Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling
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Let's just forget for a moment that valuable skills and infrastructure are being created for India in this process and look at where the money is going.
A large proportion of the expense of this mission goes to paying the wages of domestic scientists and engineers in India. This money will in turn get taxed and spent by the recipients and pumped back into the local economy.
As far as I can see it is a win win win.
Right now, launching satellites in the US is a pain in the ass, thanks to the combination of ITER[1] and the lack of a replacement for the shuttle.
If India can become a launch destination for US companies looking to throw birds into orbit, that's big. Doubly so because it's not like they don't have plenty of engineers. Hell, this might be the case already, and I just don't know.
[1] okay, now EAR, but still.
The Atlas V is the current standard for putting satellites into space.
Sierra Nevada Corporation puts a satellite into orbit almost once a week.
The pain you speak of is non existent.
That's simply untrue. Access to launchers is the bottleneck to satellite development. Large institutional customers have access to space, but almost nobody else does. The commercial satellite industry has been shaped by the shortage of launchers, with satellites designed to be launched infrequently with long design lives. As a result everything is tremendously expensive.
This is changing slowly with the advent of SpaceX and the develoment of launchers by other countries. There's no reason launches can't be an order of magnitude cheaper. The fuel cost is actually a minimal part of the cost of a rocket system.
I work in the space business. Getting access to a suitable launcher for smaller lower priority projects is hard.
PS: In the end there is a fairly small list of things satilites can do, they can measure things, relay information, or act as a beacon. Useful, but we don't exactly need 10 independent world wide GPS platforms.
That's good and let's hope it doesn't change soon. We're already risking Kessler syndrome[0], and allowing any poor schmuck to launch throwaway satellites as a way to earn money is a huge, global tragedy of commons waiting to happen.
A point I believe Antonio Elias made a couple years ago (I quite him a lot...) was that the satellite market is currently quite inelastic. Both when Russian launchers became available to the west, and with cheap Chinese launchers hit the market, global launch rates didn't really increase. Clients just moved around, and pocketed the difference.
Wow, I'm interested. Let's hear them!
> they help to push money around the economy (worker salaries and equipment invoices)
But that already happens with any new enterprise. Any new company created helps push money around through employee salaries and equipment invoices. What's special about a space mission in this regard?
> but also in terms of the skills gained by everybody that works on the project
But that already happens naturally in the free market. We have an explosion of tech jobs now that are increasing everyone's skills. It's almost a given now that an employee must be computer literate. Advances in technology have required that people have more skills. What's special about a space mission in this regard?
> as well as the international capital of being a spacefaring country
A.k.a. bragging rights. Do you really think international investors care if a country is throwing rockets when deciding to invest in that country? That they are that frivolous?
ISRO's expertise is also helpful to advance India's defense capabilities which could have otherwise remained hostage to USA's Military Industrial Complex.
> Let's just forget for a moment that valuable skills and infrastructure are being created for India
This does not take into account what the money would have done otherwise. Since we can not know what the money otherwise would have been spent on its hard or impossilble to say it it is better for india.
> A large proportion of the expense of this mission goes to paying the wages of domestic scientists and engineers in India.
The money would alternativly also have been spent on thing bought in india, also gone into the pockets of shops and other things. This money would also have been taxed, just the same as it is now.
You are completly ignoring the counterfactual, you only look at the things that did happen, and not at the things that did not happen because of this.
So its not a win win win. It might be a win win lost. Or maybe a win lost lost. Again, im not against spending on space programmes, but your economic analysis is completly flawed. People who want taxes to build sport statums make much the same case and also ignore the counterfactual.
The spending of taxes should be done on the merits of the direct effects you want to achive and not some nebulus things that money will do later.
Maybe, or maybe it wouldn't have been. They could have spent the same money on imports.
"Important", unqualified by a specific concrete, objectively measurable goal that thing are judged by importance to, is inherently subjective.
I don't mean to be rude, but so what that you think this or that is more important? The discussion should be based on the merits of each investment, not eric_cc's list of most important things on an objective level.
Get off your high horse.
I wonder this as well.
I would like to share one story and one HN comment that I think are both eloquent and highly relevant to the discussion:
Why Explore Space?
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html
Who Saves Lives?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4025495
* * *
I commented in an earlier story today, but I think this mission will serve to kindle a fire in young people, stoking their interests in technology, science, orbital mechanics, etc... particularly in India, but will hopefully resonate throughout the world. In the broader picture, this mission represents the seeds of inspiration being planted for a future generation. Imagine the scientists and engineers that this event will bring forth and blossom.
Secondly, as it has been said several times Indian space program gets just small fraction of total Indian budget.
Guess what, people would not use them because going to the bathroom in town was taboo. They would walk past the new toilet facility and use the woods.
a. The primary target market found the cost to high
b. The primary market who had always used the woods were embarrassed of not knowing how to "use" the facilities and embarrassed to ask anyone about it.
c. There were some free locations, that were filthy.
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21607837-fixing-dreadful-...
> Evidence is growing that India must urgently correct its cultural practices, though it is sensitive to say so. Studies of India’s population show how since at least the 1960s child mortality rates have consistently been higher in Hindu families than Muslim ones—though Muslims typically are poorer, less educated and have less access to clean water
Step by step:
- Government charges people taxes.
- Government uses tax money to pay scientists and equipment.
- Government makes tax-over-tax profits by charging taxes again on scientists salaries (which were already paid with tax money, but now will be charged tax again) and on equipment purchases (sales tax will be charged on equipment that is already being bought with tax money). Everything the scientists spend their income on will also be taxed again.
This is just a ruse so government makes more money. It fools people every time.
- Is the Mars mission the best allocation of those resources right now?
- Could this money generate more wealth, or the same wealth faster, if it were allocated elsewhere? (for instance, savings generating higher interest rates and more small business loans)
I can't understand how people think these programs are a good idea. I'm not against exploring Mars, mind you, and I think it's a good idea. But what we have to do is create incentives to encourage entrepreneurs to come up with ideas.
