India To Launch Mars Orbiter "Mangalyaan" Tuesday 109
sfcrazy writes "On Tuesday (Mangalwaar) the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) will launch the Mars orbiter Mangalyaan from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The spaceship will take over 10 months to reach Mars and, if everything goes well, it would make India the first country to send a payload to Mars in its first attempt, and would beat close rival China whose recent mission failed."
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Science research and development, engineering, and technical progress is arguably more useful for moving societal issues forwards. The byproduct is better education, a smarter population, and better job opportunities. You can spend money trying to fix social problems all you want, but ultimately people need to know that their future is secure, their bellies can be filled, and they can support themselves beyond any one-off public spending not to be recovered. Claiming that poverty or corruption need be "solved" first is a recipe for disaster and not compatible with what happens in all of the developed world (which still has poverty and corruption to a small but significant extent).
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree in general but still sending a probe to Mars is a political stunt to show India is also coming up, not just China.
Politicians everywhere are largely useless at directing resources to where they need to go. Why complain here when it could have as easily gone into something less useful? Political stunt or not they are doing the right things.
There are million things India could be investing money into that would bring a better return in areas that you mention than this.
Well time and again physics has been shown to be the driver of much of our progress. Just have a look at how long it took biologists to make use of x-rays or scattering of electrons into a microscope, the chemists to see the value of quantum theory in understanding how molecules form and interact, how at CERN Tim Berners Lee invented HTML and how the next super fast cables that will replace gigabit ethernet have been made and tested there, or the origin of duct tape, and I could go on and on. India (and China) in my opinion understand that physics research in particular gives the best bang for the buck. Good on them for not cowering away from hard physics challenges.
0.37% of the National Budget (Score:1, Interesting)
The entire Indian space program is 0.37% of the national budget. This Mars mission is even a smaller fraction of that.
So, no, you ain't going to solve poverty and hunger by allocating 0.37% of the budget to welfare schemes.