this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 189 points 1 year ago (3 children)

One of the big cost saving features was not giving their engineers paychecks for the last 17 months apparently....

https://lemmy.world/post/3801333?scrollToComments=true

A day after the Congress sought to puncture the hype around Modi’s leadership for the achievement of landing on the moon by recalling how India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had created the key infrastructure for technological advancements, general secretary K.C. Venugopal raised critical questions about the government’s attitude towards science.

Venugopal tweeted: “The excitement and pride of Chandrayaan-3 will stay with us for a long time. Isro Chairman Dr Somanath’s leadership truly created history and we extend our hearty congratulations to him and his team. However, the Prime Minister must answer some (questions) for his hypocrisy. You were quick to come on screen and take credit after the landing, but why has your government failed so terribly in supporting the scientists and Isro?”

"Why did the HEC (Heavy Engineering Corporation, Ranchi) engineers who worked on Chandrayaan-3 not receive their salaries for the last 17 months? Why did you cut the budget for such crucial missions by 32%? These are the heroes of our country, they run a world-class space research programme, but you have no regard for their talent and hard work. To add insult to injury, you hogged the limelight when that moment was about the scientists’ achievements,” he added.

[–] [email protected] 109 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Slavery sure is cheap. Good call out.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And the masters take credit for the slaves. Cuz, you know... If people aren't commodities and I treat my workers like commodities, then they must not be people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Impeccabile logic.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A bad boss hogging all the credit for the hard work their subordinates did, while treating them crapily, what's new?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

R u sayin you’ve been stiffed for a year and a half before

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oof. That's embarrassing

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Interstellar grossed over $700,000,000 at the box office. How much money will Chandrayaan-3 make?

Just showing how pointless this comparison is.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's very hard to put a price on scientific advancement like this.

It often involves development of new technologies, talent and facilities that can generate money for decades.

The actual profit generated can be insanely large. Like the original NASA missions. They gave us so much technology. They are likely responsible for billions of future profit derived from the tech.

Consumer products like wireless headsets, LED lighting, portable cordless vacuums, freeze-dried foods, memory foam, scratch-resistant eyeglass lenses and many other familiar products have all benefited from space technology research and development. Modern laptop computers are direct descendants of The Shuttle Portable Onboard Computer (SPOC), which was developed in the early 1980s for the space shuttle program.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Worth pointing out that the scientific advancement would generate billions that NASA will only see a fraction of.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Isn't NASA funded by tax payer's dollars? I guess you can look at it as a government funded non-profit research lab that it's mission statement is to generate technological advancements for the general public's benefit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Indeed. As they are publicly funded that money comes back in the form a taxing the profits private companies make from the technology, rather than directly into their pockets.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not an advancement if it's already been done multiple times, just that by other countries

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

But even training those personnel and building facilities can lead to more breakthroughs later. It's why it's so hard to put a price on scientific endeavours.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well if they find water there it could make way more

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Eh I can get water from my tap, I won’t buy any of that funky moon water.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, if you ignore all the R&D costs up to now, including the cost of the 2 failed attempts that came before. And comparing it to house prices isn't great either, they're comparing the sale price of a house with the cost price of a rocket. It didn't cost £200M to build that house that sold for £200M.

Still though, it's a great achievement, and keeping a relatively low budget is impressive.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Why include R&D up to this point? Do we say Mars Pathfinder (Sojourner) actually cost billions because we include previous Mars missions?

I think it's just a bad article. They throw out numbers but don't say how they got them.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Article ignored all the costs up to that point.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And unlike Russia, they were successful

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Russia landed on the moon, too. They just had a few more pieces.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

They were spreading their control zone

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They were going for a speed record.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could say Russian landing was more impactful and groundbreaking

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Ba dum tiss

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

On the second try. First time their engine also over preformed putting them out of the very narrow corridor that their altimeter was expecting. But it looks like India has really overhauled and reworked the code to be much more robust this time.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Wait, Interstellar wasn't a documentary?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Well ya they went to stars that's much more far away to make that. Has no one watched the movie?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Really? I don't think so!

In absolute values, sure, but They didn't adjust for the difference in purchasing power between India and the US. Yes, the purported INR 6,150,000,000.- can be converted directly into USD 74,400,732.- using the current exchange rate of INR 82.66 for USD 1.

BUT, if you take into account the difference in purchasing power of the two economies and use a conversion rate that eliminates the differences in price levels between countries (https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm, 24.059 between India and US in 2022) then INR 6,150,000,000.- come out to be equal to USD 255,621,597! This value you can now compare to the production cost of movies in the US etc.

But what can you expect from those young "journalists" from the independent... they should be ashamed of themselves.

Edit: You could also take the Big mac index and compare it (https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index) and the 75 million would become about 165 million.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah, people always forget that purchasing power is a very important detail when you compare currency economies either in present day or historical contexts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why is purchasing power relevant here? They're not talking about how much the country can afford, but how economical they are in achieving their goals.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Purchasing power refers to how much goods you can buy with your currency. As you can imagine you can buy less with 100$ in the US than in India, where everything is cheaper. If you take purchasing power into account you convert everything into a "standard amount of stuff". And using a conversion based on "the same stuff" you'll get a different currency conversion factor.

India achieves their goal still very economically, but it's not 75mil, it's 255mil. The equivalent amount of stuff that costs INR 6.15billion if you buy it in India costs USD 255million if you buy it in the US.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh ok, I see what you mean. People are paid less and things cost less in India, basically.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yes, exactly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I have worked with many Indian engineers. They keep going like a fucking train. I felt like they already knew all the about the project even before they got hired.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have there been any people on the moon other than the Americans back in the day?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

12 Americans have walked on the moon, with the last one in 1972. Four of them are still alive. Everything else has been unmanned.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow, walking on the Moon is deadly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

One guy did it more than anyone, but he died of a drug overdose.