India's Mission to Mars...is it worth it?

Some of you are probably thinking that this is a planned mission, and that India has just announced its intention for sending something up to Mars. Yet, as of  09:08 GMT, India's Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan (Mars craft in Hindi), took off at from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the country's east coast on Tuesday. 

Yea thats right, India has launched its own satellite into Mar's atmosphere. Pretty crazy to think that right? But that is the exact sentiment the Indian media and government wanted to bring out: that India HAS the ingenuity and power to pull something off to this high of a caliber.

The project itself has been given nothing but praise. There have been many benefits linked to the launch.  "The most important of such benefits could well be to fire the imagination of young minds in this country, getting them to dream about possibilities for tomorrow." Other praise comes from the fact that the entire budget used to go through with this launch was comparatively lower than that of other space-active nations "$72m (£45m)."

While the project itself has strict literal purposes for India and the scientific community ("The spacecraft will examine the rate of loss of atmospheric gases to outer space. This could provide insights into the planet's history; billions of years ago, the envelope of gases around Mars is thought to have been more substantial.") it also adds intrigue and suspense to the "current Cold War" as it has been dubbed, that is going on between the two future superpowers India and China. In an era in which China has continued to flex it's muscles and capabilities, India has finally responded proving its worthiness and potential in a possible competition. This has sparked pride throughout the country, much like the US landing of the moon did for American morale during the actual Cold War.

Yet for doing something so impactful for the scientific community and for moral within India, the launch of Mangalyaan has also taken much backlash and criticism. Critics believe that such a launch was not appropriate for a country that still has an enormous poverty issue and infant mortality/hunger rates that are comparable if not worse than the most afflicted Sub-Saharan African countries. Those who oppose the mission believe that the "$72M" could have been put to better good.

Yes...I do understand the ideas each critic states in opposition to this mission. India HAS to focus on its internal problems before it can even be considered in the same neighborhood as the US and even China at this point in time. But at the same time, we have to look into the workings of Indian Budget. Had this money not been allocated for space design, it would have most likely gone to the defense sector, in which India is the "highest" defense spender in the world. India spends so much on its military, both refining its old soviet era equipment and acquiring new high tech machinery (such as the Dassault Rafale fourth gen fighter jet). Yet massive corruption has usually stipend such spending and caused modernization rates within the army to be extremely slow. Another area of interest where the money could have been used would have been infrastructure, an area India surprisingly still has not invested as much as competitor China. But high levels of corruption would have most likely slown down and produced shoddy results as well. 

This is why I believe this mission is a success. It first produces tangible results that cannot be affected by corruption. The plan was initiated and carried out so quickly, because the rest of the world was watching, that there was no room for error. The mission also encouraged innovation and ingenuity among Indians which has brought out national pride and hopefully intellectual curiosity.

Lets just wait a few years to see really how impactful this launch was...in the meantime tell me how good//bad of an idea this was by the Indian government.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24729073