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Mythbusting India's Mars Mission (marsdaily.com)
240 points by tchalla on Nov 7, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 147 comments


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?


Money is the wrong thing to look at.

You can observe this by how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking that destroying the money would be a huge waste. It wouldn't. Money, by itself, has no value. It's only useful in how you can use it to obtain goods and services. Destroying money reduces your own ability to obtain goods and services, but doesn't actually destroy wealth, as everyone else's ability to obtain goods and services increases to compensate. While wealth is typically measured in money, wealth consists of goods and services.

The fact that the money recirculates in the economy is irrelevant to the question of waste. If they wasted the money, it essentially means that the goods and services purchased with it were squandered.

So, forget the money for a moment. Analyze it like this: a bunch of engineers and technicians spent thousands or millions of collective hours. High quality aluminum, steel, electronics, etc., were used. And the result is a spacecraft. That time and those resources could be used to do something else. Perhaps something better, like build schools or factories.

That is the argument being made. I'm not saying it's necessarily correct (this mission doesn't seem like it's very expensive in the grand scheme of things, and the benefits for science, technology, and just plain prestige seem well worth it) but it is at least sensible in its foundations.


This is little more than "why are we spending money on electronic gadgets when cancer still needs to be cured", an argument that has zero traction in this community. It doesn't suddenly start making sense when the topic is space.

Factories and schools are not failing to be built because of a deficient in engineering talent caused by the IRSO.


There was interesting exchange between Krugman and Ezra Klein few years back - Krugman insisted that macro models show that the Obama stimulus should have been 3-4 times bigger to take effect. The guy is probably right. But Klein replied that even if that big stimulus was passed into law, there just weren't enough quality projects in US which to absorb the stimulus.

So next time someone ask this - the proper reply is - where is the cancer research infrastructure and promising leads which could absorb what we spend every year on smartphones and tablets.


Add enough corruption and fat to those cancer research programs and they would happily consume all the wealth you could ever dream of throwing at them. Eventually you'll reach a point where you realize that instead of throwing those millions at wasteful cancer research, you could get more bang for your buck funding some other startlingly efficient programs.


It may be better to look for quality projects in basic research into fundamental science. Understanding more about biology and physics helps cure cancer and could devoir almost any budgets (see cern).


American infrastructure is creaking. There's lots that can absorb resources. (Though probably not in a very short time, it takes a while to get projects shovel-ready.)


It could easily go into a project such as something like Masdar City.


I agree, that other argument is bad. However, just because an argument is bad does not mean any counterargument must be good. The counterargument presented, that the money spent doesn't matter because it recirculates within the economy afterwards, is also bad.

I agree that this is probably a net gain. But you can't demonstrate that by saying that the money keeps moving within the economy, and you especially can't demonstrate that by holding up destruction of cash as some sort of worst-case scenario for waste.


> This is little more than "why are we spending money on electronic gadgets when cancer still needs to be cured", an argument that has zero traction in this community. It doesn't suddenly start making sense when the topic is space.

Then the people that criticize space exploration based on similar arguments would be stupid to do that. In the long run (which may not be that long after all) we do need to get off this planet in order to survive as a species. This is just a fact, is how the observable Universe works.


This argument presumes that Schools, Factories are better investment of talent hours than Space (high quality aluminium, steel or electronics)

This is not always true. There are some areas of governance from a sovereign country's point of view which it cannot neglect and should develop indigenous capability. Areas like defense which is non-negotiable and other strategic areas like space.

A good government always tries to balance investment in different areas. If India stops investing in Defense and Space and keeps building only schools and toilets, that will be a lopsided, weak development to say the least.

Even in other non-strategic areas, societal development cannot be dictated to flow in a single direction.

Consider this for contrast:

India's top 3 high budget movies - 86 million USD [1]

Mukesh Ambani's house - 2 Billion USD [2]

India's education budget for 2013 - 11 Billion USD [3]

India's health care budget for 2013 - 6 Billion USD [4]

[1] http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/top-10-most-...

[2] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-bu...

[3] http://www.livemint.com/Politics/7EmPAMBANzkPDAPuyruQ1I/Chid...