This is stupid and definitely not true by definition. Free market is full of zero-sum games (like advertising) that waste resources and government can be significantly cheaper by the sole virtue of not having to compete with anyone. Even if free market is often better in practice, that observation is far from allowing for a general declarative statement like yours.
> I can't understand how people think these programs are a good idea. (...) But what we have to do is create incentives to encourage entrepreneurs to come up with ideas.
Because they provide hard to quantify mid-to-long-term benefits, and little profits short-term, which is the exact blind spot of entrepreneurs. Look, capitalistic economy is a greedy optimization algorithm (with the computer-science connotations of the word greedy); if something isn't immediately profitable, it won't be done, period, no matter the long-term benefits.
People like Elon Musk do space in spite of free market, not thanks to it - he had a dream and enough money to push cheap rockets down the market's throat whether it wanted them or not.
However,
> if something isn't immediately profitable, it won't be done, period, no matter the long-term benefits.
This is not true. Many companys make huge amount of long term investments that will not be profitable for a while. Companys that fail to to do these kind of things will have long term problems when the market changes and they have nothing new to offer.
> People like Elon Musk do space in spite of free market, not thanks to it - he had a dream and enough money to push cheap rockets down the market's throat whether it wanted them or not.
This is also a strange phrasing. Musk could not do what he does without market demand for his product, he has lots of money but not enougth to fully devlop everything he wants without profit. He might not have started the project to make space flight cheaper, but thats the effect the market cares about and thats why its a substainable project.
Space flight is also very special because regulation are way beyond what you normally face. Goverments around the world are not to friendly to people building these kinds of rockets. SpaceX for example only has americans working there because of these regulations.
I guess it depends both on how long is the long term, and on the quantifiability of the returns of investment. There was a nice thread about it yesterday, with a wonderful quote:
"My former boss (CTO of Panasonic) once told me that the only way to do real R&D is to have a monopoly that allows you to hide the margins in cutting edge R&D. Everyone else was doing just product development."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8357318
Entrepreneurs avoid doing "blue-sky" research because the return is unpredictable. It might be zero, it might be a little bit, it might be an entire new industry - but you can't predict your profit. That's why we have governments that fund basic research with no expectation of getting anything from it immediately.
> This is also a strange phrasing. Musk could not do what he does without market demand for his product, he has lots of money but not enougth to fully devlop everything he wants without profit.
True. What I meant is that both here and with Tesla, he used his money to force this demand. They had to do a lot of work to get electric cars to the point people actually started to want them. Ditto for rockets; he needs them for his goals, so he made them profitable where previously they were not. But toilet-paper businesses [0] (which are the majority of the market) went elsewhere, there are plenty of lower-hanging fruits that you can monetize if you don't care what you're selling.
> Look, capitalistic economy is a greedy optimization algorithm [...] if something isn't immediately profitable, it won't be done, period
Your "Look" and "period" intimidation tactics aside, what you are saying contradicts the way capitalism works. An enterprise only comes to be through savings, that are then invested. This in itself is inherently a long-term process that aims towards what will be profitable in the future. Capitalism only works through sacrificing short-term gains for long-term bigger gains. I have no idea where you got the skewed view that capitalism is myopic as you put it. Apple invests R&D on new products all the time and it funds it with its own money. If it had to pay taxes in the US it might not have been able to fund its own research, and then you'd see companies lobbying for R&D tax cuts, which then generate more waste through increased red tape.
> Tesla, he used his money to force this demand.
You're playing words games. Tesla bought rockets, that's it. He didn't "force the demand" for rockets, he increased it by 1 through wanting them. The essential difference is that Musk did not steal money from anyone in order to buy rockets. The government, on the other hand, steals from its constituents so that someone that did not earn the right to build a rocket can now build one. And obviously Tesla's rockets or whatever he's doing (I don't really care) will be better because he has an incentive to optimize his resources' allocation as it is his money on the line. A governmental agency has no such incentive to be wise with its funds since it never earned it and it can always request more.
To respond to a particular point,
> Not having to compete with anyone does not make a product cheaper, it makes it more expensive. Competition drives prices down. So the government having a monopoly over a service makes that service more expensive.
True in many cases, especially if you only care about end-buyer price, but false in others. Some things fail spectacularly when you make them competitive. Things like basic research, things like exploiting a limited pool of shared resources, things like schools and prisons - they all go to hell when you try to run them on free-market rules. Some would say medicare is another similar thing. The market price is not the only important metric; some others are: quality, accessibility, efficiency, externalities.
> Advertising is not a waste of resources, it is investment of resources - literally, money spent buying leads in order to try and convert them into customers.
Who, were you not to convert them, would go to the competitor. It's a total waste of resources - you spend money (and more importantly, fuel and man-hours) trying to one-up your competitor, he does the same; on average, you still get the same amount of clients, only both of you wasted resources on a stupid zero-sum game. You'd both be better off if you agreed to not run any more ads that it take for people to discover you exist; yet since you can't agree on that, you're stuck in a zero-sum game.
> Things like basic research, things like exploiting a limited pool of shared resources, things like schools and prisons - they all go to hell when you try to run them on free-market rules.
Research is done with money from profits; if companies weren't taxed so much they'd have more profits left to invest in R&D.
Public schools are a vehicle for government propaganda and the brainwashing of children. There, they are conditioned to obey, not to question, and not to trust their own thinking. Public education as it is is as much child abuse as growing up religious is; it teaches kids the truth is in others, and that they couldn't have arrived at true conclusions by themselves.
There are better ways to deal with crime than prisons. It's a strawman to counter anarchist views with "but what of the roads? and prisons?" as if those are the only ways to travel and to curb crime. Go back in history, there are several alternatives to these that do not necessitate the government. Of particular interest is Iceland in the 10th century, but that's really just one example. I wonder how much research you've done to conclude with so much certainty that those things "all go to hell when you try to run them on free-market rules".
Advertising is not money spent trying to one-up competitors (though it can be). It is broadcasting the existence of a service or product. It's not about converting others to drop their favorite brands (though it can be), but about letting others know you exist. How do you get people to know you exist without advertisement?
