Showing Revision 3 created 05/16/2014 by aepst.

1. Title:
   Is India's space program worth the money?
2. Description:

   India's Mars Orbiter Mission is an attempt to become the fourth nation and first Asian country to reach the red planet and a point of great national pride. It will be completed for just over $70 million dollars, a tiny fraction of the cost spent by NASA on similar programs. But is spending any resources on a mission to Mars wise when hundreds of millions of Indians struggle to meet basic needs?

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   [Voiceover Countdown] Plus one... two... three... four... liftoff
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   NewsHour: In early November, India launched a 320-ton rocket
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   on a mission to Mars.
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   If all goes according to plan, the Indian spacecraft will travel 485 million miles
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   over more than 10 months and go into the orbit around Mars in September.
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   The US, former Soviet Union, and the European Space Agency
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   are the only ones to have accomplished the feat.
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    DR. RADHAKRISHNAN: It is a challenging task, a complex task.
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    NewsHour: Dr. K. Radhakrishnan is the director of the
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    Indian Space Research Organization.
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    He was one of the engineers looking on when the Mangalyaan,
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    or "Mars craft" in Hindi, launched.
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    The probe will be studying the atmosphere of Mars,
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    and looking for traces of methane, which could be a sign of previous life.
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    DR. RADHAKRISHNAN: A lot of things are known about Mars.
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    But there are several issues which are yet to be understood, and understood precicely.
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    NewsHour: The mission to Mars is a source of immense national pride in India,
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    but it might also signal a new Asian space race, and it's already
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    triggered a debate about the benefits of exploring another planet,
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    when so many Indians struggle for basic necessities.
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    Though it has been in existence for nearly fifty years, the very fact that
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    India has a space program is unknown to much of the world.
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    But since its inception, India has not only launched a mission to Mars,
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    but has sent a probe to the moon, and has built and launched 70 satellites
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    that do everything from measuring water resources to enabling
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    mobile communications in rural India.
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    Radhakrishnan says that at its heart, India's space program is meant
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    to improve life for India's 1.2 billion people.
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    One critical mission is to predict where and when storms will hit land,
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    so people in the storm's path can be taken to safety.
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    In 1999, when a massive storm hit India's east coast,
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    more than 10,000 people died.
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    But a few months ago, when another powerful storm hit the same area,
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    only 21 people died. Nearly a million people had been evacuated
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    after early warning data from Indian satellites.
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    Dr. Radhakrishnan: Part of this use of earth observation satellites is
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    to provide services to the fisherman, to the farmer, to the decision-maker
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    at the grassroots level.
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    NewsHour: So how does understanding the atmosphere of Mars,
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    or whether there was methane, help the farmer, or the fisherman in India?
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    Dr. Radhakrishnan: It is not directly; understanding of the atmosphere of Mars
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    is not going to help him immediately, directly.
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    But he says technology from the Mars mission will help improve
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    the satellites India has yet to launch, which will directly benefit
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    ordinary Indian citizens.
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    But beyond the tangible scientific benefits, the feat of sending a rocket
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    to Mars has been a huge point of pride for India.
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    As the Mars spacecraft left Earth's orbit, Indians took to Twitter
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    to express their excitement, a point echoed by Dr. Radhakrishnan
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    who says the mission has inspired the nation.
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    Dr. Radhakrishnan: People are keeping awake in the night to see
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    how the Mars orbiter operations are progressing.
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    So if you can transform so many young minds, and they say "yes, we need to
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    take up a career in science," it is a big transformation
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    for the country, for the future.
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    And working for the space agency is prestigeous.
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    Hundreds of thousands of engineers have applied for just a few hundred slots.
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    The pride is also in part for how little India spends to explore space.
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    The Mars mission costs 4.5 billion rupees, or just over 70 million dollars.
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    Compare that to the Maven mission, a similar NASA probe that's also currently
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    en route to Mars. It costs nearly ten times as much.
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    The savings are achieved in part because engineering labor is cheaper.
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    The Indian program recycles and adapts components like launch vehicles
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    and builds far fewer models, relying heavily on computer testing.
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    But spending any money on space exploration here is controversial.
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    India is still a developing country, where nearly a third of the population,
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    about 400 million people, live on less than $1.25 a day.
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    Brinda Adige runs an NGO called Global Concerns India,
