Thoughts about Indian moon landing?
I think it’s ok to dream and it’s definitely a good source of inspiration for many people, but shouldn’t their money be spent on tackling poverty?
It’s by far the poorest country to have ever sent anything into the space. Unless they could somehow come up with ways to capitalise on their space expertise such as private launches etc I don’t see how it could help the poor people there much.
In general expenditure for space exploration (or big ticket stuff) is usually a red herring in conversations about poverty eradication. In part because there's the 1:1 fallacy in administration (tau tau a significant part is state authorities and their taxation revenue) but also in terms of dividends down the line. For sure you can critique the priorities on a matter of principle but it's not like USA was evenly and uniformly rich during their space race years (racial segregation pun was still ongoing apatah lagi how native Americans were actively experiencing cultural genocide).
What is interesting is the long-term impact to their ICT and technical R&D industries. Like it or not, one of their demographical time bomb was having a highly educated middle class and coming with no real pathway to a career outside the service sector and/or migration. Will this be enough of a pull factor? NASA is still operating in Florida because equatorial advantage despite the politics being so shit; many expats would still continue to work in China if they weren't being discouraged to do so. Speaking of China, having manufacturing hubs like Shenzen arguably contributed to improved economic conditions and India has an even younger and dynamic population who may take all the science and engineering they're learning formally and informally and do something. The fact that a lot of space-oriented tech has come back to earth such as it is, and entered civilian life in good ways can't be overstated (titanium and lighter metals = better designed tools and prosthesis for the old and the disabled; better water filtration; carbon dioxide filtration), so imagine what can happen if much of this can be done on a global south economic budget.
In any case, if I want to be genuinely concerned I would think about the fueling needs of such a sector and the fact that both India and Pakistan are nuclear-owning countries 😌 but I remain always hopeful whenever any genie is out of the bottle when it comes to common folk having the access to improve themselves and change the overall condition.