I'd also like to point out that although I usually enjoy your comments here, you're being extremely condescending to me in your tone. Examples: "pretty much [...] debunks your points", "a lot of dogmas that sound nice", "trivially easy to be shown false", etc. The reason I point this out is because I'm routinely downvoted for defending my side of the argument, when in fact we should be using downvotes for people like you that address others with contempt and trivialize their points.
Are downvotes votes of disagreement? If so, everyone should be able to downvote.
Your fallacy is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Most of the wealth of developed nations comes from the belief that holding an asset will be worth more later - for example a house in your neighborhood will be increasingly valuable because people will continue to want buy it for the local schools, jobs, etc. How the rate at which assets are projected to increase in value is THE central lever on economic performance. What space tech does is says: the assets in this economy have the potential to increase in value at a greater rate. This makes everyone in the economy better off due to investment speculation "wealth from belief".
However, I do think its valid to critique India if it were to over-invest in space-tech: they are not a modern economy with a large middle class yet, and thus could see more lucrative gains from New-Deal / GI-Bill -esque promotion of middle class. That being said, any (safe) investment portfolio should have a mix of all possible good policies, which includes tech programs along with social-welfare.
Developed countries are wealthier because it takes a tiny fraction of human effort to produce e.g. a car or a loaf of bread compared to in a developed country, because through investing in technology/capital we're much more productive at making cars and bread.
The salaries are not merely money being cycled around in the economy if the labor being paid for results in the scientists not having time or inclination to produce other labor. Furthermore, it is likely that the resources launched off of the planet could have been used for something else.
Whether or not it is equivalent to the broken window fallacy really does depend on subjective assessments of the value produced by the missions. However, it is also worth noting that even the broken window fallacy is not some universal law, and relies on its own assumptions. In certain market failure conditions destroying something and fixing it as a mechanism for increasing the velocity of money could have a net benefit.
Although it is very useful to distinguish between the real economy and money transactions as though money is an abstraction for resources being traded around, the best policies also acknowledge the existence of money, as well as friction in the economy.
I have no idea why pravda is being downmodded, beyond silly mood affiliation.
The 'broken window Fallacy' is Bastiat's observation that while the income generated for glaziers from repairing rboken windows is indeed a form of economic activity, and that this is nice enough if you're in the window business, it's economically inefficient because the economic activity merely restores the status quo instead of going to finance new production - had the window remained unbroken, the shopkeeper might have bought a book or a suit of clothes. The glazier's gain is the shopowner's loss and so there's no net improvement.
But that's a wholly inappropriate analogy for this situation of expenditure going towards Indian scientists and technicians, because they were engaged in new and productive work rather than merely receiving a subsidy. The Indian government didn't have an existing interplanetary program that was scrapped and replaced with another; it built one from scratch. In terms of Bastiat's analogy, it would be as if the shopkeeper hired the glazier to install a new window in what had previously been a blank wall.
The direct economic value of measuring whether there is methane in Mars' atmosphere is intangible - just as it would be hard to measure the impact of a newly-added window on a shopkeeper's turnover at the time of its installation. It could also be argued that NASA or some other space agency could conduct the same measurement on some future Mars project, and so the ISRO effort is probably duplicative. But even if the direct economic output of the craft itself is assumed to be zero, the development of the satellite manufacturing and launch capability, which is a net economic gain too, whereas the replacement of a broken window does not have any innovative component (since the prior existence of the window means the capability to make it already existed).
It seems to me that you and the other two posters who are arguing this position are making the implicit assumption that that NASA et al. have a comparative advantage in the development of space technology and that therefore Indian efforts are economically superfluous, in addition to your general distaste for the notion of government as client.
You've completely ignored what Zizee said and substituted a different argument. Zizee said this:
Let's just forget for a moment that valuable skills and infrastructure are being created...
Zizee is claiming that even if the mars mission were useless (kind of like breaking/fixing windows) the project would be justified simply because salaries are being paid.
Situation 1: There is a window. It gets broken. The shopkeeper pays for it to be replaced, instead of buying a book.
Situation 2: There is no window, and there is no need for a window. But the shopkeeper pays for a window anyway, instead of buying a book.
Situation 1 is restoring the status quo, situation 2 is financing new production - but they seem equally bad, because in both cases you're paying someone to do something that doesn't (at the beginning of the situation) need to be done.
I'm not saying that we're in situation 2 here, because windows are in fact useful. But zizee's original argument was roughly, "let's forget all the benefits that we get from windows, this project is paying the wages of glaziers, this money will get taxed and etc." And I think that that particular argument in favour of this project fails, and I think pravda was correct to point it out.
There's no need for any voluntary purchase, by definition. You're arguing that we should only spend so as to maximize utility, but utility is subjective and that's why we value markets over individuals. After all, what is the utility of the foregone book? It may merely afford pleasure to the reader, or be hurled across the room. It doesn't matter; the book's significance lies not in its content but in the fact of its production, for which the demand would not otherwise exist if the same money had been spent on the repair of a broken window.
Um. I'm probably misinterpreting you, but it sounds like you're suggesting that we should force people to buy things they don't want or need in order to make the market healthy?
If you are saying that, I strongly disagree. Both causally (I don't think that will make the market healthy) and normatively (even if it did, I would need a lot of convincing to advocate that).
If you're not, could you clarify?
> for which the demand would not otherwise exist if the same money had been spent on the repair of a broken window.
Or if the money had been spent on any window.
By "there is no need for a window", I meant "nobody cares if there's a window there". In both situations, money transfers from the shopkeeper to the glazier, the glazier does some glazing, and the shopkeeper ends up no better off than before.
pravda did not point that out. pravda claimed zizee was using the Broken Window Fallacy. zizee's argument and your summarization of it are not examples of the fallacy. Nor is situation 2 in your post above. The fallacy has nothing to do with something being useful or necessary.
The broken window just doesn't strike me as a central part of the broken window fallacy. To me, the important part is that people see the glazier getting money in exchange for a service, and think that economics is happening and this is a good thing; but they don't see that if the glazier didn't get that money, the bookseller would.
