India sends a spaceship to Mars after UK gives £280million in aid

[ChinaToday]

INDIA launched its first Mars-bound spacecraft today at a cost of £45million - while the UK still gives the country more than six times that figure in aid each year.

The Asian country, which has widespread poverty, has spent more than £600million in total on its space programme.
The UK Government has pledged to stop giving aid to India in 2015 after taxpayers handed £280million to the country in 2012.
Last year India's then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said UK aid was “a peanut in our total development expenditure”.
The Indian government has defended the Mars mission by noting its importance in providing high-tech jobs for scientists and engineers and practical applications in solving problems on Earth.
Hundreds of people watched the rocket carrying the Mars orbiter take off from the east-coast island of Sriharikota, and many more across the country watched live TV broadcasts.
Officials at the space centre described it as a "textbook launch" and if the mission is successful, India will become only the fourth space programme to visit the red planet after the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe.

Speaking from the launch site, mission director P. Kunhikrishnan said: "Capturing and igniting the young minds of India and across the globe will be the major return from this mission."
The project began after the space agency carried out a feasibility study in 2010 after successfully launching a lunar satellite in 2008.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the planned voyage to Mars only last year during his annual address to the nation.
"It's a really big thing for India." said 13-year-old Pratibha Maurya, who gathered with her father and about 50 others to watch the launch at the Nehru Planetarium in New Delhi.
Some have questioned the price tag for a country of 1.2 billion people still dealing with widespread hunger and poverty.
But the government defended the Mars mission, and its $1 billion space program in general, by noting its importance in providing high-tech jobs for scientists and engineers and practical applications in solving problems on Earth.
Decades of space research have allowed India to develop satellite, communications and remote sensing technologies that are helping to solve everyday problems at home, from forecasting where fish can be caught by fishermen to predicting storms and floods.
"These missions are important. These are things that give Indians happiness and bragging rights," said Raghu Kalra of the Amateur Astronomers Association Delhi.
"Even a poor person, when he learns that my country is sending a mission to another planet, he will feel a sense of pride for his country, and he will want to make it a better place."
The orbiter will gather images and data that will help in determining how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the large quantities of water that are believed to have once existed on Mars.
It also will search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes that could also come from geological processes.
Experts say the data will improve understanding about how planets form, what conditions might make life possible and where else in the universe it might exist.

India sends a spaceship to Mars after UK gives £280million in aid | World | News | Daily Express

 

[pathum1986]

 

[ranjeet]

It's a BS article which was published a while ago, I mean whats up with Chinese processing old $hit to give themselves oil massage?

 

[SpArK]

A nation’s state of development is not only gauged by how many mouths it manages to feed, but also by the expansion of its technological prowess.

No country that holds its own in the upper echelons of the global community of nations, in multiple platforms, can afford to waste an opportunity in realising its scientific potential.

 

[AnnoyingOrange]

To UK....a LOL

And a Rofl to Chinese brigade.

INDIA launched its first Mars-bound spacecraft today at a cost of £45million - while the UK still gives the country more than six times that figure in aid each year.

The Asian country, which has widespread poverty, has spent more than £600million in total on its space programme.
The UK Government has pledged to stop giving aid to India in 2015 after taxpayers handed £280million to the country in 2012.
Last year India's then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said UK aid was “a peanut in our total development expenditure”.
The Indian government has defended the Mars mission by noting its importance in providing high-tech jobs for scientists and engineers and practical applications in solving problems on Earth.
Hundreds of people watched the rocket carrying the Mars orbiter take off from the east-coast island of Sriharikota, and many more across the country watched live TV broadcasts.
Officials at the space centre described it as a "textbook launch" and if the mission is successful, India will become only the fourth space programme to visit the red planet after the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe.

Speaking from the launch site, mission director P. Kunhikrishnan said: "Capturing and igniting the young minds of India and across the globe will be the major return from this mission."
The project began after the space agency carried out a feasibility study in 2010 after successfully launching a lunar satellite in 2008.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the planned voyage to Mars only last year during his annual address to the nation.
"It's a really big thing for India." said 13-year-old Pratibha Maurya, who gathered with her father and about 50 others to watch the launch at the Nehru Planetarium in New Delhi.
Some have questioned the price tag for a country of 1.2 billion people still dealing with widespread hunger and poverty.
But the government defended the Mars mission, and its $1 billion space program in general, by noting its importance in providing high-tech jobs for scientists and engineers and practical applications in solving problems on Earth.
Decades of space research have allowed India to develop satellite, communications and remote sensing technologies that are helping to solve everyday problems at home, from forecasting where fish can be caught by fishermen to predicting storms and floods.
"These missions are important. These are things that give Indians happiness and bragging rights," said Raghu Kalra of the Amateur Astronomers Association Delhi.
"Even a poor person, when he learns that my country is sending a mission to another planet, he will feel a sense of pride for his country, and he will want to make it a better place."
The orbiter will gather images and data that will help in determining how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the large quantities of water that are believed to have once existed on Mars.
It also will search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes that could also come from geological processes.
Experts say the data will improve understanding about how planets form, what conditions might make life possible and where else in the universe it might exist.

