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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: India and Mars
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
Should India be putting satellites into orbit around Mars when 100's of millions live in desperate poverty?
Should we be sending aid money there? (India I mean, not Mars)
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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South Coast Kevin
Shipmate
# 16130
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Posted
Why don't you tell us what you think, Deano? To get the discussion started.
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My blog - wondering about Christianity in the 21st century, chess, music, politics and other bits and bobs.
Posts: 3309 | From: The south coast (of England) | Registered: Jan 2011
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Should India be exporting so many IT service providers? Or should they be home driving bullock carts?
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
It's certainly not what Jesus would do. The Mars shot. But as for going to where charity would make a difference regardless, He'd do that. Soft power ignoring, subverting, shaming vanity. Even vanity that will have a marginal positive Keynsian effect on the economy.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Perhaps the Indian government see the development of high-tech electronics and aerospace industries as a way of providing a way out of poverty for some of its citizens. Just a thought.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
It is a good question. It would be interesting to know how Indian people think about it.
I don't have a clear answer myself. At least it's better than using the money for football stadiums that will never be used.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Of course, India succeeded first time on a budget significantly smaller than it costs NASA or ESA (who also manage a high failure rate as well as cost). Which is a great advert for Indian science and technology.
Yes, there is poverty in India. One could question whether a relatively inexpensive space programme should be cut to fund anti-poverty campaigns. But, if you were going to do that you need to ask whether a Western European country with citizens dependent on charitible food banks could afford to spend obscene amounts of money on weapons of mass destruction.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Jon in the Nati
Shipmate
# 15849
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Posted
quote:
Should India be putting satellites into orbit around Mars when 100's of millions live in desperate poverty?
For perhaps the first time, I agree with Deano.
No, India should not be doing this. Nor should the United States be orienting its entire national existence around the ability of our military to shoot, bomb, protect national interests and steal stereos anywhere on the planet, while poverty, gross inequality and ignorance remain rampant at home.
And yet here we are. Such are the priorities of nations.
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Homer: Aww, this isn't about Jesus, is it?
Lovejoy: All things are about Jesus, Homer. Except this.
Posts: 773 | From: Region formerly known as the Biretta Belt | Registered: Aug 2010
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
Better there than into a nuclear bomb race with Pakistan.
When a spacecraft goes to Mars, a very small amount of money actually leaves the planet. The rest is actually all spent on Earth in ways that benefit the economy and the development of technology.
It's too late for the question of whether the U.K. should stop giving Aid to India; next year U.K. Aid to India ends
The U.S. is giving money, but sadly much of it actually is in the form of weapons built in the U.S.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
Should India be putting satellites into orbit around Mars when 100's of millions live in desperate poverty?
Should money in India be spent on sporting facilities and movie production and television and art galleries and symphony orchestras and libraries and parks and zoos when hundreds of millions live in desperate poverty?
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
If India wants to do this, good luck to it. It is genuinely good to see india becoming prosperous and wealthy. But the first thing that any rich country should do, while there is still severe poverty in it, is to establish an effective tax and spending regime to spread its wealth more equitably. So as a citizen of an aid donor country I am less worried about the Indian space programme per se than about whether or not India is making sure that rich Indians are contributing to eliminating poverty there before they ask taxpayers in other countries for help.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Why don't you tell us what you think, Deano? To get the discussion started.
Turns out I didn't need to.
But I will now. The answer to my first question is of course, yes. If they can they should. As Palimsest said above the money is spent in India and little leaves Earth. The money is spent on the middle classes though, the engineers and designers. Which I'm all for as that money then gets spent in millions of ways.
To my second question? No. The aid budget is better spent elsewhere. There are more deserving countries these days than India and sub-Saharan Africa needs it more I think.
Sorry Jon the Nation, just because I asked the question, doesn't mean I oppose the Indian space programme.
By the way, NASA had many failures because they were developing the technology. That is inevitable when you are at the leading edge.
India used proven technology, which makes failure less likely.
Does anyone seriously believe that India would have launched that satellite if the technology wasn't stable already? Of course they wouldn't.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
There are two different questions here.
1. Should India have a space programme? That is their decision. None of our business.
2. Should the UK be giving foreign aid to countries that contain very poor people but are, as countries, now quite rich? As I say, that is a different question, but in my view, no.
I'm not totally persuaded by foreign aid. It's a bit 'something must be done - toss them some cash'. Furthermore, having seen foreign aid at the aid end, government to government aid didn't do a great deal of good. It did though have a better record than UN driven programmes. Those tended to be extravagant but really useless. Not only that. The 'donor' jobs tended to be distributed on the basis 'this one is Ecuador's turn' irrespective of whether the Ecuadorian had the right skills or spoke a language known to any of the locals. Mission societies, on a far more hand-to-mouth basis did a far more effective job.
However, if you're going to give foreign aid, it should not go to the citizens of countries that are prosperous enough that their own governments should be doing the job but aren't.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
I agree with the foreign aid bit - India has more than enough resources to feed its own citizens, if those resources were only distributed more equitably. I also agree with the shortcomings of government-to-government aid: much gets syphoned off by corrupt officials and other middle men; charitable giving, whilst not immune from corruption, tends to be better and more effectively targeted.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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Jon in the Nati
Shipmate
# 15849
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Posted
quote:
Sorry Jon the Nation, just because I asked the question, doesn't mean I oppose the Indian space programme.
Fair enough. I oughtn't have assumed that.
What is it they say about assuming...?
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Homer: Aww, this isn't about Jesus, is it?
Lovejoy: All things are about Jesus, Homer. Except this.
Posts: 773 | From: Region formerly known as the Biretta Belt | Registered: Aug 2010
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
No worries Jon.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
What I find truly amazing is that India has completed a Mars mission on a budget that is less than the budget of a Hollywood summer blockbuster.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
What I find truly amazing is that India has completed a Mars mission on a budget that is less than the budget of a Hollywood summer blockbuster.
Or as was said on 8 out of 10 cats last night, for half the price of Gareth Bale! Real Madrid could have bought a slightly crapper player and gone to Mars!
But as I say, when the heavy lifting of the preliminary science and engineering has already been done, then it does get cheaper.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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Philip Charles
Ship's cutler
# 618
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Posted
Like all projects of this kind it is a question of balancing projects against resources. In this case I consider India got it right. The cost was less than 7.5 cents (US) per person.
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There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Posts: 89 | From: Dunedin, NZ | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
It's worth repeating this post for the sake of people who seem to have missed it:
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
It's too late for the question of whether the U.K. should stop giving Aid to India; next year U.K. Aid to India ends
This article gives a bit more detail - the Indian government doesn't particularly want aid (or claims not to), and in fact new aid programmes stopped in 2012. (i.e. Any aid we're currently sending to India will be year 3+ of a multi-year programme that was already in place when the cut was announced.)
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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