[4] http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/budget-2013-hikes-spending-...

Edit : alignment


"This argument presumes that Schools, Factories are better investment of talent hours than Space (high quality aluminium, steel or electronics)"

It does no such thing. It merely presumes that if you want to justify the mission, that is what you must compare it to, not a ridiculous scenario of taking the cash spent and burning it.


That is still a money argument though, right?

Beyond the "is there necessary infrastructure for alternative project X so the diverted funds aren't wasted" question, the argument for me is: that time and those resources were spent in India, by India, and the result is an increased knowledge and capacity to leverage some highly technical skills and technologies.

You don't add rocket scientists to your workforce by building schools, you do it by adding/increasing the capacity for such work. Being trained to do the work doesn't make the work to do, if that makes sense.

I definitely agree that the question of "why is X needed when the first-order benefits of Y has such a larger impact" is relevant and important, insofar as X is the space program and Y is a collection of social programs.


Well said.

From another perspective... I often look up at the night sky and think to myself: how many civilizations are gone, simply because they failed to have the vision to leave their home planet?

A great line from a t-shirt:

"Asteroids... are nature's way of asking: 'How's that space program coming along?'"


I fear that the "Great Filter" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_filter) is less likely to be a big rock or hunk of ice whacking planets full of the uninspired, but rather the speed of light necessitating dense civilizations to minimize communication latency. The sooner we expand, the better, because we are only going to become more addicted to information and instantaneous species-wide communication.


Could you elaborate on

a) communication latency b) addicted to information and c) instantaneous species-wide communication.

and how those are greater risk factors?


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.


> 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).


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.


"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.


The cost of satellites and rocket launches would tend to disagree. They are not cheap. I won't dispute that valuable talent was also developed, but the cost of the hardware is hardly "a rounding error".

The fact that you persist in confusing money with wealth makes me think you haven't really understood my point. Gold is not all that useful by itself, so launching a bunch of gold into space would not be throwing wealth away the way launching an expensive and fancy satellite is.

A Mars mission is not undergrad CS work. It's a serious project. If we deleted all copies of the Linux kernel from the world, have you destroyed wealth? Of course you have.


The most commonly reported figure for the cost of the Mars mission is US$72 million.

There's apartments in NYC/London that cost more than that.


At no point am I arguing that the mission was too expensive or anything like that.

I really wish that, just once, I could criticize a bad argument without everyone thinking that I support the opposing view.


You said they weren't cheap. In this case, they were.


$72 million is not cheap in my universe. And given the context, the relevant question is the cost of the hardware versus the other costs involved.


Its not cheap compared to what?

What could you get in the equivalent of $72 million?

A holly wood movie? Series A funding for yet-another-photo-sharing start up? Opening ceremony for Olympic games?

Things like the Mars mission has profound implications on the very survival of human race over the next 1000 years.


A school.


How many schools could be built on a US DoD's Iraq war budget (just an example)? And how many lives would be spared if in fact that money went into building of schools? I think there are issues in our world today infinitely better suited for complaining about wasting resources than some country's space program.


I’m not discussing that — things one could be done on the US DoD budgets are pretty much unimaginable.

The only thing I wanted to provide is that there are, actually, useful, measurably beneficial things one could do for „just” 72 megadollars — like a „boring” school, or a clinic. Or a stretch of a road and a clean well, maybe even a small stretch of railway. In many places those would be huge.

This doesn’t mean a space program is the best place to take money away from — not even in India, and definitely not in the United States. I just mean it’s not money one can wave away as small change.


Yes, but then we are arguing about truisms, so what's the point the naysayers want to make? I don't mean you specifically, but on several threads on this page there are people arguing that: "oh, this is so much money wasted, other things could be done with it, but oh, I'm not saying we should take away from the space program, but, oh, this is so much money wasted..." ad nauseam. I mean what exactly is the point in pointing out that yes, obviously, other good things can be done with 72 million, and then disclaiming that it's an argument against India launching a Mars probe? Why point out such a trivial truth unless arguing against India doing this? If it's just about 72 million not being small change in general, why aren't people making such trivially true statements in discussions about other things?