India sends a spaceship to Mars after UK gives £280million in aid | World | News | Daily Express

 

[Tractor]

Waste of money and China will not follow.Simple.

 

[AnnoyingOrange]

Waste of money and China will not follow.Simple.

China would have done it by now...if China could.....

 

[Tractor]

Any real landing on Mars?No cheating as well as landing in the moon?

 

[HariPrasad]

China would have done it by now...if China could.....

China attempted and failed.

 

[Han dominance]

British aid is very important to the poor in India.

It's the only money that helps alleviate poverty.

Indian elites are wasting tax payer money on luxury.
While the poor survives on British aid.

Even now Britain is helping the Indian poor like in the good old days.

 

[illusion8]

British aid is very important to the poor in India.

It's the only money that helps alleviate poverty.

Indian elites are wasting tax payer money on luxury.
While the poor survives on British aid.

Even now Britain is helping the Indian poor like in the good old days.

Britain has been and still is giving aid to China as well.

This forum is a troll magnet.

 

[HariPrasad]

Britain has been and still is giving aid to China as well.

This forum is a troll magnet.

Yes,

But do you expect envious Chinese to check that before posting BS in PDF. If they do that than they are not Chinese.

British still giving hundreds of millions of pounds in aid to wealthy countries - Telegraph

Foreign aid to China - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

British National Party

 

[INDIC]

Waste of money and China will not follow.Simple.

How many millions died in China due to hunger at the time China became a nuclear power.

 

[illusion8]

Yes,

But do you expect envious Chinese to check that before posting BS in PDF. If they do that than they are not Chinese.

British still giving hundreds of millions of pounds in aid to wealthy countries - Telegraph

Foreign aid to China - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

British National Party

That's why I said what I said in the second line.

 

[Indian Tiger]

We spent 450 crores on this mission. Let me put that in context. One of the local cricket teams - Mumbai Indians alone is worth 1000 crores. Ambani built a home in Mumbai for 5000 crores. Every single day, Indians buy gold jewelry worth 1500 crores. An upcoming Bollywood movie (made about space) is costing over 500 crores. And finally, Indian central government budget is 17 lakh crores (I actually rounded off this figure and that roundoff error alone could fund 130 such missions). 
Why India needs a MARS program

1. It is exciting for the children and teenagers, many of whom might take up a career in science, technology and research. These kids deserve an inspiration in the sky. If we can get a couple of hundred of these kids into hard sciences, the mission would have paid for itself completely.
2. ISRO is already using the technology to help other countries put their equipments in space (for a lucrative fee, of course). If we continue to innovate in cost and speed, we could become a big hub for space projects. That would mean employment for 1000s of engineers and lot of foreign $$. India successfully launches Indo-French, 6 foreign satellites
3. India needs to prove its technological capabilities as it is building up the technology hub of the future - not just space, but everything. If you could launch a Mars mission at the cost of setting up ERP in an enterprise, you could build anything. There are both direct and intangible effects of this demonstration. This would really benefit India's tech companies. This is actually rocket science! Again more $$.
4. India needs to spend on research to master the science of the future. NASA had plenty of spinoffs resulting out of its space program that advanced other fields such as medicine, apparel, food and navigation.
5. We could have made the "Model T" of spacecrafts - inexpensive and quick. The mission was completed in just 14 months and $75 million with little prior expertise. More importantly, the mission got off the ground on the first try. China, Japan and Russia have had to abort Mars missions in the past 2 decades due to launch failures. That is an outstanding engineering feat worth of salute.
6. Indians have always been fascinated by space since antiquity. Our ancient scientists spent all their lives looking at space. In the recent times, scientists such as Subramaniam Chandrashekar (Nobel laureate in astrophysics), SN Bose (Boson was named after him) have electrified the field. This mission is deeply fascinating even from a cultural perspective.
7. Imagine the potential it has for the humanity if we could launch 100s of inexpensive missions in our search for alternative life forms and alternative planets. 4 years ago India helped confirm that there is water on moon - the confirmation of which has eluded global researchers for 5 decades. This mission sent to detect methane could be the start of a new life for Indian science. Aryabatta and Bhaskaracharya would be really proud of the lads who worked on this mission.
8. We need our Renaissance. We can be drooling in our pee or we can start to create something. We have to start breaking the chain of poverty by thinking outside the box. That would mean boldly assertive. People in other walks of life can surely draw inspiration from our scientists. This day is so refreshing although I have zero connection with anything ISRO did. If we can reach Mars, we can do anything - from politics, arts to science & sports.

Outsiders have no idea of what this all means to Indians. We launched a peace project - not a bomb. We didn't go around fighting a poor country citing the presence of fake WMD. We didn't build a vessel to conquer unsuspecting thirdworlders. We launched a mission to help humanity and the advancement of science. More importantly, we launched it with our money. We didn't ask for your money nor help. Who are you to patronize us this way?

These journalists are like the rich bullies who enter a poor man's house and mock at the books kept by the poor man - "you poor bastard can't afford to eat rich food and you can afford to buy more books?"