you are incorrect to quote 30 billion dollars in context of spacex and "blue origin" and it is a very wrong perception in india that just throwing huge money and thousands of college degrees will bring technological achievements and social development... the difference between isro and spacex/blue-origin is simply the degree of capability.
1. "blue origin", established in year 2000, has only 350 employees and as for investment
[1]...
and this cost not only developed the recently tested reusable rocket but also the six-astronaut capsule.
for more
[2].
2. spacex, established in year 2002, has presently employees... the launch cost of the spacex falcon v1.1 rocket is 61 million dollars ( the lowest in the commercial launcher market ) and for developing its predecessor, the very successful falcon 9, the cost has been
[3]...
as for the dragon space capsule, the current version called dragon v2 is derived from the original dragon development which began in 2004, only two years after spacex's establishment ( compare with isro ) and as for funding of its development
[4]...
continual development of the dragon raised the cost but not greatly
[5]...
the dragon v2 would have of course incurred some extra development costs because it has a powered descent system and some improvements, and the costs are
[6]...
though certainly, like any space agency, spacex too ( as would be "blue origin" ) benefited from previous developments by others
[6] but much of their development has been in-house...
3. isro, established in year 1962, has 15809 employees assigned into 17 departments
[7] and its budget only for 2015-2016 is 1.2 billion dollars
[8] which means that isro has been given huge amounts of government money for 53 years, at least 15 billion dollars, and this is unlike jeff bezos who put his own relatively very less money into "blue origin" or elon musk who put just 100 million of his own money into starting spacex and this was out of the 180 million dollars he received as his cut from the sale of paypal to ebay.
i agree to your first statement that one should generally find a independent path and that is what spacex and "blue origin" have done... sadly, isro is not a space agency that be credited with the words "creative" and "ambitious", which is why it remains a glorified satellite maker and launcher while the two smaller and private companies mentioned above have achieved human-crew capabilities within 12 years and 15 years of establishment respectively.
a little example of spacex's deviation from traditional approach
[5]...
isro can keep launching satellites but a call must be given out to private individuals/groups willing to create a private space agency that will find or adopt innovative ways of achieving a human space program which works on a pan-south-asia basis.
isro has benefited so much from developments by others in the world but remained a boring and useless agency that followed obsolete text book approach even when many such approaches were discarded by others... the few things it said it is innovating, example the reusable launcher, have not moved beyond cad/cam drawings in years... it is one thing to claim its mars mission was developed at a cost less than the hollywood film "gravity", it's another thing to actually see that this particular mission compares nothing to nasa's "curiosity" mission which landed a 900 kg rover of that name on mars two years earlier ( 2011 ) and it's yet another thing to know that two private american space agencies have achieved human space launch and tourism capabilities at lot lot lesser cost than isro.
the failure of isro is really because of the anti-innovation anti-ambition environment in india... just some months ago, n.r. narayanamurthy said that india hasn't contributed technologically to humanity in 68 years
[9].
that cannot be used to excuse away the incapability of isro... as i showed above, money wasn't a problem for isro compared to spacex and "blue origin"... as for building of knowledge, isro has benefited from nasa, esa and ussr/russia for five decades.
what about the "35 percent indian scientists at nasa" without whom nasa would collapse??
can't they, if they exist at all, reshape isro into something respectable??
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[1]
Blue Origin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[2]
Blue Origin | Our Approach to Technology
[3]
NASA Analysis: Falcon 9 Much Cheaper Than Traditional Approach at Parabolic Arc
[4]
Statement: Elon Musk, SpaceX: NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program: Accomplishments & Challenges
[5]
Dragon (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[6]
The Space Review: The future and the past: comparing Dragon and Orion
[7]
http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/article-files/right-to-information/HumanResources.pdf
[8]
India Allocates $1.2 Billion for ISRO Space Activities
[9]
no invention from India in 60 years: n. r. narayana murthy