Again, I am not singling you out, I get what you're saying, but I just have to ask: why aren't we having people pointing out how many schools can be built out of a budget for, for example as kamaal wrote, an Olympic opening ceremony? I don't think it's even some kind of closet racism, as some have argued, in general (though in this case there is also that, in this story's coverage by the Western media), because people go nuts over the US space program also. Even outside the US. :) It's a clear pattern of pushing the waste argument over just about any kind of space exploration anyone does, and it's not done just by "unwashed masses" but also by very educated people (e.g. here, I had a colleague, a theoretical physicist of all people, telling me how space programs are such a waste when there are people starving etc...). What the hell?


Actually, we do have quite a lot of people pointing out both that and the war effort, both counted in "schools" and "manned Mars missions". Not in this discussion, but that's probably related to the fact that India neither started a homophobic olympics nor invaded Iraq.

Mind you, I do think that a lot of complaints about this specific mission are of a racist nature - but that's because I suspect that many of the detractors wouldn't critique US space programs the same way.


You earlier wrote:

> The cost of satellites and rocket launches would tend to disagree. They are not cheap.

The cost of the material of hardware is a miniscule proportion of that compared to the investment of time of engineers etc. involved in the project, and ground based hardware that can be reused for other missions. That engineering time could have been used on something else, sure. But the time spent is not wasted: It increases the experience and thus value of those engineers for the future.

It's already a mission on a shoestring budget, but the bit that they actually threw away never to see again was much, much smaller.


I never said the time spent is "wasted". At no point in this discussion have I argued that any of this stuff is "wasted". I am simply arguing that it counts.

Yes, the time spent by the engineers has long-term benefits in increasing their experience. However, a large portion of that time is lost to the spacecraft. If that time could have been spent more productively elsewhere, then spending it on this was a bad idea.

Again, I'm not saying that the mission actually was a bad idea. I'm simply saying that "the money stays in the economy" is a terrible argument.


> Gold is not all that useful by itself, so launching a bunch of gold into space would not be throwing wealth away the way launching an expensive and fancy satellite is.

At the point of launch the satellite would be even less valuable (in the use value sense, which is what you're referring to) than a bunch of gold. At least gold could be put to some use (it is a useful metal), while a satellite's only useful purpose is to be launched into and operate in space. It's why a satellite exists, you would lose wealth only if it wasn't launched.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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


Speaking of not all that useful...


I do like how some distributions ship with an alias of rm to 'rm -i'. But, I prefer having the raw power of rm available at all times, because it led to a habit of checking everything into git, backing up critical files, and always thinking twice before I type -rf or hit Enter.


And a much larger percentage of that wealth was transferred to the engineers who worked on that project in exchange for their labor. The rocket itself represents a tiny percentage of the overall wealth transfer. So the majority of wealth was simply rearranged not destroyed, unless every single person who worked on the project puts every single cent they earned into a savings account never to be spent.


Wealth is not money.

Let me repeat that.

Wealth is not money.

One more time.

Wealth is not money.

Now, if you'd care to try your comment again with that in mind....


I never once mentioned, or alluded to the transfer of money being the transfer of wealth, so if you'd like to try reading my comment again with that in mind...

Also notice the part where I explicitly mentioned that if the money earned is never spent on good or services than the wealth is destroyed. Maybe try working on your reading comprehension before you decide to be a dick?


Yes, I noticed where you said that wealth is destroyed if the money is never spent. Thus I concluded that you conflated money with wealth, because that statement makes no sense. Hoarding money in a savings account does not destroy wealth.


Well then maybe brush up on your economic theory before rereading my comment?


> Wealth was destroyed and sent to some far off land, specifically to space and to Mars.

Really? What about the expertise gained? The knowledge gained?

Space exploration is vital for long-term survival of a country like India.


Yes, some wealth was created and kept. That doesn't change the fact that other wealth was shot into space.

Why, why, why must people assume I'm being blindly antagonistic? I just don't get it. You quote me and then reply as if I said something stupid, and "correct" me by saying something I agree with and never contradicted.


Wealth is not fixed like energy. It can be created. Money can be used to create wealth when it is used to create new products for example. In this case you could argue there were no products in the traditional sense. But it got people's attention.

