parachute for reentry, with water splashdown.

Reentry has been done by: NASA, ESA, Russia, India, China, Japan, and SpaceX.
Reentry is mostly for manned spaceflight, which was the driver behind the SRE
mission. ISRO has ambitions in this direction, though the manned program seems
to be on the back burner now.

(There are other uses for re-entry: planetary exploration and sample return,
mostly. But getting to other planets or getting samples from somewhere
interesting tends to be pretty hard. Older spy sats used to re-enter their
data payloads, but that's not needed anymore.)

~~~
swatkat
Yes :) ISRO will be testing SRE-2 next year[1]. Ground tests of a crew
module[2] are underway; hopefully orbital test would be done in GSLV Mk III in
another two years[3]. Human space flight might be delayed (2020?) due to
budget constraints, and also GSLV Mk III should be "human rated" first.

I think ISRO gets an unfair treatment when they take up such forward-looking
projects.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experime...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experiment_II)

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO_Orbital_Vehicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO_Orbital_Vehicle)

[3][http://newindianexpress.com/nation/Manned-expedition-
hopes-r...](http://newindianexpress.com/nation/Manned-expedition-hopes-rest-
on-GSLVs-shoulders/2013/10/31/article1865523.ece)

------
justanother
One caravel and four carracks, carrying 270 men? A westward route to Asia?
Senhor Magellan, why should we waste the Crown's treasury, when so many
suffer?

------
misnome
Clearly the money could be better spent working out new ways to kill people
remotely from an armchair on the other side of the planet.

I'm sure once they have eliminated all poverty in their country, like the US,
and then worked out the whole remote killing thing, they can continue on
trying to do "Science" and "Advancing the state of human knowledge".

~~~
mahranch
"Clearly the money could be better spent working out new ways to kill people
remotely from an armchair on the other side of the planet."

You jest, but space is the new way to show off your nation's military prowess.
It not-so-subtly shows competency with ICBM technology. North Korea did just
that when they attempted to display their latest ICBM tech to the world by
"launching a satellite into space" a few years ago.

A lot of people seem to be overlooking the military applications here. India
has a shaky relationship with Pakistan and (like it or not) space superiority
will become the next "air superiority" militarily in the coming decade or 2.

------
yalogin
This is ridiculous. I saw hundreds of comments denouncing all the negative
things about India's space program but have yet to see one actual negative
comment about the program. Every one seems to be praising it and then there
are these articles and comments (even on HN) some how defending the space
program and their mars probe launch. Too much karma whoring going on.

------
velodrome
Space exploration is in the interest of mankind. The more people who know the
subject the better. Setting up shop on the moon and other planets gives humans
(and other Earthly organisms) redundancy from an ELE (Extinction Level Event).

------
shenoybr
In my view, this money is well spent. It auguments and helps space research
and exploration and puts India - a developing country - out there with the
developed nations to boast of a successful space program. Skeptics will never
die. Money can always be spent on something else. But for India, as a country,
demonstrates that the country has a lot of potential and that it has smart
people to pull the job off.

------
hetman
It's ironic seeing so much criticism from citizens of countries such as the
USA which hasn't exactly solved its own poverty issues from the perspective of
plenty of other countries. So where do you draw that arbitrary line?

Also, it seems incredibly short sighted not to see how development of a
sophisticated space programme won't benefit the people of a nation (certainly
if the engineers and policy makers were prescient they could just invest their
time building only the space devices that would directly benefit their people
but the real world of engineering is too complex for things to work that way).

It's fortunate HN is full of people that mostly see the benefits, but it's
clear a lot of people elsewhere aren't that thrilled. I for one am glad India
made this step. If a bunch of people are going to demonstrate what can only be
described as overt jealousy, maybe it will spurn their own nations into
greater efforts in the space arena.

------
avisk
More than the economic and scientific returns, the inspiration provided by
these missions to millions of young children to pursue science and the
interest it generates is priceless.

------
tod222
_For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was
going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he
wondered how he would explain what the applications of his work were. "Well,"
I said, "there aren't any." He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for
more research of this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're
representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman
what you're doing—and if they don't support you under those circumstances,
then that's their decision._

-Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science

[http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html](http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html)

------
hawkharris
As an American, I greatly admire India's achievements in science and
engineering as well as the public education system that powers them.

I hope that the United States will learn from and one day catch up to India in
terms of higher education.

------
InclinedPlane
It's difficult to do better than xkcd in bursting these sorts of arguments so
succinctly: [http://xkcd.com/1232/](http://xkcd.com/1232/)

The fact is that the tradeoffs between important endeavors (like feeding the
hungry and exploring the universe) are not as simple as people make out. To a
certain extent there is a justification to do "useless" things even at the
cost of "critical necessities". Should people stop pursuing art, music,
philosophy, etc. in times of crisis? Certainly there are extremely hard times
when you absolutely can't afford to do anything but concentrate on survival,
but such times are rare. The world is never going to be perfect, but we can't
let that stop us from making the world better, in every way. By pursuing
science and art, and so on.

