> For Ethiopia, where few scientists have the expertise to make use of the flood of cheap data, perhaps the best argument for a modest space programme is that it might help the country develop its human capital. But at a time when 5.6m Ethiopians need emergency food aid because of a drought, it seems an odd priority.
What an odd argument. These are the same folks who complain about poverty in India anytime ISRO launches a new rocket. Like every country that has a space program, you cannot wait until you solve all your social ills before you develop your human capital. Investing in science and technology is something that every country should proudly do even as they try to resolve poverty, infrastructure and social issues. They need not and should not be mutually exclusive.
Interesting, I wonder if you could say the analogy holds that manufacturing is to improving a country's economic output what space programs are to improving a country's scientific output.
Well, they need to be mutually exclusive when you can't even provide the minimum necessary for your citizens to live by.
I can understand a poor - but not totally destitute - country to invest in advanced technology, but no, I can't understand why in a country where thousands every year die or are severely affected by hunger, is investing in space technology instead of helping the immediate needs of its citizens.
It would be like a family in a household were you are about to die of hunger or of some disease by lack of treatment, made their priority to pay your university tuition fees instead.
If you focus all the tooling and construction around your space program locally, it doesn't seem any different than the Public Works Administration in the New Deal. I don't know anything about Ethiopia, but if it's just a roundabout way to make work, then it may be more effective at stopping hunger than giving out food.
It's different in a sense that public works don't just create jobs, they also create public infrastructure that is then usable by, and materially beneficial to, everyone.
A space program would obviously create jobs, but 1) does it create as many jobs as infrastructure work, per unit of currency spent, and 2) does the output that it produces materially benefit the public?
Basically, it's not a question whether they should spend money on space program, or on handing out free food. It's a question of whether a space program is really the best bang for the buck in terms of creating jobs and other benefits.
And you could argue that it might be, because the space program will produce important long-term benefits. But short-term benefits will produce "interest", so to speak (if you can get more people out of poverty today, you'll get more people who can become scientists tomorrow - and it might not even be the same people, but their kids). So such an argument cannot be a mere hand-wave - it must present the numbers.
> It would be like a family in a household were you are about to die of hunger or of some disease by lack of treatment, made their priority to pay your university tuition fees instead.
Perhaps you aren't aware, but this very scenario and others similar to it happen throughout the animal kingdom and in human species. In the wild, mothers often abandon their sickly or less fit children to focus all their energy on ensuring the survival of their most fit offspring. It is also possibly a reason why poorer people, especially farmers, tend to have more children than urbanites as a sort of morbid insurance. The more children you have, the greater the chance one has at surviving. Parents do often put more resources into the child that shows the most promise. It's a valid survival strategy. I'm just stating that what you think is crazy is actually pretty rational and is practiced.
That said, if you don't have programs like these, then the best and brightest are simply going to leave and you'll experience brain drain, making it that much harder to endemic problems. There is more than enough food to feed the world, these destitute situations arise mostly because of corruption or government incompetence. 6 yr old me had no interest in solving corruption and/or economic development and I imagine I'm not alone.
Exactly how do you argue that aren't the ones dying of hunger/disease by lack of treatment that are the brightest and most suitable for the needed positions of high intellectual achievement needed to run a space program?
In the "animal kingdom" both things are part of physical abilities, in here one of physical the other is intellectual.
In any case, one would think than in the XXI century we would be more advanced than expecting a nation to prune the disabled/destitute part of their population by letting them die of hunger/disease while they launch rockets into space.
> Exactly how do you argue that aren't the ones dying of hunger/disease by lack of treatment that are the brightest and most suitable for the needed positions of high intellectual achievement needed to run a space program?
I was in no way advocating for a culling. I was just pointing out how that wasn't the best analogy as it seemed you were trying to compare it to something ridiculous when in fact it is a common phenomenon, sadly.
> In any case, one would think than in the XXI century we would be more advanced than expecting a nation to prune the disabled/destitute part of their population by letting them die of hunger/disease while they launch rockets into space.