So a writer could write a sci-fi novel about mars and sell that to a ready audience.

An entrepreneur could create models of the planets and sell those to schools.

A movie maker could make a new movie with a space theme.

Not to mention actual technical innovations that could come out of new knowledge gained. Moreover, kids could be motivated to take up science and engineering for future jobs in 'STEM' fields. If this unlocks the imagination of even a few creative people, they could put back more than $100m of wealth into the economy.


>>That doesn't change the fact that other wealth was shot into space.

No wealth was shot in to space, or literally negligible amounts of it. The wealth is the know-how, and expertise that can replicate such a mission again. Which exists in tact on earth.

One of the goals of the mars mission is - to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission.

In other words, this is just the beginning.

From -

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c25/mission-objective.aspx

The 'other wealth' you talk about is pocket change, in comparison to any public project.


Okaayyyyy... Let us be ridiculous. Why do you assume all of space will not belong to India for all of time?

Why do you assume Mars has zero wealth? Over the long term, this "loss" of wealth will result in helping humans (not just Indians) harness that wealth in Mars and other places.


I'm not assuming any of these things. At no point do I say that it's not worth the expenditure. I'm just saying that there is an expenditure.


there is an expenditure.

That is a trivially vacuous statement. Everything has an expenditure. It is the net benefit that counts. Even breathing takes energy.


I was responding to a guy who said that no wealth was destroyed, which is another way of saying that there was no expenditure.


I believe he was talking about net wealth.


Opportunity cost is the equivalence of wealth lost.


The opportunity cost of giving money to the ISRO is lower than what they would have done with that money otherwise. Money sent to the ISRO is an investment in India's domestic STEM talent. There are few better ways they could have possibly spent that money.


I really tried to understand this - but completely fail to. Can you try and make any sense at all? How in the world is something productive - that leads to mankind as a whole gaining knowledge and information AND to India bolstering national pride and marketing itself as a Space logistics provider to the world - even remotely comparable to breaking windows? Geez - by your logic everyone should keep money in their mattress and go to bed.


I think what he refers to is the broken window fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

It is not about, if the US space program was better/worse than the Indian one. But that we don't know the alternative outcome of a lot of smart people working, not on the space program, but on many different fields that could lead to a greater outcome than this one project (the work would be less visible to the public than one shiny big project but in the end there is (in my opinion) more gain for the people, because the market responds generally better to the needs of people than a bureaucracy)


yes but that makes a large assumption that those smart people would rather work on something else. there isnt much stopping them from going elsewhere and working on space programs - if thats what they'd rather do. this way the country is atleast keeping those folks around - and making sure the money stays within the economy.


I will link to mikeash comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692694

Money is not equal wealth. You can spend money in a circle of two people a thousand times, that doesn't make the two richer. Or you can add 0's at the end of all bills, that doesn't make anyone more rich either.

I think it's more reasonable if we focus on wealth and not on money in this discussion.


The leading comment stated that expenditure is not cost. In that context the response is to the point. Your argument that it is a cost-benefit analysis is of course correct. But that is consistent with arguing that one can not simply wave the cost away as if it is not real.


An oft-repeated well-meaning but rather ignorant objection. Read this http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html


History. It's rare to put a lot of smart people on the same program and not produce something with enormous social and commercial benefit. DARPA's little side project still produces new things decades after the initial investment.


I'm all for space exploration, but this is the broken window fallacy. Those earth engineers could be doing other things. So if space exploration were in fact a worthless goal, then we'd be paying intelligent people to waste their time.

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

(I'm only addressing your first two paragraphs. Your third paragraph switches tact by arguing about the positive benefits of space exploration funding)


The broken windows parable is an argument against destruction to encourage the exchange of money. There is no analogous destruction in this case.

> "Those earth engineers could be doing other things."

I might as well point out that you could be working on a cure to cancer right now. You wouldn't buy that argument though, right?


In the abstract, paying people to waste time is very similar to destroying windows: you're destroying the services that they could have provided.