So I'd say that yeah, zizee is committing the broken window fallacy, even if the broken window itself has no analogous component in vis reasoning.
(But I'm not going to argue about it if you continue to disagree. That would be a profoundly boring argument.)
Well, new and productive work is not equivalent to valuable work, for possibly a pretty big number of definitions of "valuable". Of course, "valuable" is subjective.
I mean, of course, in the global future context, this endeavor may contribute a lot of value, but what if I am starving and I probably wont be there to take advantage of that value? With sufficient people in this situation, the value of this project is pretty low.
This is a completely nonsensical line of reasoning, that's why. They're still paying folks to do ostensibly wasteful activities, and you're not going to successfully counter that with your perpetual motion economics.
This is the logic of "useless" expenditures on space programs, and it is not some theoretical claim, but one that has been borne out many times in the US and elsewhere. This ground has been covered so many times in the past fifty years it isn't clear why anyone still believes that investment in space exploration is not a wise way to spend a modest fraction of taxpayer's money.
Moreover, 'zizee is talking about something even more powerful. Space programs can act as huge multipliers on an economy. A country's economy is sort of a closed system, but that doesn't mean it can't undergo a multitude of phase changes that free up resources after spending money (even waste fully). Astonishing amounts of infrastructure is needed to support a space program, and a lot of it translates to other industries well. Just as a plant opening in a town may only directly employ a few hundred people, the support infrastructure - from welding shops to hardware suppliers to diners - is huge. Many thousands will be affected by those few hundred workers.
A US example: a plant engineer goes out to lunch. Their salary has already been taxed through withheld federal payroll taxes. At the diner, a 10 buck blue plate special is ordered, and a tip left. The town has a tax on prepared dishes, which is added, and the wait staff will have their wages (and possibly tips) taxed - a wage which some portion of which is was from the lunch. That lunch also goes to support a local farmers group and a national cattle company. And so on; the piece gets smaller and smaller as it splits and redistributes through the local and national economy (and these days likely global). At some point, that money is spent.
But there's no zero sum here. Hopefully, at every step of the redistribution, at every split, some wealth was generated. A service was performed where it wouldn't have without some money. Some taxes were collected and put back into infrastructure which added a new light to the two-lane Main Street making it safer and faster for trucks to go through, a state grant to the local colleges, and a federal appropriation bill that supports local green farmer groups. The light makes more business possible on the far end of town, and drives down the plant's shipping costs a little, leading to a buck fifty more on the quarterly bonus the laborer a got later that year. And I'm leaving the other two alone, as this gets out of hand fast. At some positive, non-zero rate, the economy very slightly accelerated.
A decade later, two more plants from other industries are opening. The town is small, but has been friendly to industry. The first plant has some skilled labor that is sorely needed for these plants, and a few leave for slightly higher wages. The old plant has an established reputation in the town, and eagerly hires some replacement twenty-something's, both for their cheaper cost to stay competitive and to train fresh minds (to correct what they learned from the first ten years of mistakes).
Those skilled workers who got hired for a little more money, just for their exposure to the industry and a few skills picked up applicable to the new plants? They are going to get a blue plate special, but this time with pie. That could yield an extra buck or two to the diner - a buck or two that would never have been bought if the workers didn't get the raise from the minor skills gained from the plant that hired a couple hundred people ten years ago.
Space is like that, but with the accelerator to the floor. Technology from space programs infuse industry across the board, and require skilled labor from every level: from rocket scientist engineers to the guy painstakingly polishing the special steel alloys in a clean room. And they're all becoming slowly more valuable as a result, and they'll earn higher wages, eventually. And that money, gained from that wealth in knowledge and skill, generates more wealth - and eventually money.
Keep that up for long enough, and you've got enough skilled people to keep an economy running indefinitely. Which I suppose detracts from my initial statement: it sorta is a perpetual motion machine. Bootstrap it well, and the system will, in fact, continue to grow. Economies are big, governments are big, and they're only closed systems if you insist on zooming in and putting dotted lines around only money flow.
Amendment: contrast this perhaps with the Superconducting Super Collider. A boondoggle of there ever was one, many thousands were hired for no appreciable result, many hundreds of millions of dollars were literally sunk into a super high tech [partial] ring in the ground, and millions in equipment was manufactured and purchased. And yet, foolish as it turned out to be, it still payed many thousands a wage for a few years, fueling nearby industries with displaced highly skilled laborers now without a job, and apparently local wineries can make use of the stupefyingly expensive tunnels. All the while, the boondoggle pumped money into the hands of people who spent it, who then went on to spend what they received, all of which is getting taxed over and over. Some of that money absolutely had to end back up with the government, just as some of the air you breath was likely also breathed by any arbitrary other human. Even wasteful, such an endeavor was at least useful for it's multiplier effect. (Personally I would have loved to work on the SSC and think it was a shame to kill it, but holy geez it cost a lot - but at least can learn from a cool tech who tested components in an EM anechoic chamber, which inspired a trick I've used to help make windows slightly more reliably energy efficient. Side effects.)
Government spending via redistribution is absolutely zero sum.
Every dollar spent by the government into the economy is one dollar taxed out of the economy. Money that is given to some has to necessarily come from others. Just because the benefits are concentrated and the harm is spread out doesn't change the fact that you've only taken money from A and given to B. No additional wealth or prosperity is being created in that transaction.
Now, it may be the case that once B has the money, he spends or invests it more efficiently (in new skills, new assets or what have you) than A would have. But such a multiplier effect, if it happens, is happening in spite of, not because of, government redistribution.
> Hopefully, at every step of the redistribution, at every split, some wealth was generated
The key word is "Hopefully." It is highly unlikely that a government bureaucracy will distribute money such that it is spent more efficiently and productively than an individual taxpayer would if he still had the money to spend himself.
Yes, the economy creates wealth, but only when productivity increases. Redistribution does not create any wealth, only "spreads it around," except for the rare cases when someone in the bureaucracy makes a better decision with the money than the people who paid it in taxes. But I can't really think of a time that has been the case...
This talking point does not hold up to scrutiny.
