Indian Prime Minister Formally Announces Mars Mission 212
neo12 writes in with the news that India plans on being the 6th country to launch a mission to mars. "Making the first formal announcement on the country's Mars mission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said India will send a mission to the Red Planet that will mark a huge step in the area of science and technology. 'Recently, the Cabinet has approved the Mars Orbiter Mission. Under this Mission, our spaceship will go near Mars and collect important scientific information,' he said addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of the 66th Independence Day."
Pool ressources (Score:4, Insightful)
I am always surprised to see so many countries going at it by themselves, if we pooled resources, we would be maybe a couple of steps forward, instead of sending orbiters and robots.
Priorities! (Score:1, Insightful)
Supposedly 30% of their households don't have electricity and the remainder suffer from regular blackouts, and they want to go to Mars?
How about a simpler mission first: get from one side of Delhi to the other without hours in traffic.
LOL!
Re:Pool ressources (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a balance to be had between R&D, exploration, and economic development. If every country in the world waited until they solved all of their social problems, then there would be no R&D or exploration. Additionally, R&D and exploration are related to economic development.
The fact that India is planning on being serious about a space program implies that they are becoming serious about R&D. And with R&D comes economic development which will help out their social problems.
Re:Priorities! (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to look at it from their point of view. They don't see it as "going to Mars" so much as just getting out of India. I hear they've got 600,000,000 volunteers...
(yes, I do realize it's not actually a manned mission; just play along)
Re:Priorities! (Score:0, Insightful)
Can't wait to see how hard this fails, as everything in India has:
Rampart bribery to get this moved along
Corporate espionage with 2 other companies stealing the designs to try and undercut whoever won the contract
Everything crashing and burning due to cutting all corners
Hiring all mission control staff from the usual pool of call center drones, resulting in many "doing the needful" and demanding a document on the simplest of procedures as out of the box thinking is just something not done.
Re:Pool ressources (Score:3, Insightful)
Should we call back Curiosity?
Re:Pool ressources (Score:5, Insightful)
If only our govenment would realize that a space program is more than a galactic pissing contest, that it is a investment ito new knowledge and technology. War isn't the only thing that brings with it new tech, space travel brings new tech because of the never before encountered situations and challenges. The tech developed there can be applied elsewhere as well and with technology comes a raised standard of living.
Re:And What of Custer? 7th Cav? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is excellent news. At last we can stop sending them billions in aid every year. Seems like they have plenty of cash.
Re:Pool ressources (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Priorities! (Score:5, Insightful)
So much uninformed crap in this thread... (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot has interesting and informative posts on many topics, but I don't know why everything goes to hell the moment India is mentioned..
1) It doesn't take a hugeass rocket to send an unmanned probe to Mars. The amount of energy needed once you're in the right orbit to escape earth's gravity is minimal. So it's not that crazy to imagine India doing it given that they already got a probe to reach the moon. It's the next step, not a massive leap. Putting a lander on the moon or Mars, or manned spaceflight would be a much bigger step. So the figure of 100 million is not outlandish and it's very possible and a logical progression given the current technical capabilities of the Indian space program. In fact, India may well be able to use one of their existing rockets for this, the hard part is making sure interplanetary probes get captured into the orbit of the target planet, instead of missing it completely (something that's not that hard to do and multiple countries have aimed and missed in the past, I remember a Mercury probe that ended up orbiting the sun).
2) Yes, India has overwhelming amounts of corruption. The space program is one of the better run organizations though.
3) Even though India is a poor country, due to the sheer size of the population the amount of money the government controls is huge. Not USA/China huge but at least the size of large European economies. 100 million is pocket change. And not spending it on a research mission to Mars that can help advance technology in the country doesn't mean it would go towards feeding hungry people. Just like reducing 100 million of the defence budget in the US won't put that money into schools or universities or healthcare or whatever.
4) It has little to do with the slowing Indian economy (even if it grows at 5% that's far more than most other countries in the world right now).
5) Talk of burning cars or powerless villages is just bigoted racist arrogant illogical bullshit.
Re:All for $100 million ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mars Climate Orbiter (a NASA mission) cost $330 million and failed completely. Sometimes these things happen in space exploration. One year out of a two year mission isn't awful for a fledgling space programme like India's, and for that sort of cost.
Re:All for $100 million ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes because getting there, planting a flag, and building a land based communication array on Earth are achievements. When you define goals like that, obviously its hard to fail.
Also, it detected water using the M3 from Brown University and the JPL. The Indian produced equipment on it scientifically, and technologically was a joke, and the only new things observed in the mission was done with either American or European equipment on board.
Also note, when they attempted to use the mini-SAR radar system that ESA put onto the craft to check for water, the Indian's didn't even point it towards the moon!
In the end, the data it collected was only confirmation from the results from the NASA Lunar Prospector which detected water as well. 10 years before the Chandrayaan was launched.
Re:Pool ressources (Score:4, Insightful)
It's easy. Invest hundreds of billions into infrastructure. Pay people to build roads, highways, waterways, dams, sewers, water reservoirs, water treatment plants, energy conduits, pipelines for gas and oil, bridges, railways, airports, harbors.
That will do it. Then you'll have clean water anywhere you want it.
Re:Thankfully (Score:4, Insightful)
We're sending them a holy fuckload of money...
Couple of billions (if at all) for a country with 1.3 billion people... is not a fuckload of money, sorry.
The stated end goal of Communism is a complete abolition of all government control and the abandonment of a monetary system...
I was bourn in USSR. I'm not sure where your idea about abolition of government control comes from (well, ok, it assumed people would be good enough to require no police etc, but you still need someone to coordinate buildling infrastructure etc). Main point of communism that was advertised was abolition of a monetary system. And they honestly tried to stimulate people work harder for fame, not money. It had its downsides, but if you ask people who lived there and have "democracy" now, I don't think most would give a flying fuck about political system.
Re:Pool ressources (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the problem is that there is no constituency for R&D in the U.S. The Liberals and Conservatives don't give a rat's ass about R&D because it doesn't help them get re-elected. Middle-of-the-Roaders congress-peoples used to be convinced that R&D paid benefits to society and that one needed a long term perspective. Now that Congress is polarized, each group is only thinking of the next election. You can get anyone of them to parrot the right R&D two-step spiel, but when it comes down to actual votes for appropriations, the Conservatives think of it as Big Government and claim Industry can do it all the R&D necessary and wouldn't it be really neat to buy the next election with a tax cut. The Liberals start crying the blues for the blue haired and their social programs and wouldn't it be neat to buy the next election by using it to "save" the social programs from those naughty conservatives.
It didn't help that those morons from Texas steamrolled the SSC in Texas past the sane choice at Fermilab in Illinois. Finally, Congress got fed up and put a stop to it. That wasn't so bad but it left a bad taste in everyone's mouth for Physics and Big Science which spilled over into Little Science such as NIH and NSF.
Now, the current newest crop of alleged legislators has no history with science and technology. Paul Ryan was an Econ and Poly Sci graduate. Romney is a business tycoon, Obama is still a small-town organizer, and Biden...well, Biden is old guard and should know better but he's currently spending his time telling non-white voters that Romney will put their chains back on (yep, he said it Mississippi or Alabama recently).
Where will the drive to succeed in S&T come from? Will it take China whipping our ass so that we get shamed into it? That's no way to run a country.