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People like you are outright hindrance to science and progress. We do not need to do serial problem solving, it can go on parallely. But please let Indian students relish good science. They deserve it. Good, you are not deciding any budget for these matters. Let's see the disparity:

NREGA (Solving indian poverty) budget: Rs. 4, 000 Billion

ISRO budget : Rs. 56 Billion (0.3% of Indian Budget)

Indian Budget: Rs. 17, 000 Billion

India has lot of other problems to solve. Yes. But this news is about Indian science, and let's keep it so. Let's not take away from the scientists who are delivering good value on budget. There are platforms to vent your opinions, but this one is not the one.

If it was not for ISRO who launched INSAT 3D, cyclone phailin would have had a devastating effect. How will this help India? Indian science is progressing. Indian scientists are taking ambitious missions. It will help propel more people into these fields. Technologies do not exist in vacuum and have derivative uses.

Exactly. No reason progress on both ends can't be parallelized. Also most of the time progress in science and technology leads to alleviation of poverty. It is seldom the other way around.

Not to mention that NREGA is nothing but waste of money.

Your initial comment was knee-jerk and symptomatic of the typical response that greets advanced space/rocket programs from a developing country like India - namely that it has other more pressing issues like poverty, hunger, economic development, corruption etc. to tackle before getting to space exploration.

As others have pointed out, these are not pre-requisites for a space program. And given that the $100M expenditure (Flipkart raised $160M in funding from the same country a few days back), there is no chance that it is diverting precious resources from the rest of India.

Which brings me to the latter part of your comment - that ISRO does not know how to "compete" with private space startups.

Tell me, why did you suddenly impose the private-profit constraint on India's sovereign space program? Sure ISRO derives some revenue from its commercial launch program, but that is not its primary purpose.

Investments into a country's space program (or any other strategic initiative for that matter) can rarely ever be recouped via "profits". Are NASA engineers working round the clock to compete with Space-X? Is the primary goal of the Chinese space program's to garner the largest commercial launch market share?

All of this does not mean ISRO is above criticism, nor its Mars program. For instance, why the hurry to make this happen in 2013? Why go alone instead of allying with friendly countries? Why not wait for the larger GSLV rocket to place this into orbit instead of the smaller PSLV? Why such opaque decision making around its objectives?

The latter part of this Science article covers some of these points: http://news.sciencemag.org/asia/2012/08/qualms-about-indias-...

It is a travesty that his comment is at the top, rather than discuss merits/demerits of this initiative, we (atleast 7 of us commentators) are fixing this downright moron's narrow vision. I am immensely peeved that his comment is not adding anything of value, and is outright banal as they come on Indian topics.

I do not think GSLV is ready, and won't be ready any time sooner although they are testing it in December. Also, I think GSLV should achieve workhorse capability like PSLV before it can be tasked with major workloads. I think NASA is helping with the payloads on MOM. I would be curious to know which ones are contributions by NASA though [1]. Also, the landing gear is designed with the help of ROSCOSMOS [2]. Some more detailed information in these links [3, 4, 5].

[1] - http://www.isro.org/pslv-c25/pdf/mom-payloads.pdf

[2] - http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/pdf/2760.pdf

[3] - http://isp.justthe80.com/planetary-exploration/mars-obiter

[4] - http://antariksh-space.blogspot.ca/2013/01/isro-mars-mission...

[5] - http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3zXg2UZ2J7w/UOej3qTPVvI/AAAAAAAAAO...

[6] - http://www.iafastro.net/iac/archive/browse/IAC-12/A3/3A/1469...

[7] - http://www.ias.ac.in/jess/aug2009/d8je-91.pdf

God forbid if someone voices a different opinion than yours, he must be a "downright moron" right?

No. This is not different opinion at all, but rather a very very common and banal opinion that gets voiced in every Indian space thread. I deliberately used strong language because I felt it is deserved. The comment is not exploring anything novel, is a rabid near-sighted political and anti-science commentary, and is taking space away from scientific questions.

You might want to read the guidelines[1] before commenting on HN.

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."

Also do you even read before calling names? You're the only one who took the discussion away from the topic placed in here. Please note that groupthink of seven people who agreed with you doesn't make opinion of others (who disagree with you) any less relevant.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is civil, I would have called you out in face to face discourse too. Btw, will you say to an Indian politician verbally face to face, to bug off to mars on this orbiter? (refer to your first post, first line)

I have replied very aptly to the points that are being raised in posts. I am not deviating in any sense at all, instead you took science away from this topic. Well then your opinion is one that gets raised thousand times, and it is under my purview to give a strong reply once.

