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Preface: I'm Indian, and I genuinely want ISRO to be the space agency: if not today, then certainly in fifty years. > Trust me, every 'poor country' must have

by mrkgnao 10y ago

Preface: I'm Indian, and I genuinely want ISRO to be the space agency: if not today, then certainly in fifty years. > Trust me, every 'poor country' must have good science projects going. If not space projects, then at least some hard engineering ones. Exactly my point. There was a ton of nonsense around the time of Chandrayaan about whether or not it was right to spend money on such things "when people were starving": in case it wasn't clear, I think that's bullshit. And I'm worried about it coming back, and actually doing some serious damage this time. > Indians works on these projects if they don't name the project in their language what other language should they call it in? As some of the other replies to your comment also point out: my problem is not the Hindi. If we launched a space telescope, I fear it'd end up named "Mahakashdoorbeen" or something. Why not something less boring than "Mars Vehicle" (which is what Mangalyaan translates to)? Remember, a 19- or 20-year-old is still young enough to be attracted to shiny things, so moralizing about how this is "useless nonconstructive criticism" doesn't help. The name doesn't increase the maximum pressure the rocket can survive, but it gets you people who can. > Im not sure if NASA has such practices. In fact me be the exact opposite. In short ISRO makes failure cheap. That's very interesting: it's reminiscent of Erlang, in a way. Launch a ton of cheap missions, expect some to fail, work on reducing the failure rate while not crying because a couple went up in smoke. I could see this turning into something big if they took it farther in public. > ISRO is a government run firm, which hires Indian nationals who come out of local colleges. The kind of types no software company likes to hire, in fact you will be surprised most go for jobs there because they wouldn't have got jobs elsewhere. Why does it need to stay that way? It seems you know more than me about how ISRO works, so this just makes me sadder. -- It seems from the downvotes that people think I'm one of the rabid "India is a toilet" types that surface on /r/worldnews whenever there's some good news about India. I'm not: it's just I think that more Indian leadership (for lack of a better word, again) in space (and STEM more generally) is something to legitimately care and feel proud about.

kamaal 10y ago
>>Preface: I'm Indian, and I genuinely want ISRO to be the space agency: if not today, then certainly in fifty years. Wanting the end without any focus on means will take us no where. Like I said in another comment. Focus on development of human resources. Good quality and uniform standard of education for everyone without discrimination. Building high quality higher institutions of the standard of Harvard's, MIT's and Stanford's is what will prepare your next generation of citizens who will build the next space stations and space telescopes. In short solve social and political problems first. Western perspective on India is right though. You can't have starving people, who don't have access or means to basic hygiene or sanitation, coupled with society deeply in social problems won't take you too far. What you have at ISRO is despite these problems and initial inertial of the initiatives created by a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru. Unfortunately off late the country's politics hasn't much talent to offer to the challenges and needs of our times.
- xherberta 10y ago
  >> Focus on development of human resources. I would like to tangentially note that NASA couldn't have done what it has done without the post-WWII Operation Paperclip, in which the USA literally stole Germany's rocket scientists.
  - kamaal 10y ago
    I don't disagree, but the point is the 'stolen' scientists actually agreed to work on some top US projects at that time out of their own will. That says something. If the best of the world want to come to some country- You have to be doing a lot of right things to build such a ecosystem.
    - walshemj 10y ago
      When the alternate is Soviet Russia labour camps no wonder German scientists where falling over them selves to surrender to UK or USA

by mrkgnao 10y ago

kamaal 10y ago

>>Preface: I'm Indian, and I genuinely want ISRO to be the space agency: if not today, then certainly in fifty years. Wanting the end without any focus on means will take us no where. Like I said in another comment. Focus on development of human resources. Good quality and uniform standard of education for everyone without discrimination. Building high quality higher institutions of the standard of Harvard's, MIT's and Stanford's is what will prepare your next generation of citizens who will build the next space stations and space telescopes. In short solve social and political problems first. Western perspective on India is right though. You can't have starving people, who don't have access or means to basic hygiene or sanitation, coupled with society deeply in social problems won't take you too far. What you have at ISRO is despite these problems and initial inertial of the initiatives created by a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru. Unfortunately off late the country's politics hasn't much talent to offer to the challenges and needs of our times.

xherberta 10y ago
>> Focus on development of human resources. I would like to tangentially note that NASA couldn't have done what it has done without the post-WWII Operation Paperclip, in which the USA literally stole Germany's rocket scientists.
- kamaal 10y ago
  I don't disagree, but the point is the 'stolen' scientists actually agreed to work on some top US projects at that time out of their own will. That says something. If the best of the world want to come to some country- You have to be doing a lot of right things to build such a ecosystem.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    When the alternate is Soviet Russia labour camps no wonder German scientists where falling over them selves to surrender to UK or USA