There are plenty of examples where individuals fail to build infrastructure that, if built, would help everyone much more than the cumulative cost to build the infrastructure. The same goes for research and technology development.
Basically, the talking point assumes that individuals are rational economic actors in a rational market, and this is just not true. Additionally, even if the individuals were rational and fully informed, there will be highly suboptimal Nash equilibria.
But you are mistakenly assuming that all government spending is redistributive, as if the only thing the government did was transfer payments. Government also provides services (sometimes by contracting out to the private sector) and invests in physical capital (likewise).
Yes, a dollar taken from someone and given to another is a net null. But when we consider scale and efficacy of large organizational actors, perhaps we notice the potential of these tax dollars. It's not just the individual line A to B that must be considered. It's A to Gov to B.
I can't fund high-capacity battery research the same way the government can. I'd need to find, say, 10,000 other folks to throw $100 into a pool that we could give to a researcher to fund her experiments. She hires help, does work, maybe something comes from it. But,
How do we know she's using our money as intended? How do we know she's producing results, and the quality of those? How do we select her from all the other applicants?
Well, let's hire an auditor to check that the money is being used appropriately. Then, we need other folks in her field to confirm for us that her research is productive. We'd also need those experts (or others) to help in the technical review of her proposal against other proposals to select the most beneficial one.
Interestingly, it all starts to look like a bureaucracy. Because that's ultimately what a government, in all its spite, ends up providing -- a shared set of resources through which a society can effect greater change as a whole on itself than it could individually.
I'm sorry that your experiences and epistemology lead you toward contempt for such an apparatus, but please recognize the benefits and net-positive effect, particularly to science and engineering, such an organization has demonstrably provided.
To a country with little established science, this can be a gigantic booster shot to their domestic science abilities both through funding and in the case of space programs, inspiring youth.
As we awknowledge that a healthy scientific community is an economic boon, one could say that money is taken from A, redistributed to B by the government, and in the process creating industry C which will hugely benefit the country in the future.
A modest, very simple example is the US National Park Service. It runs a profit! Government dollars create the Parks, and obviously they are a good that is worth more to the public than the taxes it cost to make them. But that generally would not happen without Government intervention.
Not at all, most governments print their country's currency.
Well, at the level of the currency issuer (of which India is one), Government spending is money creation, and not redistribution.
Sounds like you want an effective political system to oversee that distribution. Me too.
Government spending must be essentially zero sum, since it almost exclusively must spend within a closed system (it'd be a bit silly for it to primarily spend on some other country's, after all). But to say that government spending can't be as productive as individual taxpayer spending is sort of misunderstanding scope. The typical person can't be bothered to deal with the coordination of funding all the things they'd like; the number of services that gently affect our lives is staggering. To suggest the individual administrate such spending is like suggesting we generate a line item for everything the government provides and be able to select what we personally want from it; there's a utopia to be had there, but holy mackerel the logistical coordination and administrative overhead for such a system would be mind-bogglingly complex and large, or the life simple, dull, and risky. I bet there's a Murphy's Law corollary somewhere that suggests such a fair replacement is at least as dysfunctional as the current system (heck, I'll just invoke the central theorem of Systemantics [1]).
Anyhow, the win here is that governments can concentrate money to generate a kind of critical mass, It can create opportunities that otherwise couldn't germinate (and, well, often don't). Some accomplishments require ridiculous amounts of money - more than a person could ever hope to have. Until very recently (say last ten years?), it hasn't been possible for extremely large groups of people to coordinate resources for extremely large technologically and logistically complex projects without also having a very direct, obvious, and positive feedback mechanism (read: short-term profit); crowd sourcing may actually be a fantastic replacement economically for government's deep pockets, but we're absolutely not there yet. And without that insane access to enormous capital, we simply can't bootstrap many of these industries. There are notable exceptions, but they're notable because of how uncommon and unlikely they are; legends arise from powerful individuals building massive industry sectors, but rarely without extensive help from the government (obligatory references to Standard Oil and SpaceX).
So we rely on the government to do such things as bootstrap super-capital intensive stuff. The sort of things that require billions to begin and decades to mature. And 50 years later, it's clearly paying off! What once required tens of billions to do once now can be done for tens of millions! And it's gotten so mature, the private sector is finally starting to compete with the government... here.
I'm not going to argue the value of a space program. It's so deeply integral to the magic of modern life it's dizzyingly complex to even contemplate listing. Like trying to figure out if it was worth Bell Labs allowing the transistor to be invented.
India's got a helluva scrappy space program. It manages to do a lot of things right, and as noted elsewhere by 'tn13 [2], it may even be profitable! (I have no idea how to figure out if that's actually true - it's tricky to figure out if individual sections of a plant are stand-alone profitable, let alone a complex government entity!)
[0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/104873-there-are-10-11-stars... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics#Premise [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8364632
"There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight."
"But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.""All nations wanting to launch to Low Earth Orbits at low costs approach us. Germany, France, Israel, Norway, Denmark, Italy are examples. Yes, despite ESA. Because PSLV is a cost effective and reliable launch vehicle for launching to LEOs."
And of course, Reddit being what it is, there were cute questions and answers as well. Sample:
Qn: "Let's face it. You're definitely "cool" now. Were you "cool" growing up? How was your school/college life in general? Do women dig ISRO scientists?"
Scientist 1: "Oh yes, cool all the way. I don't know about other scientists but they sure dig me."
Scientist 2: "He's kidding. I know for a fact that he is more single than Lance Armstrong's nut."
More here: "We are three ISRO scientists here to answer your questions -AMA" http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1ujcmo/we_are_three_i...
I seriously doubt this. Sure, it wouldn't be seen as a threat, but it certainly would be seen as a clear sign of America's decay in technological leadership and capabilities.
> oh no we need to beat them to the moon!
Everything I've seen documented from that era actually points to this being exactly the attitude. Sending satellites into orbit and launching ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads involves a different set of skills then sending humans into space. Sure you need to launch rockets in all cases, but life support, pushing the extra payload (into orbit, and then the moon), developing a whole set of extra skills (docking, space walking, etc.) It's just way more complicated and expensive to send people into space and there was no military advantage for either country to do it. Both countries wanted to beat each other in a game of technological machismo, just plain old competition at work.