EDIT: Reply to comment below.

"> This is civil + I would have called you out in face to face discourse too.

Notice the contradiction? You should calm down, I think."

Honestly, I am lost on the point you are trying to prove here with your comment. I am saying, I would have said those words to you face to face too.

Anyways, thank you for contributing a whole lot of this topic.

If you don't go and take a peek from across Khyber pass, then someone else will come and screw you for hundreds of years.

When you rely on suppliers too much, then you keep buying and selling to Arab traders, and don't develop naval capabilities. Again a tiny country from other side of the world will send a force on your shores and you will be screwed for 100s of years.

When do you intend to learn a lesson?

You may be living in the la-la land where relying on US infrastructure for a small fee looks like a great idea, but you would do well to consider what if Obama decides he doesn't like Indian anymore. Americans sent a warship in Bay of Bengal in 1971 in support of Pakistan. If you leech onto their GPS then it is not hard to imagine that you will have to seek their permission before tackling any troublemaker in the region. You may not have a problem with this setup, but many others do.

Now to see what happens to the countries that don't go beyond their coasts, look at the allocations of arctic or antarctic regions. Do you want the smallest share of the pie when moon is being mined?

And then there is China. Have you spoken to someone who can recollect what fear people lived in 1960s. In my opinion both space and nuclear program of India are not a luxury, they are necessary tools to tackle existential threats. And both of these programs have run very cost effectively with good results.

However, if you feel particularly philanthropic, then nobody stops you from being the messiah. Mother Teresa didn't come on HN to change the world. Go do what you pretend to believe in..

ISRO's budget is 950 million usd. Roughly about 0.33% of the total Indian budget for 13-14. While there are other pressing issues, it does not mean that you don't do anything else.

I am not even going into numerous benefits from ISRO, something demonstrated just a couple of days back with Phalin cyclone.

That data is available for cheap few thousand dollars from whatever other countries have already put up there. However, I do agree that science should be kept on the front burner. Mission to mars doesn't seem a very useful one for climate study though.

Yeah and you know what those countries predicted? They were way off [1]. Developing indigenous capability in scientific community means future progress, and produces fruit rather than simple outright outsourcing.

[1] - http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1ocz33/a_pleasant...

>>but then there are a lot of other economic machinery related things that we need to figure out first.

The budget is shoe string, so small that its almost a rounding error in India's budget. I am not sure what you would accomplish cutting that and investing in yet another give-away-things-for-free schemes.

>>By the time ISRO of India matures up, rocketry elsewhere will move away from public institutions to the more competitive and cut-throat marketplace of private players.

Well this is as mature as it gets. A agency that has sent one probe to moon, another one in progress and is sending one to mars at a shoe string budget compared any other nation is by no means a 'immature' agency.

>>So I just don't see the point, enlighten me if there is one.

There is no point in anything. Anything for that matter, why climb the Mount Everest? Why invent the Internet, or go to the moon, or anything that will ever exist on earth. Earth is just a small rock going around an average star in some corner of a galaxy. Humanity is too small and feeble to have any impact on anything in the grand scheme of things.

>>Besides Indian Government should rather (and at least) be focusing on the more serious issues drowning 'our country in our own poop' -- things like corruption, poverty, malnutrition, malaria, dengue, power outages etc. What not!

Firstly this isn't one-after-the-other, you have to do things in parallel. Secondly if we were to wait to start before everything is right, we would never start anything.

Update: May be you should reply to specific comments. Besides, I will reply any way.

>>Can someone explain how ISRO is gonna compete tomorrow, and do the same space exploration at a competitive cost, when the rest of the world would have moved to space industry being managed by private players and even start-ups?

We should debate about that then?

How many start up's do you see in space exploration currently? Spacex doesn't count as a start up as they started with a pretty big investment.

Space exploration is expensive and requires funding across years to see any sign of success, in short you can't start a space exploration firm in your garage. This why ideally governments are better placed to chase such large decade spanning projects.

>>Someone indicated below that ISRO operates on a shoe-string budget. Can we fix that at least?

What do you want to fix? Can you point out what is broken first?

