India to launch Mars mission this year: President | Hacker News Reader

India to launch Mars mission this year: President

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

55 pointszengr46 comments

Expecting a flury of "fix all your problems before anything else" comments ITT.

Keeping aside cynicism, it is nice to see a lot of countries aiming towards exploring Mars. We can cover even more grounds this way.

Looking forward to a better space race and hoping these countries will do the right by releasing their work into the public domains.

"fix all your problems before anything else" Will come as a byproduct of their Space program. It's true as you say, some people have a knee-jerk reaction to this, but more level-headed people can see the enormous benefit in not just science, technology and medicine that will surely come as a result of this, but also the jobs it will create and the inertia to succeed. That's gotta pump some money back into the economy.

There are several generations of scientists, mathematicians engineers, doctors, you name it... that have been inspired by the U.S. space program, so I can completely view this as the best idea they've had in a long time.

For all those curious in this thread.

And

For those wondering what benefit this can possibly serve.

There is no cold war like situation here in India. Also US and Russia have already been there. There is also a huge problem of poverty, corruption and every other social evil known to man exists in India. So why go to mars?

For a country of India's size, you will never ever go to space if you wait till all other problems are solved. Because given the very size and population of India, problems are a given. Of course a mission of this importance will serve your usual technology and science benefits. Like ISRO's previous mission to moon, there will be important findings and discoveries. But besides this, its a matter of huge national pride.

Contrary to whatever you may think a lot of development and great work happens in India. So its not like we only have call centers, or IT services companies here. We have everything from Nuclear weapons development to Mars missions in India. And like every other country we would like to send out a message that we can do it too.

Sounds naive and childish?

No, if you think from an Indian's perspective. I find this project a worthy endeavor in many ways because it serves more than one purpose. Growth of technology and science, inspiring the youth to work further in this area, ensure India earns well deserved respect in the global space research community and also pave the for further space exploration.

Coming to budget, 454 crore spent for a project of this importance is chicken feed if you ask me. Besides if you can prevent one minor scam in our country you can run a project like this.

Overall I feel this is an amazing project, and I feel proud that my country is executing it.

Wait, 454 crore is 83 million dollars? That _is_ amazing! That's like 8 pebble watch projects on Kickstarter.

"An engineer is someone who can do for $1 what any damn fool can do for $2".

India has a ton of great scientists and engineers, and I agree this is a mission the nation should be proud of.

Chicken Feed ain't it.

What's more the moon mission(Chandrayaan-1 http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/faqs.htm) cost just $76 million.

Its sequel Chandrayaan-2 is budgeted to cost around 425 crores(News sources).

Here is one more link, ISRO's total budget is JUST 3% that of NASA - http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-03-03/india...

Next time around you will be hearing US government outsourcing its space projects to India :) [That was a joke, obviously]

The two day strike currently taking place in India is said to have resulted into loss of ~25000 crore..

Yes and India needs to balance the expectations of the poor and at the same time the middle class youth. These kind of stuff hopefully might inspire and prevent brain drain.

I'm on the fence about any nation going to Mars for the sake of pride.

I don't think the first man on Mars will want to go down in history as an American, personally. At least, if that is how it is pitched and sold - s/American/Indian/g - then I have to say that I am terrified of the sudden lurch of the species towards a planet of immense resources, bereft of any intervention of industry besides .. simply .. the technology to get there and do stuff.

It may be a sense of great national pride, but for no great pride ought this matter of human control over another planet be achieved!

Send Robots to Mars, not Men! Turn over the keys to the enter species, not one single brand/variant of it!

Project name: Mangalyaan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalyaan

I can't parse the ": President" in the headline. Is that standard way to indicate that "the President said so"?

If you go to their home page and look at the "Other Stories" section, it appears to be a standard way to attribute the phrase. Think of it as Reverse Indian Notation; in North America we'd say "President: India to launch Mars mission this year".

I agree. That's just backwards. But I've seen it in the Australian press too.

what about educating children in the vast slums of Mumbai... what about water supply to the villages afflicted with famine..

They're not mutually exclusive

Discussion done here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372563

thanks a lot !

Launching such missions does not mean that other areas are being ignored. Stop comparing two completely different things.

I am still skeptical about a successful Mars mission, but it will be good if we all be more positive about it.

Where do you choose to draw the line in such cases? Every country makes this choice. Every country does some expensive things instead of spending that money on the poorest members of its society. If one advocates anything other than complete equality of living standards, sending a mission to mars whilst the poor go hungry is just a question of degree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalyaan

The project cost is around 454 crore or what you could save by preventing a minor scam in our country.

The way I see, this is chicken feed for a project of this importance.

And then you have a problem with unemployed aerospace engineers instead. Building a scientific and technological base in order to develop the country by necessity involves spending money on scientific and technological projects.

Yeah. The US sorted out all THEIR problems, like poverty and civil rights before they started building all those spaceshi...uhmm, wait...

The US was far richer than India is now when the space program began.

But that was a different time, you can't compare India and US, Problems were different back then (mostly technical), and would it be even feasible to wait for becoming reach and developed before developing tech today?