You are not paying them to waste time though. You are paying them to develop a very advanced (and valuable) skillset. You are paying to develop and mature your nation's scientific community and education system, to provide them access to facilities and capabilities they previously lacked.

The IRSO didn't sit on their asses twiddling their thumbs while consuming money for several years, only to have a rocket pop out of think air. They were working their asses off, developing new skill-sets and advancing their understanding of their field.


Just to clarify, I was addressing the general form of argument, not the concrete example of whether space research is a waste of time. Personally, I consider advancing science and the arts very worthwhile goals of public spending, but that's a different point.


Right, but now you're arguing that their work is useful. That's a different argument than simply arguing we're spending the money on earth. If people think the space programs are wasteful, then presumably they don't think the work done is useful.


and then we have no engineers who can accomplish anything related to space exploration when time comes for humanity to explore beyond earth majorly?

You are suggesting we weaken our foundations. A talent pool takes a lot of generations. No one can say America or some other country will do the space thingy, you go work on poor.

Mind you, these so called engineers and other workers are free independant INDIANS, who can do whatever they want, join any field they want to, work towards goal they collectively set.

There are many unproductive things, .. drugs/prostitution/trafficking has billions of $ involved each year. We would rather spend energy in making those people productive, if anything.


There exists a strange notion that engineers have some form of responsibility that goes above and beyond what 'normal' people have. Anyone can do anything they like with their lives... unless they are an engineer, at which point they suddenly become obligated to work on charitable endeavors.

Decide to write novels? "That's nice, what a nice career choice." Decide to write iphone applications? "How the hell can you sit there programming iphone applications when you could be using your intellect to fight hunger!? There are more important things than iphone apps!"


Well a free man is free to even ignore his apparent responsibility. Which is the maximum case with children of successful people. Most of them never are able to come out of the shadow of their parents. Barely few have in the History.

Akbar in India, Kublai Khan of Mongolia, etc.

Anyways, nor you or I have the correct information, or any other basis enough to claim, that these engineers can be put to better use. WHo has that information? THE GOVT! So chances are that in all likeliness this is the most efficient use of that workforce.


No, I've heard novelists get the same flak. And social justice activists, though I don't think I've ever heard privacy advocates take it. I was going to say I haven't heard bankers get it, but I think I recall a case or two.


Well, my perspective may be biased since I naturally associate more with engineers, but it seems to me that engineers take a disproportionate amount of this sort of flack. It seems to me that the general public thinks that engineers have an unusual high obligation or debt to society.


> the general public

Do you generally hear this sentiment from "the general public"? In my experience, it comes more from people who are disillusioned by their direct interactions with group X.


I have heard it not necessarily often, but several times, from extended family members (there is one notable offender, my response to her is usually an exasperated comment about her not even having a job... holidays with the jlgreco family are interesting affairs...) and here it rather frequently online on places like reddit.

It is like they think talent in any STEM field is something that society has gives to people on the condition that they use said talent to cure cancer and solve world hunger, and anybody not using their talent to do those things is failing to hold up their end of the bargain. People with skill in the humanities seem to be largely free of this judgement.


Didn't you ever read Spiderman comics? "To whom much is given, much is expected" -- Uncle Ben


This is exactly what I am talking about. Why do you think that "much was given" to the engineers of the world, but not to others? Engineers may be blessed with talents in engineering, but novelists are blessed with the gift of writing. Why should engineers be expected to engineer things for charitable causes anymore than writers should be expected to use their talents similarly?

Engineering isn't some uniquely special skill; it is one of many. Yet it uniquely is singled out as being a skill that bequeaths the holder with some extra responsibility to society. Engineers don't owe the world any more than anybody else does. (And if you think they do, then why do non-engineers not owe it to the world to become engineers?)


Yes I have read, but in real life.. not everyone is able to accomplish what is expected of him/her. Its not just a matter of choice, but also circumstances.


It is true that the cost may well be less than sending a check to some American farmers to ship over rice, because the monies circulate locally.

But ultimately that money could have built a big dam, or a few beautiful bridges, or a small power plant in a country with lots of power outages.

I personally think it is money well spent, because it heralds the arrival of India to the world of first class satellite launching, by doing something Russia failed at the first few attempts. But that payoff is over the long term.


