India's MOM Mars mission makes final course correction

India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has made its first course correction since June and is now on track to to arrive in orbit around the red planet on September 24th. Known to Indians as “Mangalyaan”, the craft is famous for having left the launchpad, and Earth, last November for the tiny sum of US$74m. The craft has since …

[Anonymous Coward]

Visited India very recently, I cannot get my head around the fact that they can send a probe to Mars yet children as young as 3 are begging in the streets?

On the other hand

I cannot get my head round the fact that here in the UK they want to build a high speed rail link to shave a few minutes off the travel time and at the same time they are cutting benefits to the 'poor'.

Being poor in India is a very different thing to being poor here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nail on the head.

And yet we STILL give millions to India in aid....

Makes my shit itch to see people in this country using food banks, heat or eat, kids failing to get proper meals yet we splurge billions in aid to countries whos priorities are arse about tit...

[RikC]

Re: Nail on the head.

Newsflash: India itself gives aid to other countries. I.E. Sri Lanka. Stop thinking in terms of 'us the rich world aiding the less fortunate', it's all about politics and diplomacy (which is something one might not aprove of but is how things are done in the real world...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nail on the head.

This argument is nothing new. At the height of the space race in 1970, there was a hit song in America called "Whitey On The Moon" - the point being that poor black people were paying taxes and getting not much share of the pie, while the government spent billions putting (white) men on the moon.

I've got sympathy with anyone in a position of poverty who sees these things as an expensive waste, but I don't believe that cutting research programmes would suddenly mean "yay, no more poor people". In the long term, it probably has the opposite effect.

[The last doughnut]

Re: Nail on the head.

Have a downvote for your obvious strawman tactic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nail on the head.

Hmm. To paraphrase, the original post said "there's poverty in India, so why spend money on space missions?".

My post said "there was poverty in 1970s America, and people said the same thing at the time".

Failing to see the strawman there. Just pointing out an analogous situation.

[PatchZero]

Re: Nail on the head.

India is by no means poor and like RikC mentioned, India doesn’t need aid. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9061844/India-tells-Britain-We-dont-want-your-aid.html.

Coming back to the poverty in question, let’s look at a simple analogy. You (India) are the bread winner of a poor family and you have only £1 on you. Given a choice between using £1 for a feast or feeding everyone just about enough using £0.5 and investing the remaining £0.5 on a plant that would help you grow stuff you can sell and make more money, what will you do?

Lets all be practical, priorities are different and every problem cannot be approached in the same way!

[Babai]

Re: Nail on the head.

No need to force-feed India with worthless aids...

FYI, India's GDP is at par to UK's GDP.

[Charlie Clark]

There are plenty of places in any rich country where poverty is rife. The southern states of the USA are particularly galling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just the South. I saw some unwashed forest dwellers in MD; they had exactly $1 to spend at the local 7/11 store. I am not kidding.

[Gene Cash]

Nah, the people here in the South are just plain stupid. I've seen them leave a grocery store with a $300 roll of lottery tickets after paying for their groceries with food stamps.

You can't fix stupid.

[killakrust]

Why Explore Space?

Obligatory letter from Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, associate director of science at NASA (1970).

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

[Martin Budden]

Every time there is an El Reg article about MOM there are comments about poverty vs science, unwanted aid, and general racism. Every. Fucking. Time. Can we please stop with this crap and concentrate on the mission itself? Please???

[Babai]

India doesn't need your aid..

If you still want to force-feed, then do it :)

BTW, India's GDP is comparable to UK's GDP

[Jon Green]

The danger of kerning

I read the subtitle as:

"Mangalyaan probe will feel the bum of orbital insertion"

...which puts an altogether different spin* on it!

(* Pun semi-intended.)

[Martin Budden]

Re: The danger of kerning

The main title contains the words "MOM Mars mission", which highlights the danger of PNS Syndrome.

[Charlie Clark]

Congratulations

Let's hope the mission is a success. While this is partly bragging rights, it's also an indication of India's commitment to science. It's not just a land of IT-outsourcing and call centres.

[Unicornpiss]

Followup mission

If this mission is successful, and India launches more Mars probes, they may eventually need a satellite unit in a fixed orbit to relay data back to Earth. So as a follow up to MOM, they may launch: Mars Insertion Lagrangian Facilitator, or MILF