If you take away the cold war background, many observers seriously doubt that the Americans would have bothered going to the moon.
And yes, both countries wanted to beat each other in a game of technological machismo, because they were convinced that the other side was going to be a military aggressor if they didn't. That is something missing from today with China/India, and why I doubt the US would care much if those countries space programs surpassed the US.
It was not only that, however. There was also a competition between two different forms of government and societal organization. I would bet that many in the US would experience anxiety about our "declining status as a superpower" if another country were to beat us to Mars.
Also, in the long term, if only non-western cultures expand into the solar system, they will surpass the western nations. The Earth will become a major but junior member of a coalition in a larger political context, in the same way that the UK has become a major but junior partner in the power bloc centered around the US. Just as the UK now crews Trident missile subs built by the US, the Earth will retain considerable autonomy but will ultimately answer to the Solar System wide civilization that controls the strategic high ground outside of the Earth's gravity well.
That means that after paying for this mission to Mars, Indians have still $1499.40 left to spend on other things.
Now stop bitching.
1. Mindset due to poverty: There are many people below the poverty line so it makes sense for the scientific programs to aim for the cost-effective solutions not cutting-edge.
2. Experimental: If it was your first space mission, you wouldn't exactly load it with gadgets. Missions have a chance to succeed or to end in failure. Investment would only make sense after tasting some success.
3. Cost of living: If you are well-off in India, you may still be poor outside of India. Cost of living is lowest in India (http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp). So cost of research and development will be lower than elsewhere too(maybe not everywhere).
4. Media attention(somewhat): It started with the headlines from British news "We pay for India's rocket to Mars" which raised a lot of eyebrows in India. Even though money from aid was used for intended purpose, it was questioned if India needed the aid. (To me its not worth the brouhaha. They will fancy paying for nuclear programmes next.)
5. GDP: US GDP is the largest in the world. They can afford to spend loads of money without worrying (lets say debt crisis was an exception). India has GDP which is smaller by orders of magnitude.
I am not sure if you understand what that means.
Most people don't realize how low it is until you start comparing yourself with people of your same age some 10-15 years in to your career who are working with other software companies.
Any decent IIT grad joining something like Amazon or Google gets ~15L-18L per annum these days, If you are from other colleges you can still get ~10L per annum. And this is for writing some HTML or some application around a data base. Heck even people working at IT services industry get paid around ~4-5 L per annum, and plus they can always move on to some nice after a few years, most do and within 8-10 years of their careers can reach atleast ~15L per annum. Plus some people also get foreign travel opportunities. If you have a good saving and investments discipline you can buy youself a home, a car and may be a nice wedding and a good deal of gold within 12 years of your career.
To know how far those people who started their careers in the IT industry in 90's are, many are settled in the US. Many own 2-3 homes in a city like Bangalore drawing insane rent income, Many own stock options worth money you have never heard of. You can talk of Mars mission, pride and all that. But when you see your college mate driving a Honda Accord and eating a 3000 rupee dinner with his family after spending another 2000 on a movie on a Sunday evening. You begin to realize money has its own importance in life.
Working in Government firms went out of fashion as early as mid 90's.
I'd exchange so-called-high paying job to get a job like ISRO now (Somebody misguided me in my early days with the same logic you mentioned)
Obviously IT guys get paid a lot when they settle in US. I can tell you most of these guys are skilled a lot and can do that with little effort - Nobody's stopping them. And when they do, they earn in multiples than most of the IT jobs there.
Most Indian private companies today offer free lunch, free transport and health insurance. The days when only government firms offered these are long behind us. If not free, most companies at the least subsidize lunch, food and insurance.
>>I agree some IT guys like me earn in multiples of that - but most don't.
Eventually they will. Changing a job will easily get a you a minimum of 30% raise in any company in India. Even a services company. If you change jobs every 3 years you will still be way ahead of any guy working there. And also note their hikes are largely based on a concept of 'pay revision' which are generally once in 10-15 year activity. In that time even your average guy would drawing at least thrice more than than any government employee.
>>And what about the amazing work-life balance (more life less work), job security and "serving-the-country" feeling.
What you call work life balance, will look like stagnation 10 years into your career. Job security will feel more like institutionalization and you increasingly feel like you are stuck in a place from where there is no way out. The difference in salary between yours and your peers will be huge and they would have a lot more touch on any technology than you will.
And not to mention most private companies think of government firms as wastelands where people just push time doing nothing.
>>Compare that to a heavily stressful job, waking up at 3AM because....
Frankly speaking to my ears this sounds similar to what many of my class mates in school used to say about students who study late night working on physics and math problems. Because they thought people were taking too much stress to work on things they didn't have when they could simply have a garment or a shoe shop and earn the same. We all know where they are today.
Money comes at a price. Like it or not my friend money matters. We live in a society where we have to spend money buying things, send our kids to schools, pay their tuition fees, we need to buy a home, car etc.
>>I'd exchange so-called-high paying job to get a job like ISRO now (Somebody misguided me in my early days with the same logic you mentioned)
You seriously should. And there is nothing really stopping you. And you can easily get through the exams they have. But the fact that most of us don't shows us where our true priorities are.
ISRO is just one small island in the massive government bureaucracy there is. In all likeliness you won't be writing any great application but rather clocking 9-5 with your friends sipping tea in the canteen, cribbing about rising prices, a senior colleagues daughter's marriage for which he hasn't any savings ,pay revision which is 7 years away, and discussing lifestyle of a friend who just bought a honda city while you are here saving money commuting in a bus because petrol prices increased by 4 rupees last week.
There is clear lack of sterilization techniques being used on the ISRO spacecraft. This is clearly visible in the public photos and videos. NASA spend a great deal of time and sterilizing deep space probes to reduce the chance of Earth microbes colonizing a place like Mars, or a moon of Jupiter, but ISRO does not.