What bridge or power plants programs have been defunded because of the IRSO?

The reason the IRSO is able to accomplish so much is because it is so efficient and damn good at what it does. The reason why other agencies and organizations in India have such a hard time keeping bridges safe or the lights on is because they are massively inefficient in comparison. These other programs, given the IRSOs budget, would have accomplished approximately "fuck all" more than they did without it. The IRSO should not be punished for the failings of other aspects of the Indian government.


It is ISRO: Indian Space Research Organisation


>>But ultimately that money could have built a big dam, or a few beautiful bridges, or a small power plant in a country with lots of power outages.

Why can't they be in parallel?

And this is some what unfair to the people at ISRO. India spends a great deal of money on infrastructure too, bulk of that money is either stolen brazenly or sunk to corruption.


That's the broken window fallacy rearing its ugly head yet again. That money could be spent on a Mars program, or it could be spent on feeding people, or on fancy dinners for rulers, or on anti-corruption investigations, or on a sports stadium, or...



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?)


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.


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.


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.


>>The reaction I am seeing in the international press to India's mars mission is quite the opposite

Indian press was no different. There was 20 minute debate(These guys are still debating if the mission was necessary) on whether the mission was necessary. The next 2 hour prime time news was about Sachin Tendulkar's last test match.

Some channels just gave a passing reference. All that was shown is that ISRO had launched a mars mission with a 20 second clip of the rocket taking off.

There is no popular demand. The general public is not in any position to understand what the mission is or why its important. How much effort was gone into it, and how it was done.


Not jealous, just surprisingly misinformed and perhaps narrow minded :) Hope that India is going to work on the communications side of things, exciting times indeed!


I don't think anyone is jealous. We see the pictures, and we actually care.


right - and so do Indians I'm very sure - it's just that anyone with an understanding of science and a sound logical ability will know that tooting about how bad the poverty in a country is - when they're achieving something succesful - is anything but "concern". those problems have been there for decades - 70 million worth of toilets isnt going to solve indias sanitation problems. 70 million worth of space missions will inspire 70 million more kids to become scientists and engineers - and drive the country forward.


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.


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.


> 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

> 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]


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

Here's what Hollywood makes:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-hol...

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.


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.


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...


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?


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


1) a large number of big budget animation and non-animation movies that use large amounts of SFX actually get their animation work done in India nowadays.

2) the logic of your argument fails anyways - they proved to the world - that they can send a spaceship to mars - they already launch satellites for other countries - and make a shit ton of money on it - their people are learning to make spaceships that can go into deep space - an industry that if anything is also growing in the private sector - they did the whole thin for the cost of a few hundred javelin missiles that the US army has been using to kill arguably mostly civilians in Afghanistan (and dont tell me the US has money - you know the debt ceiling fight recently? That was the US agreeing to borrow more money). there is almost 0 wrong with this mission.


Bollywood is not directly making American films, but American films are definitely getting financed by Indian money [1]. The Reliance group (which makes movies in Bollywood) is also one of the big investors in Dreamworks.

http://www.dreamworksstudios.com/about/history


Earning profit on a film affects a small number of people now. Advancing the state of the art in technology affects many people for a very, very long time. It's tempting to say forever, but humanity won't last forever.

Finally, it's entirely possible to create sustainable industries in aerospace. It's just not an immediate turn around.


>>There's no point in having all the IIT's, if people have to leave the country to use their abilities.

Bulk of the IITians are busy preparing for interviews(stuffing algorithm books in their brains) at big web companies to ultimately write HTML pages. The ones left are preparing to do their MBA's at IIM's or at some foreign university. IIT's are all about brands stamps, and access to a world wide network of alumni that ensures you get fat paychecks.

Guy's at ISRO. Most of them are from small time colleges, and many with average marks and grades. Many probably don't even have an engineering degree, and probably have a diploma.

IIT's have contributed very little or almost nothing to India. Bulk of their students don't even work here. Modern India is the pretty the result of the sweat and blood of the ordinary college educated student.

>>Space, rocketry, satellites, etc are upmarket skills.

I hope more people realize this hard fact.