Actually spending to be a front runner in tech like this is not an expenditure, It's a well thought investment. Which i am sure will prove to be a good one, with long term returns.

There will always be some excuse to avoid exploring, avoid scientific research, avoid creating art. There will always be a hungry mouth to feed, a diseased body to cure, a cold and lonely person with no home. And it makes sense to put a lot of resources toward such things. But it doesn't make sense to be consumed by them. To stop advancing, stop exploring, stop learning, stop growing, stop having fun, etc. India will only be spending something like 0.04% of its annual national budget on this Mars mission. That seems like a small price to pay for the benefits to national morale and inspiration it's likely to bring.

In related news, Uganda is trying to launch a space probe: http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/639792-uganda-to-launch-its-...

"We shall send a mouse to space. If it comes back alive, it will mean that Uganda is able to send human beings into space and we shall embark on constructing a new space observer that a person can use"

Here's a version you can actually read - http://www.readability.com/articles/c3cbrgbi

Is there any point in countries doing that alone, rather than global cooperation?

Claiming property of whatever they find up there?

India has both signed and ratified the Outer Space Treaty, that prohibits countries from making territorial claims on celestial bodies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Good to know, thanks. BTW, I was not particularly referring to India, but to countries that simultaneously start such missions. It seems, Bhutan did not sign yet, so we can get nervous when they start a mission. ;)

Sticking a flag on a rock in space has the side-effect of changing how the the world perceives you...

Less overhead, easier management, lower total budget. Unmanned Mars missions need not be terribly expensive, perhaps only a few tens of millions of dollars, depending on how it's built.

Who said, ISRO's missions are completely cut off from the world, if you search a little, there is a lot more of cooperation in space fields today, than any other field.

This is true. Here's the Chandrayaan-1 (earlier lunar satellite) payload:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1#Payload

It contained significant instruments from NASA and ESA. The instrument that discovered polar water was M3:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/details.php?id=5923

I believe it was given a free ride by ISRO, but the instrument itself was paid for by NASA.

Should I be credulous about this? I've seen Indian newspapers report some pretty odd things.

Ah, I stand corrected. I thought this was to be a manned mission. It is late in my neck of the woods.

ISRO has a pretty decent success rate, there is no reason to be skeptical about this.

Also we already have a mission to moon(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1). There is no reason why this won't be successful.

If you think India's odd, I've got one word for you: "Florida"

Pretty old news for me, I first heard of it (and I reckon ISRO doesn't make announcements if its not already sure) after the chandrayaan mission a year or so ago.

But what is funny is the view of people towards ISRO's space missions. See a lot of trolls would start talking about poverty, malnutrition, etc etc in India, whenever such news is announced.

The two point they don't see is:

1. Technology is not a object that you can go out and buy, investment always comes at price and a risk, but you never know what you will find, and what are its applications, if you think of it otherwise.

2. Similarly, India, is just another country, racing towards socio-economic development, and people are not happy with meeting 10 year old benchmarks. So, when we will achieve certain standards, others (developed countries) would have already moved ahead, and in this race we would be both driving at same speed. This is where scientific discovery/research comes in. Until and unless we device a way to cut short the chase, we will never come par with the developed countries.

This is what estonia understands, being a african country, its both behind, developed countries like US, and developing ones like India. So it recently decided to go 2 steps ahead, and go fully electric for its car industry. Sadly, which is something India doesn't understand. But you get the point.

What is being spent on India's space program, is only a fraction, compared to what is being spent on these real problems people are talking about, so stop complaining or go back to stone age!

Estonia is a European, not African, country.

err, my bad

I'm a little skeptical here. It's easy to announce a Mars mission, it's a little harder to actually achieve the goal.

For a country that has not yet achieved manned spaceflight at all Mars seems to be picked for publicity reasons more than practical reasons. It's good motivational stuff but that usually backfires when the goal is eventually not achieved. I hope they will do this, I believe they will not, and the dates mentioned reinforce that belief.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_human_spaceflight_progra...

Did you read the article? This is an unmanned Mars mission. I believe India is more than capable of pulling of Mars orbiter mission.

Sure it is unmanned, but you can have only so many space projects at once without incurring a risk.

To announce a mission of this magnitude when they already have a manned space program announced (with the budget to go along with it) would seem to me to dilute the funds to the point that both will likely end up aborted.

Maybe they should first complete the stuff they've already announced and then move on to the next target? As it is India's space program is not exactly on schedule adding more projects will likely reduce the chances of existing projects running to completion.

see, the point is why send humans for missions that robots can do, what is the point of sending humans+oxygen+supplies for them, when you can have a lifeless machine perform whatever you need. See this is one of the reasons, manned missions are only being done by those approaching space for colonization. India's objective is not that.

It is abundantly clear this is not a manned mission (though if they were to attempt that it would be an extremely bold statement).

India has a stated intention to put humans in space and is actively working towards that. Adding yet another arrow to the quiver with such an ambitious goal already underway feels as though it might end up risking both projects.

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