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    focused on women and children, here in a slum in the city of Bangalore,
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    less than ten miles from the headquarters of the Indian Space Agency.
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    She says she was sad when she first heard about the Mars mission.
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    Adige: At one end of the spectrum, so much of money that is being spent
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    to send a rocket out into outer space, when we know that here on Earth
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    in my country, there are children dying every day because they have no food
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    to eat. So many more going away, spending their days and nights
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    without electricity. No roads, no education, no protection for women
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    and the girl child, anywhere in this country.
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    NewsHour: Do you think that, if they didn't spend the money on the satellite,
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    that they would spend the money on women and girls' issues?
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    Adige: No, they would not. They would not.
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    Their priorities are certainly not looking at women, children, human beings
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    who are in need of basic necessities just to live.
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    NewsHour: So you're not against the science, just the priorities.
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    Adige: Yes.
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    NewsHour: Adige gathered a group of women from the slum
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    who echoed some of the same concerns.
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    I asked the group that, given the millions being spent on the mission to Mars,
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    what kind of impact additional money could have in this neighborhood.
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    They described a litany of issues including bad roads, lack of access
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    to medical care, the high costs of education, and complaints about
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    sanitation issues like sewage runoff after the rains
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    and a lack of safe drinking water.
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    One of these women, Minoja, who works as a cook in a nicer part of town,
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    took us to her mother-in-law's house, and showed us
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    the contaminated water that comes out of her pipes.
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    Minoja [interpreted]: All of this water in the house smells terrible.
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    NewsHour: It smelled rancid.
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     This is the municipal water the family pays for from the city.
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     They have to spend extra on trucked-in clean drinking water:
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     money they don't have.
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     But Dr. Radhakrishnan defends the Indian Space Program budget --
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     in total, about a billion dollars a year.
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     NewsHour: On a global level, India's program is incredibly inexpensive.
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     On a local level, it's still very hard for people to comprehend on the streets
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     of Bangalore or elsewhere, spending so much money going to a different planet.
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     Dr. Radhakrishnan: The question is in absolute terms when you talk about
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     the $1 billion that we spend annually. Is it providing the benefits to the people?
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     Space is touching the lives of every man and woman in this country.
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     NewsHour: Radhakrishnan points out that the entire Indian Space Program
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     accounts for one-third of one percent of the nation's budget.
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     Those numbers may make it easier to justify what may be a larger goal:
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     competing with another superpower.
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     Just last month, China became the third country behind the US
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     and the former Soviet Union to land a rover on the moon,
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     and China has successfully completed manned space flights,
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     a feat several years away for India.
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     But in going to Mars, India could best its neighbor.
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     The competition is a fuel India is reluctant to admit.
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     In November 2011, a joint Chinese-Russian Mars mission failed.
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     NewsHour: Is there political pressure to keep up with the next-door-neighbor, China?
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     Dr. Radhakrishnan: Each country has their own priorities,
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     their own vision for the space program.
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     India has its vision, China has its vision.
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     We are pursuing our vision.
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     NewsHour: It doesn't matter when China does what it does?
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     Dr. Radhakrishnan: It does its program, we do our program.
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     NewsHour: But it was right after China's failure that the Prime Minister here said,
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     "Here's our priority, we're going to Mars."
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     Dr. Radhakrishnan: See, November 2013 is an opportune time for
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     a mission to Mars. And such opportune time occurs only once in 26 months.
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     NewsHour: While the Indian launch date did capitalize on when the distance
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     between Mars and the earth is shorter, to critics like Brinda Adige,
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     this is simply a space race.
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     Adige: You've gone to Mars, now I also have to go to Mars.
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     You've reached moon? I must also go and see whether there's water
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     on moon or not. Whether my people down here in this country have
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     drinking water or not, is a quandry.
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     The question arises, "To what end?"
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     NewsHour: To administrators like Dr. Radhakrishnan, success with
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     the Mars mission is another step in helping the world see the red planet,
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     and India, in a new way.