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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

This is both amazing and sad. Amazing because its the emergence of (yet another) a space power, and amazing because it gives the world more and presumably healthy competition for a globally useful technology.

Sad because "we built, planned, funded and launched this awesome technology because ... war"

Humans. What a species.

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Technology tends to be value-neutral. The application of technology could be for evil or for good. To claim that the primary purpose of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (NAVIC) is for belligerent activities is to claim knowledge of the intentions of the Indian government at the time of the system's creation.

Couldn't it be just as likely or more likely that multiple positive and negative rationales were in play at the time?

  - reduced dependency on the US
  - chance to learn something for oneself
  - give boost to the Indian aerospace fields
  - home-grown navigational abilities for war but also for civilian use
  - pride, wanting to be seen as a global tech leader
  - any other number of things?

I think it is amazing that we now have not one (US) but five (US, EU, CN, IN, RU) navigational satellite systems, two of which (US, RU) are globally operational and two more will be (EU, CN) by 2020. What interesting times we live in.

Principals of the Indian space program are on record stating the system was developed to assure access to GNSS during conflict. There is no mystery regarding the motivations of the Indian government in deploying this system.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Protecting one's sovereignty is essential in this day and age.

Why?

Are you serious? Should I remind you of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and various other countries that have been invaded and destroyed? If the big powers can't keep their thirst for more land and resources in check it's obvious that smaller powers will start taking matters into their own hands. There are incursions happening on a daily basis on the borders of India from both sides of the subcontinent and threatened by military incursions in the peninsula.

I would love it if there was a global world with no borders. But that is too idealistic. No one will give up weapons of mass destruction.

I assume that you are ok with having your country taken over by ( insert random country ) ?

I must say that US gun policy would improve for the better if China was running them.

> To claim that the primary purpose of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (NAVIC) is for belligerent activities is to claim knowledge of the intentions of the Indian government at the time of the system's creation.

Sounds like you didn't read the article:

> It is a culmination of 17 years of rigorous work by Indian space scientists. India took a firm decision on IRNSS in 1999 after the US government refused to share GPS data that would provide vital information on Pakistani troops position during Kargil war.

I did read the article. I'm not disagreeing that military matters motivated India's decision. I'm merely arguing against the claim that it was their primary motivation. I'm certain it was a large/significant factor, I doubt it was the only factor. There are so many other beneficial reasons to pursue this tech, some of which I enumerated. Consider Galileo.

It is of course hard to determine what is primary motivation for any large decision. But imagine a scenario where the US GPS system was somehow banned from military use. would it have been funded? I don't think so. And the same can be said for India and China and Europe's versions. Somewhere in the decision making is a desire to have this in case the bullets start flying - and that motivation is (IMO) sufficiently large that without it, it's dubious the decades long investments would have occurred.

No we cannot be certain, yes the peaceful benefits are many (cf US GPS) and it is of course right and proper that India takes steps she sees as necessary for her own defence.

But it is still a mixed emotion - optimism and sadness, joy and regret.

It's not an attack on the plans of nations to raise themselves up. It's just sad that humans are so brilliant and so dumb at the same time

Civilization is having the gun and choosing not to use it. Not bothering with the gun, singing kumbayah and depending on human goodwill is never going to work.

Human history shows there are competing interests who are willing to kill to get their way. Those lulled into a sense of complacency by fantasy narratives about the how the world works learn the hard way.

See the list of recent victims in the middle east starting from Iraq, Libya and now Syria. Tens to hundreds of thousands killed, families destroyed, infrastructure, education, healthcare destroyed and countries sent back decades if not hundred years in service of human greed.

And 50 years later commentators will dismiss these 'third world' countries as utter failures and insinuate some deficiency without any context of history. You can debate for ever but the man with the biggest gun gets the last word.

Not war, but self-preservation.

Historical fact: India has fought 5 wars since 1947, but was never the aggressor. India, or any country for that matter, doesn't choose its neighbors.

Remember, the internet was a result of DARPA's work.

I think you are missing the point. What I think GP was saying is it's sad that the only way to fund grand projects seems to be making them useful for killing other people.

That would be true if grand projects only came out of military funding. There are plenty of examples of wonderful projects that are the result of civilian enterprises without a primary military motive.

The Internet and GPS are more visible examples, but semiconductors, medicine, algorithms (like machine learning) etc are no less grand and marvelous in terms of taking humanity forward!

CERN participated also.

War is the mother of all inventions.

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