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Comment by sidcool | Hacker News Reader

There will be naysayers when a second or third world country achieves a milestone. Inspite of similar feats done before by developed nations, this is huge for developing economies. Similar thing happened when the earlier Prime Minister of India announced that India will launch a Mars mission within a year at a fraction of cost at what NASA or ESA would do it. Most people laughed at it, and said it's impossible and what not. But guess what, India did send a successful Mars mission that's orbiting the red planet right now. Since then I take 'Expert' HN comments with a pinch of salt. Sometimes HN acknowledges a feat only when done by Elon Musk, NASA or ESA.

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> Most people laughed at it, and said it's impossible and what not. But guess what, India did send a successful Mars mission that's orbiting the red planet right now. Since then I take 'Expert' HN comments with a pinch of salt.

I've been on HN for many years and my recollection is that the community here has been very supportive and encouraging of India's efforts in space technology.

> I've been on HN for many years and my recollection is that the community here has been very supportive and encouraging of India's efforts in space technology.

Unless your memory is selective - you may recall that the support was far from unanimous. I recall a number of HNers stating that the ISRO budget would be better spent on other 'more pressing' challenges India is facing (poverty, sanitation). In fairness, there was a lot of push-back against the naysayers, stating why the space program is money well spent (the most prominent benefits I recall were improved weather predictions benefit farming and cheaper/better telecoms)

--edit: added stuff below this line--

The naysayers have made an appearance in this very thread. They are currently being downvoted (I expect nothing less from HN).

There are always some naysayers. There were some for the US program too:

https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...

That's not being a naysayer. I think the same is true of the US space program.

If we really want to colonize space we need self sustaining habitats and highly compact and automated manufacturing from raw materials. Both can be done while staying on earth, and sending people up or yet another probe is mostly pointless.

> and sending people up or yet another probe is mostly pointless

Good thing they are lifting telecom & weather sats too! It's reasonable to say those are not pointless.

It's unreasonable to put space programs on hold while we try to solve the human condition. There is no political will or even widespread support. People are horrible - they worry about themselves, their families, their neighbourhoods, towns and countries in that order. "Self-sustaining habitats, pffft, not with my hard-earned tax dollars. Build my kid's school a bigger stadium than last years'"

Although there were some discouraging voices, I have to say HN in general has been very supportive of India's efforts in space exploration and technology/R&D in general.

Especially considering the general negative narrative of misplaced priorities of a thirdworld country from the likes of bbc/guardian/nytimes, HN is a breath of fresh air - probably because HN community is more optimistic about the positive impact of tech, and bbc/guardian/nytimes are not, and sees feeding the hungry and investing in R&D as mutually exclusive.

It's a form of Karma whoring.

Make a statement about how it's disappointing about the lack of support for X, even though the opposite is true.

Plebs then rush to upvote this statement because they (like the majority) do support X.

Disappointing, but it often works.

This was my recollection as well. People who were making the "starving children in Africa" argument were being downvotes and rebutted.

I remember a large number of users who were enthusiastically supportive.

Mostly what I remember is how quickly the conversation dove into people wondering why the American program was expensive, then discussions on Musk.

The mission was just straight up cool and everyone was kicked to see it succeed.

(I think many people here are still kicked that we as a species could get a satellite that far, and at that cost)

>Most people laughed at it... Since then I take 'Expert' HN comments with a pinch of salt.

I had a look at the top voted story on the Mars mission "Why India's Mars mission is so cheap - and thrilling", 392 points https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8361558

and I'm not sure anyone was laughing at it. About the closest anyone got was saying the payload was not very heavy.

This is not the thread, but even in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8364841

I'm not gonna speak for HN, but I read this site and personally I'm totally behind India's ambitions in space. I'm happy to cheer their successes and I hope it's meaningful to Indians too.

The one thing I sometimes complain about is the nationalism. India's no worse than the others on tis front. I'd like (personally) for space exploration to be a human endeavor rather than a national one.

Agree! But, the nationalism display happens because of 2 reasons. 1) People making fun of how all Indian villages doesn't have electricity and it is spending money which is a waste. When someone makes this point on social media, people go on defensive on how great ISRO and India is. 2) The government and media aggressively pushes this as national achievement to ignite interests in sciences among kids and youth.

At the end of the day, ISRO will be an Indian space agency and so the nationalism display, sometimes though excessive.

We often forget that despite all the claims of NASA being a world space agency, the flag on the moon is an American one, not a UN one or a representation of some other world agency.

I completely agree that nationalism is horrible for something as important as space colonization. But make no mistake, unless we manage to form an international government before space colonization commences, there will be a scramble for space colonies, much like there was a scramble for colonies on earth.

Sorry to be off-topic, but this is not the first time I see using the phrases 'second world' and 'third world' incorrectly here. A third world country was a neutral or unaligned country in the cold war. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-World_Model

Actually I think this may be a rare correct usage of the term.