> Bulk of the IITians are busy preparing for interviews...

> IIT's have contributed very little or almost nothing to India.

I don't even know why I am biting but I guess someone has to point it out. I know it is fancy to sling mud on the IITian but last I checked (maybe a year ago), about 50% of my class went on to do higher studies. Out of that maybe half went on to obtain a PhD. A paltry 10% or so went into management. Others went for jobs...mostly in the product sector. Some did join service jobs but quit soon after and they went for a Masters too I think. About 5% of my class have started companies in India.

> Guy's at ISRO. Most of them are from small time colleges, and many with average marks and grades. Many probably don't even have an engineering degree, and probably have a diploma.

Just stop. Please. There are tiered requirements for Scientist categories. Pretty obvious if you check the newspaper ads.

> IIT's have contributed very little or almost nothing to India. Bulk of their students don't even work here. Modern India is the pretty the result of the sweat and blood of the ordinary college educated student.

Many have come back to join as faculty back in the IITs. You can pull up say IIT Elec department page and confirm yourself. A decade ago, it was our own faculty who encouraged us to step outside. Now, slowly, we are bringing in overseas culture within our own campuses.

* * *

But hey, you have already formed an opinion and composed an elegy. What I wrote above is not for you. It is for others to gather that you are factually incorrect.


>>A decade ago, it was our own faculty who encouraged us to step outside.

Correction. That's happening from decades, not just one decade. But besides that, you do agree most of your folks don't even work or stay here.

The Indian tax payer is subsidizing the IIT's for a reason. We need to pay for the education of people who stay here and contribute(In fact that was the whole point of IIT's).

Coming to IIT's, you guys are going to settle down abroad anyways and you will also get fat paychecks. Why should you need any kind of subsidy. I am sure most banks would be more than willing to lend a education loan.


I think what he meant to point out was that almost none of the IITians work in India or in Indian companies and nowhere in your reply did you refute that fact :)


I find this really offensive. This post compares Indian cinema to American as if America was the world standard even finance-wise (see other post showing that Indian industry grosses more annually).


The US film industry grosses roughly $10 billion annually in the domestic market alone.


Science has trickle down effects in terms of know how filtering into industry to solve real world problems.



I agree with your premise, but a possibly better example would be the 2011 movie "Mars Needs Mums". [1] "The film was a commercial failure, and is the biggest box office bomb in history, grossing only about $39 million on a budget of $150 million."

It's also, coincidentally a Mars reference :-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Needs_Moms


Not a fair comparison. They spent $100MM on a movie knowing that they will net $X00MM in profits.


Could you explain how or why this is unfair? I don't think the OP was suggesting that Gravity's expenditure was therefore not worthwhile. If anything, your comment adds further weight to the comparison by illustrating the scale of a major motion picture in terms of expenditure and profit.


Science cannot be bought in the store, you don't have a market of people willing to pay you back. Its not constantly craved by humans unlike entertainment. And it is not limited to general rules of business, specially when we are going beyond our abilities, and stretching them even further.

For example, ISRO have never had a engine before that could re-ignite after a 300 days period of cryogenic conditions of space. That technology developed in extreme conditions can be reverse engineered to make our cars perform better in winters. Or some other applications. Does that sort of returns even get reported ever?


yes - and so will ISRO - with its private company Antrix - its already making money launching spaceships for telecoms companies and other non-spacefaring nations. the mars mission if you will - is just a slightly more expensive Marketing move - showing clients what they can do. So its a very fair comparison!


Don't be silly. Hollywood's movies are never profitable - if you check their accounting books at least.

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


The price of a cup of coffee(for everyone in the US) would be around 600 million :)

So it's less than the price of a cup of coffee really.


I like these kinds of perspectives :)


Wow


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...

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.)


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...

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

[3]http://newindianexpress.com/nation/Manned-expedition-hopes-r...


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?


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".


"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.


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.


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).


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.


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.


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.


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


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.


It's difficult to do better than xkcd in bursting these sorts of arguments so succinctly: 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.


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"


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

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


An alternate critical view of the Mars Mission. 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.


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 . 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.


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...


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...


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.


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


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?


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


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




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