India draws up own Google Earth plan India is planning to create its own version of Google Earth on the back of its successful moon mission. The Indian Space Research Organisation launched Chandrayaan-1 last month - it will orbit the Moon for two years at a height of about 100km and carry out mineral and chemical surveys of the surface. The mapping project, …
don't they have starving poor people, treatable diseases people are dying from and other social responsibilities to handle first? Becoming a non-3rd world country is more important imho
Also why duplicate something that's already been done several times before. Do they like reinventing the wheel?
India is a pretty grim and skanky place, impoverished and dirty. I can understand that they don't want to be left out of space-race 2.0, but ffs! They need to get some basic sanitation, a welfare state and clean up their skanky cities before they go pollute space!
Some people need to get a sense of perspective.
Population of India = 1.2 billion
Cost of project = $83m
Handout per person if moon-shot had never happened = 7 cents
India can put together a top-class GPS, and earn huge revenues charging all Yank-suspicious countries to use it, while the EU is still in debate about what colour it should be.
I'll be joining our new Overlords in the nearest curry house...
First of all lets stand up and say congrats to our Indian cousins for getting to the moon and into space. More than we have managed to do here in the UK
Now to address the point of them taking care of their own poor back home. I did not see anyone standing up on the news broadcasts when the USA landed on the moon saying the same thing and I imagine they have just as many people living in poverty. Not to mention how they handle simple social services like health care and disaster management.
Let the nonsense end please.
Take care everyone.
With the housing crisis, the US too will have a lot of homeless people who due to an economy in recession will have difficulty finding and holding on to jobs. So you have your poor and homeless right there. Why don't we call on NASA to immediately suspend all shuttle missions, terminate the return to the moon program and return that money to congress.
As Ian Rodgers said, the per capita contribution of the people is hardly anything.
Why doesn't anyone forward this poor / homeless argument when it comes to increasing spend on the defense sector? Why is it not seen when China does the same thing? Because the Chinese are good at concealing the depth of poverty?
Also, GPS is a wholly USAF run operation and it is natural to be a little bit wary when using it for military applications. Hence the drive to develop a home built version. It might be reinventing the wheel as you say, but it can't be helped. Even Europe is doing it - why didn't you question it then?
i think that you must be high on cocaine or soemthing or you embody the true american!
India you might not be aware is a country in a continent called Asia on the same planet as you are in. btw, USA is Not a continent. on the other hand, i think you are talking about the Red Indians...."launching them to MARS"... hilarious..surely you are joking?
anyway, as is usual to any article related to india, some people always nitpick about
a)poverty
b)outsourcing
regarding point (a), yes the country is poor but does it mean that one shuts down all technical institutes, research programs? of course, i agree that poverty needs to be eradicated. apart from the fact that the amount is too less for any purposes(IF the whole amount reached the need that is), at least the research program has more utilisation, less consumed in "graft"...
regarding (b), that is out of the scope of this comment ;-)
Also why duplicate something that's already been done several times before. Do they like reinventing the wheel?
answer to your question is " Do you know about innovation ?"
The Indian government will use the data for infrastructure and crop monitoring, with out depending on a some damn.company which works for their own profit.
80% of people in India doing crop management. they are giving food to the world.
That's a pretty stupid argument, most of the times. Actually, I can't recall an instance of this argument actually being significant lately.
You see, there are two problems with the "argument", two flawed assumptions that are essential:
1- all that money spent on X would be able to do something significant against all that poverty/disease/etc. (which it never is in these discussions, since that's a gigantic task -- if we start talking the US military budget, than we have a start...)
2- if that money wasn't used for X, then it WOULD be all used for fighting poverty/disease/etc. Which is a long shot; nobody over 5 years of age who has seen governments and bureaucracies in action (inaction?) would believe such thing.
Kudos to the Indians, and may their tech/scientific advances fuel an economy where everyone can live decently.
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