Moreover, by investing in R&D and by advancing technology we frequently gain
more than we spend. Consider, for example, the invention of the automobile.
Originally a toy for the rich, today they help vastly increase the yield and
efficiency of crops, and help to feed the poor.

Imagine where we'd be if in the year 1200 the entire world had decided that it
could not in good conscience pursue advancements in science or the arts until
everyone in the world was no longer in danger of going hungry. We would still
be in the middle ages, and there would be very much fewer people who were well
fed.

In the specific case of India, their investment in spaceflight technology is
likely to bring them returns far in excess of the cost of this mission. Both
in improvements to their industrial/technological base as well as in bringing
new business for their growing aerospace industry.

------
rikacomet
Indeed a good article. Right on the spot on mostly all things.

Just to add, that investment in Space ventures is not profitable today, and
hardly few people see it as a race at the moment, but if you look at what Deep
Space Industries is doing in the US, you can say that this is a race itself.
Which will turn highly profitable, when you can harvest resources in the
future from places beyond our earth.

Additionally, Scientific discovery is not your "buy in the store" thing, that
one nation can just expect technologies to pop out of thin air, if they pay
the price. Its a hit and miss, since ages. During renaissance, multiple
scientist lost their whole empires of wealth, for what appeared to be only
small advances back then. It took 1000 failures, and cost of those failures in
time and money to build a bulb. And look today. Where we are.

Well its a good thing that these critics are powerless to stop science, else
India would have been still living on the preached ideals of these critics
like " food to mouth" ideology.

 _EXAMPLE_ : Imagine you have certain amount of money, and you have two
choices: Buy Seeds or Buy food. Yes if you are about to die, you wouldn't even
wait to have this question, but, otherwise when you are just hungry
constantly, you would invest your money partly in seeds as well that is, if
you are aware, that constructive measures like growing crop has its risks,
takes time, and has no immediate return. So, if you can just hold on until the
harvest even on a shoe string budget, like ISRO has over here, the seed that
grew into the grain will surely fill you beyond your current means!

May I even need to requote this? This is the best to describe space
exploration to, such critics.

"One small step for man, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND"

------
kamaal
I'm not sure how authentic this is. But I saw this on Quora and it explains
well how money spent of Space programs helps mankind.

[http://www.quora.com/NASA/How-necessary-is-the-NASA-
program](http://www.quora.com/NASA/How-necessary-is-the-NASA-program)

Read the first comment. I can't post the whole thing as HN has a limit on the
comment length.

------
user901
An alternate critical view of the Mars Mission.
[http://www.indianexpress.com/news/why-
mars-/1190937/0](http://www.indianexpress.com/news/why-mars-/1190937/0)

It does not talk about where else the money could have been spent, but what
other types of missions ISRO should focus on.

------
linux_devil
India as a nation is not poor , its the political class and public
administration which is involved in corruption is poor. Here is the list of
scams :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India)
. Coal scam is over $25 billion , CWG scam is worth $29 billion.

Now I wonder if international media would have criticized such administration
and if this amount of money which is equivalent to GDP of few nations would
have been used to eradicate poverty.

>"India's Mars program promises to return useful engineering and scientific
data for a price that puts other space agencies to shame!" Even after so many
scams and corruptions around , Indian scientists are able to launch this
mission at such a low cost, it's really appreciable.

------
djsampath
This is more of an opinion piece. Not a lot of facts but I have to admit that
I found myself agreeing with the author more than once.

[http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-
Pove...](http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-Poverty-and-
Closet-Racism)

------
nutanc
Unfortunately, India does not have Hollywood to glamorize the space program.
Well, it does have Bollywood, but they have other things to show :-)

Just a sample for reference which was told somewhere else, the budget for the
movie Gravity was more than the budget for the Mars mission by my country.

A very good critique and explanation of why we need this mission is presented
here,[http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-
Pove...](http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-Poverty-and-
Closet-Racism)

------
hrjet
Consider another perspective. When a new land is made habitable, how do you
allocate it? If Mars or Antartica were to become habitable tomorrow, which
parties would be able to purchase how much land and from whom?

I think early explorers will have a stake in it, unless it comes down to a
show of power, or something unlikely such as equal distribution of the new
land to all citizens of all countries.

------
bcRIPster
Oh this argument in here is ridiculous. Sure the U.S. space program was
expensive but the amount of bi-products of that program has far since
justified the cost.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-
off_technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies)

------
xerophtye
I don't get it. A country that spends millions (if not billions) of dollars on
Cricket and Movies every year, is being criticized for spending on space
exploration with "there's so much poverty there! Build schools!". Where are
these critics during the Indian Premier League?

------
NAFV_P
They spent their money well. Sending an Olympic torch on a space walk is a
waste of time.

------
arunc
Mission to Mars at $72M or just about ₹12/KM which is cheaper then my commute
at ₹14.25/KM