Watch this video and showing assembly of this particular spacecraft http://www.space.com/23199-indias-first-mars-mission-prepare...
Compare the NASA cleanroom assembling Curiosity - http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/images/content/482654main_pi....
Most engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation seen directly operating on the spacecraft are not using facial masks or even gloves for interplanetary missions, let alone full cleanroom coveralls. http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/01608/vbk-05-mars... (via http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indias-october-28-m...)
It would be a huge shame for us to have doubt whether the first extra terrestial microbes we find in the solar system were really alien or simply Space Age Earth based life
It also jibes with this anecdote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6552078
This comment has nothing to do with India, ISRO, politics or Mars, but I am curious if anyone with expertise can comment on the clean room practices seen applied in this video. Is it odd that the workers don't have on full 'bunny' suits and have (what seems to be) a relatively large amount of skin/hair unprotected? I don't know if it matters that much, it just seems a little lax given the cost of failure.
Firstly, I've visited ISRO Bangalore(A few years back). And I did see the exact things you mentioned. I did ask the guy(Not sure, if he was the PR guy) who took our class for the tour. His answer was, they were likely assembling some test equipment and not the real equipment that was going to space.
(Which unlikely given parent's NYT article:)
The modest budget did not allow for multiple iterations. So, instead of building many models (a qualification model, a flight model and a flight spare), as is the norm for American and European agencies, scientists built the final flight model right from the start.
Using the expert rule, I can't imagine Indian engineers not being concerned about contamination. It is such an obvious risk that it is probably one of the first things they'd look for. I mean, there is 50 years of precedent available to anyone working in this field.
Edit: Also, they may have done their work in non-cleanroom environments and post that, they may have sterilized the orbiter.
Edit 2: Sorry for the multiple edits, but in spite of Hanlon's razor, I sense an underlying bias. Here's another NASA photo of a satellite assembly, and they are using ungloved hands: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_Reconnaissance_O...
ESA Mercury orbiter: http://sci.esa.int/bepicolombo/50304-removing-the-clamp-band... (I think there's a guy leaning over in the bottom left corner of the pic and probably dripping snot on to the orbiter too.)
The ESA picture says its from a thermal and mass model, and the guy in question is hovering over a test fixture.
I can't say much about the ISRO video. I hope it's just press footage of something that isn't the actual flight unit. That would be pretty reasonable. Later in the video you can see the techs wearing gloves pulling the vehicle off a moment of inertia test. It's encouraging, but the fact that they're wearing hair nets while half the guys have giant, uncovered beards is not.
With Curiosity, NASA even went so far as to aim the initial trajectory to miss Mars. This was out of fear that the upper stage of the rocket, which did not have the same amount of contamination control, would collide with the planet.
MOM's orbit is fairly eccentric, so it's not likely to collide with Mars any time soon. I think we have a lot of time to study Mars before we worry about any potential contamination.
You are making vague assumptions and supporting with unscientific proof. Using phrases like "there is clear lack" or "clearly visible" etc. doesn't make your assumptions true. What's funny is that you are picking up random pictures from media and using that as evidence. There's
The official word from ISRO is that they comply with 'planetary protection' requirements. "ISRO said the spacecraft was built according to the planetary protection implementation requirements specified for ‘orbiter’ category of missions." SOURCE : http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/mom....
Some articles speculate about the rigorousness but can't confirm. Implying it doesn't exceed them doesn't equate to skipping the sterilization. Besides, it's carrying satellites from developed countries (France, Germany, Canada & Singapore), which I doubt would be complicit in creating an international controversy.
In the meanwhile I came across one more article : http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-31/news...
This article highlights some points as to why the cost would be so less.
>>Some of them were puzzled by ISRO's style of working. They were just 18 months away from the launch date, and ISRO was only beginning to cut metal. One of the foreign partners had then asked ISRO managers: "Are you serious?"
If I'm not wrong NASA tests and validates the equipment they send into space for years. They also take a lot of time and observe very strict quality practices to ensure the equipment doesn't fail or malfunction in space. This leads to them frequently missing deadlines and over shooting budgets by large amounts.
Something that ISRO doesn't. Of course then they have a larger chance of running into failures. But then one wouldn't consider it a big loss to spend just $75 million and fail compared to similar projects in other countries that cost almost 7 times more.
>>tacitly acknowledged the value of the organisation's minimalist approach. "The told us after the launch," says M Annadurai, project manager of Chandrayaan, "that this was the Indian style of working".
India has a lot of talent and lot of young people wanting to succeed and prove their worth to the world. Given the mere population scale and level of desperateness to succeed. You will always run into ingenious people very often. Most of them come from small towns and lower middle class families who need a job at any cost, even if they have to work 16 hours a day, at whatever salary they are offered.
I was one such guy myself at one point of time. I've worked at a assembly line, call center, installed BSNL modems and now as a programmer. I know many of many friends from the villages who aspire to do anything thing can, with whatever means they have.
So I won't be surprised if they are succeeding in hiring some very brilliant people at the salaries they pay.
>>"Frugal engineering comes naturally to Indians," says National Research Professor RA Mashelkar, "which is why India delivers more than any other country per dollar of R&D investment." Mashelkar, along with management theorist CK Prahlad
I don't believe this is unique to Indians, but in general when you have fewer resources you tend to optimize you work to squeeze the most of whatever you have.
And then finally some budget and schedule discipline.
>>"Testing is expensive," says Radhakrishnan, "and we try to get the maximum information from each test." ISRO engineers worked round the clock, often in shifts, when the satellite was being made.
and
>>"ISRO is one of the few organisations in India that is driven by schedules," says Rajan.
So in short, work with passionate, hardworking people, save money by sticking to strict schedules, do not build anything unless you need, once you build test minimally but sufficient enough and quickly.
Whoa... So basically that whole mission was for 30ish pounds of actual 'useful equipment' in orbit?
So NASA is still 2.1 times more expensive per kg of useful payload. And costs scale less than linearly with the payload mass, so a bigger Indian mission would have likely been even more than 2.1 times more efficient than NASA...
