Why Ethiopia is building a space programme
economist.com
economist.com
What an odd argument. These are the same folks who complain about poverty in India anytime ISRO launches a new rocket. Like every country that has a space program, you cannot wait until you solve all your social ills before you develop your human capital. Investing in science and technology is something that every country should proudly do even as they try to resolve poverty, infrastructure and social issues. They need not and should not be mutually exclusive.
I can understand a poor - but not totally destitute - country to invest in advanced technology, but no, I can't understand why in a country where thousands every year die or are severely affected by hunger, is investing in space technology instead of helping the immediate needs of its citizens.
It would be like a family in a household were you are about to die of hunger or of some disease by lack of treatment, made their priority to pay your university tuition fees instead.
A space program would obviously create jobs, but 1) does it create as many jobs as infrastructure work, per unit of currency spent, and 2) does the output that it produces materially benefit the public?
Basically, it's not a question whether they should spend money on space program, or on handing out free food. It's a question of whether a space program is really the best bang for the buck in terms of creating jobs and other benefits.
And you could argue that it might be, because the space program will produce important long-term benefits. But short-term benefits will produce "interest", so to speak (if you can get more people out of poverty today, you'll get more people who can become scientists tomorrow - and it might not even be the same people, but their kids). So such an argument cannot be a mere hand-wave - it must present the numbers.
Perhaps you aren't aware, but this very scenario and others similar to it happen throughout the animal kingdom and in human species. In the wild, mothers often abandon their sickly or less fit children to focus all their energy on ensuring the survival of their most fit offspring. It is also possibly a reason why poorer people, especially farmers, tend to have more children than urbanites as a sort of morbid insurance. The more children you have, the greater the chance one has at surviving. Parents do often put more resources into the child that shows the most promise. It's a valid survival strategy. I'm just stating that what you think is crazy is actually pretty rational and is practiced.
That said, if you don't have programs like these, then the best and brightest are simply going to leave and you'll experience brain drain, making it that much harder to endemic problems. There is more than enough food to feed the world, these destitute situations arise mostly because of corruption or government incompetence. 6 yr old me had no interest in solving corruption and/or economic development and I imagine I'm not alone.
In the "animal kingdom" both things are part of physical abilities, in here one of physical the other is intellectual.
In any case, one would think than in the XXI century we would be more advanced than expecting a nation to prune the disabled/destitute part of their population by letting them die of hunger/disease while they launch rockets into space.
I was in no way advocating for a culling. I was just pointing out how that wasn't the best analogy as it seemed you were trying to compare it to something ridiculous when in fact it is a common phenomenon, sadly.
> In any case, one would think than in the XXI century we would be more advanced than expecting a nation to prune the disabled/destitute part of their population by letting them die of hunger/disease while they launch rockets into space.
But we aren't. It's sad to say, but a cursory look at history finds that a significant amount of progress and technological development was fueled by human misery and suffering. American society still allows for perverse incentives like the opportunity to profit off of health care and incarceration when the moral hazard is so glaringly obvious. Welcome to profound disappointment. I believed in the promise of the Internet to create a more informed, compassionate, open, and enlightened society. Look how that turned out. What I've realized is that people haven't changed. We're still the same species we were 70,000 years ago. Our collective knowledge and institutions have evolved, but we haven't.
Your argument is a classic case of the broken window fallacy. The state taketh, the state giveth. Nothing is gained.
On the other hand it's a Chinese built satellite with a foreign launch, so there's minimal Ethiopian human capital involved in actually getting the thing off the ground, and so the real question is whether one big outlay to some entirely foreign OEMs and launch providers represents better value than purchasing the relevant satellite data (and continuing to leasing the use of communications satellites) from an increasingly commoditised entirely-foreign-owned and run commercial satellite market as and when they need it in the form they need it. Without access to the relevant financials, it's very hard to know the answer.
Making the data open would be one way they might achieve that big advantage.
The Economist has a reputation for being a little parental with India, from what I know. Though this article sounds like pure speculation, they do come off a little colonial at times.
Not that it's the same scale, but U.S. has ~.5M homeless [0], and I'm very happy that NASA still exists.
Saying that a government shouldn't have a space program because people are starving, without first mentioning every other piece of inefficient spending, seems misleading.
And yeah, while it does seem like they could maybe get similar benefits from the private cubesat's mentioned, there are good reasons for developing countries to work towards domestic technology instead of relying on imports.
[0] http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessnes...
My point is just that arguing "don't spend money on X, Y is more important" only makes sense if X is literally the least important thing.
But as far as scale is concerned, it's worth noting that the US spends about .5% of its budget on NASA (again, IMO totally justified). The economist article doesn't mention how much Ethiopia plans to spend, but to get a super rough estimate, their current $3m investment [0] is only about .025% of national budget [1].
[0] http://www.sciencealert.com/ethiopia-has-launched-the-first-... [1] http://www.ena.gov.et/en/index.php/politics/item/1435-counci...
Right now in India 12%-22% (again depending on metric) of population live below the poverty line, and we have quite successful and useful space program.
The perfect time is always now.
When I lived in Ethiopia (Haile Selassie was still emperor so it's been a while) there were many nights of the year where the starlight was bright enough you could walk around without a flashlight. Nights with a full moon almost felt like daylight. You could see stars at the horizon.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/oct/20/s...
To be clear, I'm not at all against foreign aid.
[0]https://ethiopia.usembassy.gov/u.s.-response-to-the-ethiopia... [1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grant... [2] https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/portfolio/
I hope the Ethiopians fare better than the Nigerians.
[1] https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/chinese-long-march-3...
As other commenters mentioned it's an odd argument - putting it into perspective I understand the writers point
It's not just drought that's crippling the country; huge youth unemployment, wealth [little of it] distribution & the government itself are some of the major issues
With the state of emergency being extended for another 4 months & Internet censorship at all time high - space program is an unlikely prioritized endeavor imo
PS: I am an Ethiopian