But probably 95% of usage uses the term to mean developing or under developed country which is probably a better definition now (as in that meaning indicates what the author meant).

India is third-world in both senses of the term: neutral during the Cold War and economically still developing.

The term has long lost its initial definition.

Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition of the Third World.[1] Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World countries were extremely poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China (see also: BRIC).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

I think there are some important points that is not mentioned when discussing Indias doing it with much less money than what NASA did.

Questions comes to my mind are;

- How well(deserved) the engineers were paid during the development?

- How much of the budget were invested in research?

- What are the positive outcomes of the mission?

I think they have some direct effects on the budget as well.

And you are here to preempt naysayers legitimate concerns?

It has nothing to do with third world achievements. It is more about Nehruvian style elites claiming glory in scientific achievements while day-to-day problems that vast underclass is facing goes unanswered because it is tough.

So Indian achievements are in categories where they punish or reward a small group because that is easier than tackling major issues e.g. banning smoking in public places because it is easy but not banning polluting vehicles as it has political repercussions.

There is no such thing as do everything right or don't do anything at all. A nation cannot be an all-or-nothing game.

Yes India has problems, but doesn't mean that it has to stop progress in all other places until all these problems (poverty, polluting vehicles, etc) are solved. Because guess what, if one problem is solved, the next one comes up.

Progress has to happen on all fronts. Banning cigarettes is good and doesn't have to wait until vehicle pollution is banned. Each will take its own time.

Just because India's Mars mission and satellite launches are taking top spot in the news, doesn't mean that India has now started rewarding only the elite. Its a tiny tiny fraction of India's GDP. We lag behind in so many areas, but we are also progressing in Healthcare, IP laws, Right to food, etc. I don't think anyone even knows that India as a "Right to Information" act. Citizens can direct queries to government offices (offline or online) and beaurocrats get penalized if they respond late. So yes, progress doesn't need to stop.

Sorry but this gets my Goat.

ISRO saves lives. Their satellites, gave us early warning during the Cyclones 2-3 years ago, allowing for rapid evacuation and relief.

They put food on our plates and help poor farmers plan crops because those satellites are the ones giving us excellent, world class meteorological data.

It's done on a budget so tiny, that the ROI for this division is possibly better than any other government department in India. AND - ISRO launches make money for the organization.

It's an example of excellence in challenging conditions, and everything that Nehruvian style engineering stood for.

They do India proud, and naysayers can be safely ignored.

Well when your top engineers get paid 25k sure you can do it for a fraction of the cost. Why couldn't you. Indian military already has tons of tech that if they bring to the civil sector they could use to compete with whatever. The problem is usually corruption and funding. The intelligence is there, in a billion people there are a few million outliers.

Heck most of American Fortune 500's are leveraging Indian brains to increase profits. Google is run by an Indian and so is Microsoft. There are Vikram Musks that are already captains of industry in America. Born and raised in India.

India is a country of disparity. Both intellectual and economic. That problem is not going to be solved any time soon. But if Indians want to create companies to compete on the global stage there is not much stopping them other than their own government and financial systems.

Top engineers don't get paid this low but I get your point. Do you have any evidence to support that the major cost component for space missions is the salaries being paid?

Apart from land rights, all the costs of everything are salaries being paid. I'm not be facetious. It's salaries all the way down until you hit land rights.

What about equipment/infrastructure/R&D/materials? If space tech is all about salaries I doubt what else isn't. If that were true wouldn't all commercial R&D move to India? It makes economical sense.

Not sure for all the downvotes, it's a legitimate point.

> The intelligence is there, in a billion people there are a few million outliers.

Um.

Bah! "The intelligence is there, in a billion people there are a few million outliers"

That statement is suggestive of an Indian race that's generally not intelligent. Just curious on your country of origin and race, and source of this bias!

Not to denigrate the Indian space program on their historic achievement, but since it has been done before (even if more expensively), it's of less interest to those that are looking forward to major advances in the field.

These types of achievements are great though, in the sense that they foster competition and help everyone improve.

Electric cars have been done before, but that doesn't stop people from praising Tesla as jesus on earth

Tesla legitimately broke new ground, before they came out with their roadster there was very little interest in electric cars. And the S really showed the world that an EV can be actually desirable in and of itself.

But yes, I would agree that they are overrated here on HN. They are by no means the first to try mass-market EV (see: Leaf, ZOE, i3) but somehow seem to get all the credit.

India is also doing the same. Space experiments like these were pre-dominantly done from places like USA, Europe, Russia and China. India is not only doing this by themselves. They are also helping their neighbours for mutual benefits. For example, they're building their own space-based navigation system to aid in their defence and other uses.

This helps India and also helps neighbouring countries instead of relying on archiac GPS system which US doesn't share with defense systems to countries other than Pakistan

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