...or that payload weight is correlated with scientific value.
Weight is a tremendous source of cost savings. Compare to the Mars Science Laboratory, at 3,893 kg. They might have spent $150k in fuel costs, while we might have spent $38M.
I think you mean 'just in rocket costs' as the fuel cost is negligible and the cost of the launch is 5 figures (dollars/kg).
For example the falcon 9 costs $12,618/kg to GTO and $4,653/kg to LEO. I don't recall the exact figure but fuel cost is a low single digit percentage of that cost.
Policing other people's entirely natural and unobjectionable pride and joy is annoying and tiresome.
("American" would have been a better substitution, but maybe you judged it to be less effective as a rhetorical hammer?)
Probably, but I'm not American, so I didn't think of that. The only other commonality I have with Armstrong is being a man, but I don't think you would approve of that any more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Resources_in_India
"Water supply and sanitation in India continue to be inadequate ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India
"Over 300 million (300 million) people in India have no access to electricity. Of those who do, almost all find electricity supply intermittent and unreliable."
Why exactly is US spending so much of higher education when most of the public elementary education is good enough to mass produce kids whose only skill is flipping burgers ?
Large nations need to allocate money to all problems proportional to the seriousness of the problem. We have learned how to live with less. My classrooms did not have even a bulb. Did not prevent me from getting good education. My village did not have any water pipeline and we figured out how to survive.
India has 1/6th of world population and has very good reason to invest in space research. India is going to needs its own satellite guided missiles, ASAT, GPS and other systems down the line if those 1.2B people have to see a good future. Or these people will be held hostage to USA's Military Industrial Complex.
India was already one of the largest Shipbuilding nation and had more Aircraft maintenance centers than most other countries in 1950s. India did not invest well into these industries, today our defense imports are obscene. We cant even manufacture a reliable pistol leave alone mortar. Had we invested in those tech also we could have saved a lot more money today which could have helped the poor.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about 13 year olds, but I assure you I don't care what you have to say.
In the words of Carl Sagan: "Just now, there a great many matters that are pressing in on us that compete for the money it takes to send people to other worlds. Should we solve those problems first, or are they a reason for going? "
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/21/141510617/what-if-...
I'd like to challenge the notion that the national debt is undisputedly a bad thing. The majority of the U.S.'s debt is in the form of treasury bonds - widely considered the most secure form of financial instrument. If the treasury bond can't be paid by the U.S., there are much bigger problems (such as the government of the largest national economy in the world collapsing). The treasury bond is utilized worldwide for its stability. It is used to moderate economic growth, and to stimulate it when it slows.
I'm not convinced government debt is entirely good, but I'm also not convinced that things would be better by paying it off.
For the record, I actually think it's probably a good use of money. I just think this breed of response — "Shut up, because the West sucks!" — is singularly toxic.
"INR2 billion (US$33 million) provided for power reforms, INR5 billion (US$82 million) for water reforms in Delhi"
"10-year tax holiday to be extended to companies that start power generation by March 31, 2017"
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Union_budget_of_India
And yet, you complain about the mere $67 million spent on this mission.
The Internet, nominally the single biggest technology solution for the developing world ever, runs on compression and error correction algorithms that were first implemented for Voyager.
A manned mission to Mars must solve a the problem of a closed ecosystem. Think that might be important to developing countries who are polluting terribly (just like everybody did) in an effort to modernize?
You can't solve everything. There will always be some problems.
And, get enough good scientists together and those same scientists will start demanding that you make progress on domestic fronts as well.
There seems to be a strange idea that spending on space is inherently wasteful. In fact, India spent ~$75m on this, mostly locally, thus providing economic stimulus, and no doubt assisting education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Re...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Stat...
No personal attacks on Hacker News, please, regardless of how annoying another's comment may be.
The fallacy you are invoking, in fact, has a fancy Latin name; it may be this one:
"Why 750 million Indian citizens cannot enjoy basic sanitation facilities after 60 years of gaining so called independence of their nation"
Seriously....
I gather that you are not an Indian, and if you really are an Indian then either you are an illiterate about what's happening in country, or you are an NRI earning in dollars in US who really don't care about India, except in writing these snarky comments.
If you are not an Indian citizen, you still should know the truth before you talk.
750 million Indian citizens aren't enjoying basic sanitation facilities because of the corruption in India. There was a Politician who was a son of Chief Minister who pledged more than 75 million in an election. This is just one example of the amount of corruption in India. Every state in India are filled with those politicians who are corrupt, and they own huge amounts of Black money.
So, I don't see what is your basis in typing in useless comment, when this money was spent as per the Budget allocation.
And finally, please don't write something unless you know the facts properly. The basic sanitation of all Indian Citizens will be improved, if the Political situation of the country is improved not by stopping Technological Advances.
Sometimes, if you don't have anything to contribute, it's better to close your computer and get out than to write these kinds of comments.
FYI, there is a category of Indians who are not NRI and it might surprise you to know there are countries other than the US and....surprise.... currencies other then dollars!! Oh wow!!
What has being an Indian citizen got to do with the truth?
I write what I write so that the rah-rah-yay-yay idiots like you could draw their attention to the real problem in your country -- a civilization more than 10,000 years old that still cannot fix basic sanitation issues, where women are raped on a regular no-comment basis, where corruption is prevalent from birth-certificate to death-certificates, where swathes of your population are being driven to Naxal violence by the state as a means of defending their homes, culture and patrimony from greedy corporations. In the face of the staggering problems you face as a nation, shouldn't you turn your and your peer's attention to them rather than trying to rejoice at "look white man, me too MARS"?
You may also be surprised to know, "Technological Advances" have been advanced enough for a couple of hundred years now to the point that sanitation, roads, etc are a non-issue -- you don't need to go to Mars for that! Or perhaps Slumdog tourism generates enough income for you to want to keep it that way? http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/slumming-it
Down-vote me all you want, happy to give you my points if you make an honest effort to understand the point I make.
You will also note that I post under my real name as I do not feel ashamed about having an honest discussion under my identity -- how about you?
Feel free to discuss this in a more relevant thread.