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Comment by alphakappa | Hacker News Reader

> For Ethiopia, where few scientists have the expertise to make use of the flood of cheap data, perhaps the best argument for a modest space programme is that it might help the country develop its human capital. But at a time when 5.6m Ethiopians need emergency food aid because of a drought, it seems an odd priority.

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.

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There's a huge amount of valuable goals that can be achieved from the Ethiopian government training and employing some locally based geospatial analysts to work with satellite-derived data (including helping to solve some of those food security issues)

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.

As the Soviet Union can testify, building science for the sake of science doesn't solve sociological issues even at scale.

solve != help with

> These are the same folks who complain about poverty in India anytime ISRO launches a new rocket

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.

Also, by investing within your country for tech programs the money is then distributed around internally by all those employees. Compare this with buying a satellite from China where the money all goes to another country.

Compare this with taxing people less so they spend money that they themselves need in their immediate vicinity.

Your argument is a classic case of the broken window fallacy. The state taketh, the state giveth. Nothing is gained.

Yeah, I agree that countries shouldn't start space programs purely for the sake of spending money domestically, but there are actual benefits to having a space program, and as long as you're doing it, there are benefits to doing it domestically even if it's more expensive.

Interesting, I wonder if you could say the analogy holds that manufacturing is to improving a country's economic output what space programs are to improving a country's scientific output.

Greece is building a space program, so why not Ethiopia too? :)

According to Wikipedia this is Greece's "space program":

http://www.astro.noa.gr/en/main/

Don't see anything about satellite launches on that page -- the only significant capital infrastructure in evidence is a single ground observatory.

Yep. They are part of ESA and other consortia that have flown satellites (e.g. GAIA and ASTRO-H) however their involvement seems primarily around data processing and analysis etc, not the design or build of space-bound hardware.

Well, they need to be mutually exclusive when you can't even provide the minimum necessary for your citizens to live by.

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.

If you focus all the tooling and construction around your space program locally, it doesn't seem any different than the Public Works Administration in the New Deal. I don't know anything about Ethiopia, but if it's just a roundabout way to make work, then it may be more effective at stopping hunger than giving out food.

It's different in a sense that public works don't just create jobs, they also create public infrastructure that is then usable by, and materially beneficial to, everyone.

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.

> 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.

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.

Exactly how do you argue that aren't the ones dying of hunger/disease by lack of treatment that are the brightest and most suitable for the needed positions of high intellectual achievement needed to run a space program?

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.

> Exactly how do you argue that aren't the ones dying of hunger/disease by lack of treatment that are the brightest and most suitable for the needed positions of high intellectual achievement needed to run a space program?

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.

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