

India to launch Mars mission this year: President - zengr
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-to-launch-Mars-mission-this-year-President/articleshow/18606746.cms

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nivla
Expecting a flury of "fix all your problems before anything else" comments
ITT.

Keeping aside cynicism, it is nice to see a lot of countries aiming towards
exploring Mars. We can cover even more grounds this way.

Looking forward to a better space race and hoping these countries will do the
right by releasing their work into the public domains.

~~~
eksith
"fix all your problems before anything else" Will come as a byproduct of their
Space program. It's true as you say, some people have a knee-jerk reaction to
this, but more level-headed people can see the enormous benefit in not just
science, technology and medicine that will surely come as a result of this,
but also the jobs it will create and the inertia to succeed. That's gotta pump
some money back into the economy.

There are several generations of scientists, mathematicians engineers,
doctors, you name it... that have been inspired by the U.S. space program, so
I can completely view this as the best idea they've had in a long time.

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kamaal
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 problems are solved. Because given the very size and population
of India, problems are a given. Of course a mission of this importance will
serve your usual technology and science benefits. Like ISRO's previous mission
to moon, there will be important findings and discoveries. But besides this,
its a matter of huge national pride.

Contrary to whatever you may think a lot of development and great work happens
in India. So its not like we only have call centers, or IT services companies
here. We have everything from Nuclear weapons development to Mars missions in
India. And like every other country we would like to send out a message that
we can do it too.

Sounds naive and childish?

No, if you think from an Indian's perspective. I find this project a worthy
endeavor in many ways because it serves more than one purpose. Growth of
technology and science, inspiring the youth to work further in this area,
ensure India earns well deserved respect in the global space research
community and also pave the for further space exploration.

Coming to budget, 454 crore spent for a project of this importance is chicken
feed if you ask me. Besides if you can prevent one minor scam in our country
you can run a project like this.

Overall I feel this is an amazing project, and I feel proud that my country is
executing it.

~~~
xyzzy123
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.

~~~
kamaal
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...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-03-03/india/28126856_1_chandrayaan-1-missions-
orbit)

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

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swatkat
Project name: Mangalyaan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalyaan>

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ezequiel-garzon
I can't parse the ": President" in the headline. Is that standard way to
indicate that "the President said so"?

~~~
biot
If you go to their home page and look at the "Other Stories" section, it
appears to be a standard way to attribute the phrase. Think of it as Reverse
Indian Notation; in North America we'd say "President: India to launch Mars
mission this year".

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

~~~
PakG1
Discussion done here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372563>

~~~
rikacomet
thanks a lot !

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rowanseymour
In related news, Uganda is trying to launch a space probe:
[http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/639792-uganda-to-launch-
its-...](http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/639792-uganda-to-launch-its-first-
space-observer.html)

 _"We shall send a mouse to space. If it comes back alive, it will mean that
Uganda is able to send human beings into space and we shall embark on
constructing a new space observer that a person can use"_

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revorad
Here's a version you can actually read -
<http://www.readability.com/articles/c3cbrgbi>

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

~~~
lignuist
Claiming property of whatever they find up there?

~~~
objclxt
India has both signed and ratified the Outer Space Treaty, that prohibits
countries from making territorial claims on celestial bodies.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty>

~~~
lignuist
Good to know, thanks. BTW, I was not particularly referring to India, but to
countries that simultaneously start such missions. It seems, Bhutan did not
sign yet, so we can get nervous when they start a mission. ;)

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tomrod
Should I be credulous about this? I've seen Indian newspapers report some
pretty odd things.

~~~
eksith
If you think India's odd, I've got one word for you: "Florida"

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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!

~~~
mkempe
Estonia is a European, not African, country.

~~~
rikacomet
err, my bad

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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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_human_spaceflight_programme)

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

~~~
jacquesm
Sure it is unmanned, but you can have only so many space projects at once
without incurring a risk.

To announce a mission of this magnitude when they already have a manned space
program announced (with the budget to go along with it) would seem to me to
dilute the funds to the point that both will likely end up aborted.

Maybe they should first complete the stuff they've already announced and then
move on to the next target? As it is India's space program is not exactly on
schedule adding more projects will likely reduce the chances of existing
projects running to completion.

