Comments on: India’s Mangalyaan Mars probe has successfully completed its first orbital engine burn. https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/indias-mangalyaan-mars-probe-has-successfully-completed-its-first-orbital-engine-burn/ Fri, 08 Nov 2013 05:22:29 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Rene Borbon https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/indias-mangalyaan-mars-probe-has-successfully-completed-its-first-orbital-engine-burn/#comment-119310 Fri, 08 Nov 2013 05:22:29 +0000 http://behindtheblack.com/?p=25809#comment-119310 Edward, most of the technological advances including in medicine come from either military or space expenditures. We spend so little on space exploration these days, it strains credulity to say India or any other power should spend less to fund poverty problems at the expense of space exploration. It’s not a zero sum game.

]]> By: Edward https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/indias-mangalyaan-mars-probe-has-successfully-completed-its-first-orbital-engine-burn/#comment-119229 Thu, 07 Nov 2013 22:43:34 +0000 http://behindtheblack.com/?p=25809#comment-119229 From the article: “Even so, some commentators have questioned whether India should be spending its millions on a planetary mission when a significant part of its population are in poverty and figures for childhood malnutrition are some of the highest in the world.”

At what point should India, or any other country, put resources into research? Should they wait until all problems have been solved? Who knows when such research will find an unexpected answer to a current problem?

We once solved a lot of health problems when research into optics led to the invention of the microscope and the discovery of germs. Let’s remember to spread out our resources to solve multiple problems and to keep basic research alive for the discovery of the surprising answers.

Further, the US has spent trillions of dollars, in the past five years, on poverty, but we still have plenty of it — more now than five years ago. Sometimes what seems to be the correct answer is not.

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