Only thing that needs to be fixed is that we need to aim higher, and provide them with better funds to get there.

Well said. Poverty, age old education structure, old traditions and thinking strategies has to get a major change. Then they launch this rocket and it seems meaningful by then.

According to Neil deGrasse Tyson (I am paraphrasing from some lecture somewhere) - humanity on Earth has always been deep in shit. If we expand our horizons (via Science, not just astronomy) instead of focusing _exclusively_ on welfare, we will do better in the long run. This mission to Mars will help in ways that we can't even imagine now

> humanity on Earth has always been deep in shit.

Agreed, but at this point welfare, direction, basic education, tactical advantage, military advantage, logical thinking, karma and pretty much everything else is _exclusively_ ignored. Even in 'mericah it is now the private players doing the rocket rounds. Kind of like NASA, the big daddy, making way for the young and restless to come in and take over. Where would the strategy of having 'exclusive ISRO' stand in the near term?

I am not getting a cohesive point in your comment to rebut.

Either you are saying: 1. India, for example, is _exclusively_ (i.e. completely) ignoring welfare - something that is clearly wrong as the country spends a lot on subsidizing food and basic amenities - you can argue the specifics of the program but can't say that the program is absent.

or you are saying 2. India is _exclusively_ focusing on ISRO, also something wrong - ISRO is a minute fraction of the budget

> Then they launch this rocket and it seems meaningful by then.

Why do you think that India should launch rockets only after all its socio-economic problems are fixed? There's no need to serialize them; they can all go hand in hand. Investing money in classical engineering and science might in fact help in alleviating said problems.

I, for one, don't mind government pouring money into ISRO. I am eagerly looking forward to Mars Orbiter in October, GSLV in December, SRE-2 and IRNS launches next year :)

RE your update: Would you like to argue for the closure of ISRO, or the expansion? You make a case for both, and it seems the argument should start from one premise or the other.

It should be expanded, because many basic (as in, not first-order profit driven) science exploration fields will never get attention from industrial interests. These are advanced by government and academic actors.

A more robust ISRO also jump-starts opening India as a consumer of incredibly complex technology solutions. And, per the Indian imperative, these solutions may look very, very different from Amero-European parallels. It feels obvious that this then fosters new demand for STEM work and manufacturing in India.

There is no reason ISRO cannot be grown in the shape of, and compete with, private space exploration. NASA can't easily shift like that because it is so entrenched and intertwined in US legislative interests, but ISRO is an upstart still.

Can someone explain how ISRO is gonna compete tomorrow, and do the same space exploration at a competitive cost, when the rest of the world would have moved to space industry being managed by private players and even start-ups?

ISRO is already a well-known player in commercial space launches and other "space services". Check out Antrix, ISRO's commercial wing:

http://www.antrix.gov.in/

Compete tomorrow not today. It is a well-known player, indeed.

Rocketry space is under serious disruption [1], and quite rapidly at that. It has often been seen that a well-known player of today is quickly wiped out by a wave that they didn't foresee coming. India is definitely missing the up-starting entrepreneur-ism around rocketry, and that's where the strategy seems to be broken. Like it is for many other fronts, including public welfare.

[1] http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/04/17/1958253/china-spa...

You keep moving the goal post. ISRO delivered some fantastic stuff on a very low budget, this is not about whether ISRO will be able to compete in future or not. Infact going by the current prices posted on SpaceX website and the amount it took for this orbiter mission, it is indeed very competitive

Someone indicated below that ISRO operates on a shoe-string budget. Can we fix that at least?

I'm not an expert on Indian affairs, but I constantly read about how Indian bureaucracy kills initiatives by slow torture in that country, especially in government. If ISRO can figure things out on a shoestring budget, and those lean and mean operations can provide lessons to the rest of the Indian government, that alone would be an excellent reason to do this, I think. I'm not sure that operational lessons would actually be taken from ISRO and applied to other government initiatives, but if you don't have a in-your-face benchmark in the first place, how do you ever aim higher?

Well. It is projects like that inspire young people. And why do you think we in India are not curious to find out stuff about the universe? I know, I am. Poor people get bored too. http://www.anyclip.com/movies/hard-target/natasha-taken-host...

Seems like finding(and making it habitable) a new place for sending some of our population might be a good idea in long run.

The politician part is shortsighted.