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Comment by randyk | Hacker News Reader

I love India and its people, having spent five years there managing a dev team for our US operations. I’m American, parents were born in India.

And I gotta say, landing on the moon is by far the last thing India’s people need right now.

The amount of suffering, pollution, corruption, water shortages, is simply overwhelming. If you haven’t actually lived there it’s easy to say that India should still shoot for the stars while solving problems at home. From someone who lived there, let me tell you that they should focus on immediate problems first.

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There are many attempts ongoing to solve immediate problems. Doesn't mean that we can't aim for space or push through with science which isn't immediately focused on solving issues on the ground. ISRO is only one of the government's many agencies. It's doing good work and getting scientific publicity, but so are many other programs.

If America can focus on space as well as the opioid crisis and mass shooting issues, why can't India do something similar?

Yeah immediate problems are being resolved by some people. But not all of our billion+ population needs to be so myopic.. there's a few that are rightly pushing the boundaries for the global scientific research.

The people that push for Indian space exploration are either (1) not living in India, or (2) they are living in India and doing well economically.

If you ask people living in the slums about this, they’ll give you a very different perspective than what you read on HN. And they vastly outnumber the people in India who are doing well.

Someone commented this in another thread

>Out of 195 countries it will be only the 4th country to do this shit. So it must be doing some things right. Poverty is one of the problems it is still working on.

I find it interesting that you try to answer for the millions who are "living in the slums".

There is enthusiasm for space in general (many are glued to their TVs or radios because the landing is going to start soon; one could say it's a point of national pride). I can say that because I live here, see the poverty in front of my eyes every day and talk to some of the people facing it. Sure, quite a few have opinions similar to yours, but they are across the economic spectrum, not just amongst the poor.

This is an argument which pops out frequently when there's a scientific success coming out of a developing country, and especially when India tries to do high-end science. The development in India has been insane, and many have moved out of poverty in a relatively short span of time, mainly because of multiple efforts by the people, the government and with the help of other countries, and this is going to continue happening. Meanwhile, space exploration will continue, whether some people like it or not.

Advancing Science and technology is exactly the thing people of India need right now. This kind of mission inspires confidence in a nation's abilities and also inspires a generation of people to pursue science. Wont you agree that US moon landing inspired a generation of Americans?

Not to mention remote sensing satellites directly help an Agrarian economy,

Sigh. It is amazing how myopic we get seeing a different place. It reminds me of that NYT cartoon which was in poor taste. I can see some reasons why India would want to do this.

- They can use the technology developed during these missions for powering commercial space operations(It is an extremely lucrative market, moneywise). They have a commercial arm.[1]

- They have their own use of satellites as well like remote sensing, navigation(I think it is called NAVIC) etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrix_Corporation

Think of what jfk said.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

It's a unifying goal, which is good for any country. Good for India. God knows the US needs a unifying goal now. We seem to only be united by our disrespect of each other.

Perhaps the solution for those problems can be found while shooting for the stars. Don't you think new opportunities will knock India's doors if scientific projects like these are successful?

The people that push for Indian space exploration are either (1) not living in India, or (2) they are living in India and doing well economically. If you ask people living in the slums about this, they’ll give you a very different perspective than what you read on HN. And they vastly outnumber the people in India who are doing well.

Well, have you really asked opinions of people living in slums? Forget India, how about asking people living under bridges in LA about their opinion on NASA.

Same thing was said about Moon landing. Re: "Whitey on the moon".

This website mistreats me.

Asks me to whitelist it in my adblocker. Then I am sceptical and think: "Hmmm, why do they need JS for a simple information page? Ok lets see, if I disable first party script blocking maybe ..." Then the site goes on nagging me about allowing their shitty scripts. I check again un uMatrix, and what do you know, OFC it loads effin Google Analytics. No thanks, tab closed.

I can say similar stuff about every country.

1960s: I love USA, but racism, sexism, suffrage etc, so they should not attempt to do space stuff.

This is a classic flamewar topic that leads to nasty places and never generates anything interesting or new. Please don't go there on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Easy to criticize eh?

Since you were born of Indian parents, it will be easy for you to get OCI/PIO. Why dont you go there and start helping with alleviating poverty, corruption, water shortages and suffering? Come on...you can do it...

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