How is it possible for India to join the elite group of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), ESA (European Space Agency) and Roscosmos (Russia)? This was a question in the minds of millions of people around the globe when the news for India’s Mass orbiter mission called ‘Mangalyaan’ came out as news for the first time. It was launched into earth’s orbit on the 5th of November 2013.
According to the reports on NDTV, the mars expedition has nearly reached ninety-eight percent of its journey. At the time of writing this post, the mars orbiter is left with only few more hours of journey to reach the red planet on 24th September.
What are the main achievements for India if the journey is fully successful?
India will become the first Asian country in the world to send an orbiter to Mars.
India will become the fourth agency in the world after NASA, ESA and Roscosmos to send a mass obiter. Surely, a matter of pride for those who involved in researching and developing the technology behind it.
India will be the first country to achieve this success in its first attempt.
What makes it different from other mars missions?
This mars mission is the lowest cost interplanetary journey ever made by any country. The estimated figure of cost for this mission is Rupees 450 million (74 million dollars) which is less that the total cost for making the Hollywood movie ‘Gravity’. When you know that the overall cost of the project is equivalent to a contribution of Rupees four per head from every Indian, you can imagine how much meagre is the budget for such an inventive purpose. In other words, we can say that the contribution of a small amount of money (Rupees four) from each person of the country’s 1.2 billion population made the mission possible.
Do you still believe that this project is a waste of money and resources for an underdeveloped country like India? I never think it is? If ‘Mangalyaan’ is a major motivation, the day is not so far that the technology sending humans to other planets like the mars.
What is your opinion my dear fellow bloggers and friends? I would like to know your views on this topic. Please kindly spare few minutes of your time to have your opinions on the comments column.
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This is a difficult question, Reji. One can very easily say instantly "How appalling ! - they should ensure that all those of their starving population be fed !"; but in fact $74m would be very difficult to distribute with this end in mind. And it would not ensure ongoing food. So maybe it should have been spent on setting up farming projects and installing wells ... But it's so much easier to achieve a sense of national pride - on the part of the goverment and scientists and the financially OK - by doing this.
Imnsho, questions of this nature actually have no answer: if they did, the world would have sorted itself out æons ago !
Dear Margaret,
I agree with your point that the starving population should be fed properly. But doing such things like setting up farming projects or some thing similar to that alone will not help in the prosperity of a country. There are lakhs of educated people in India like those who had done the research and development projects for Mangalyaan. If there are only farming projects in a country , what the scientists and Engineers will do? They have to utilize their brain and abilities in their interested fields. A scientist cannot be satisfied with doing some job in a farm. so my opinion is that there should be a balance between these type of things, then only a nation can develop and prosper.If the 74 million pound is equally distributed to all the people of India, each one of them get Rupees 4 (we can buy only a tea with that money). so it is like all the Indian people are not drinking their tea for a day for accumulating the finance needed for running a project like Mangalyaan.
We are, in fact, in agreement ! :-)
That is fine. Thank you very much for letting me know your views.