But we aren't. It's sad to say, but a cursory look at history finds that a significant amount of progress and technological development was fueled by human misery and suffering. American society still allows for perverse incentives like the opportunity to profit off of health care and incarceration when the moral hazard is so glaringly obvious. Welcome to profound disappointment. I believed in the promise of the Internet to create a more informed, compassionate, open, and enlightened society. Look how that turned out. What I've realized is that people haven't changed. We're still the same species we were 70,000 years ago. Our collective knowledge and institutions have evolved, but we haven't.
Yep. They are part of ESA and other consortia that have flown satellites (e.g. GAIA and ASTRO-H) however their involvement seems primarily around data processing and analysis etc, not the design or build of space-bound hardware.
Also, by investing within your country for tech programs the money is then distributed around internally by all those employees. Compare this with buying a satellite from China where the money all goes to another country.
Yeah, I agree that countries shouldn't start space programs purely for the sake of spending money domestically, but there are actual benefits to having a space program, and as long as you're doing it, there are benefits to doing it domestically even if it's more expensive.
There's a huge amount of valuable goals that can be achieved from the Ethiopian government training and employing some locally based geospatial analysts to work with satellite-derived data (including helping to solve some of those food security issues)
On the other hand it's a Chinese built satellite with a foreign launch, so there's minimal Ethiopian human capital involved in actually getting the thing off the ground, and so the real question is whether one big outlay to some entirely foreign OEMs and launch providers represents better value than purchasing the relevant satellite data (and continuing to leasing the use of communications satellites) from an increasingly commoditised entirely-foreign-owned and run commercial satellite market as and when they need it in the form they need it. Without access to the relevant financials, it's very hard to know the answer.
Making the data open would be one way they might achieve that big advantage.
> These are the same folks who complain about poverty in India anytime ISRO launches a new rocket
The Economist has a reputation for being a little parental with India, from what I know. Though this article sounds like pure speculation, they do come off a little colonial at times.
> THE ancient holy town of Lalibela, perched some 2,500 metres above sea-level in Ethiopia’s northern highlands, boasts some of the clearest night skies imaginable.
When I lived in Ethiopia (Haile Selassie was still emperor so it's been a while) there were many nights of the year where the starlight was bright enough you could walk around without a flashlight. Nights with a full moon almost felt like daylight. You could see stars at the horizon.
> But at a time when 5.6m Ethiopians need emergency food aid because of a drought, it seems an odd priority.
Not that it's the same scale, but U.S. has ~.5M homeless [0], and I'm very happy that NASA still exists.
Saying that a government shouldn't have a space program because people are starving, without first mentioning every other piece of inefficient spending, seems misleading.
And yeah, while it does seem like they could maybe get similar benefits from the private cubesat's mentioned, there are good reasons for developing countries to work towards domestic technology instead of relying on imports.
That's a pretty big difference... 6% of the population versus 0.1%. For reference at the peak of the Great Depression homelessness in the US was around 1.5%
Yeah, that's why I opened with "Not that it's the same scale".
My point is just that arguing "don't spend money on X, Y is more important" only makes sense if X is literally the least important thing.
But as far as scale is concerned, it's worth noting that the US spends about .5% of its budget on NASA (again, IMO totally justified). The economist article doesn't mention how much Ethiopia plans to spend, but to get a super rough estimate, their current $3m investment [0] is only about .025% of national budget [1].
I get the gist of what you're saying, but I disagree. That's something like 7% of their population. Not 0.2%. I doubt we can draw a clear line on when a space program is responsible spending, but I bet 7% needing food aid is way over it.
Depends on the metric. For example, in United States 12% of the population was racially segregated and discriminated against at the same time when NASA was preparing for moon landing.
Right now in India 12%-22% (again depending on metric) of population live below the poverty line, and we have quite successful and useful space program.
Not just a different scale, but a different degree of suffering. The average homeless person in the US has a far higher standard of living and more opportunities than the average person needing emergency food assistance in Ethiopia.
Not too long ago China helped Nigeria build and launch a satellite. For a while, the thing was working until it fell out of the sky. That was the end of that one. Not sure if they managed to relaunch another one or got a refund from the Chinese.
I hope the Ethiopians fare better than the Nigerians.
From the friendly article: Nigeria, meanwhile, spent $300m on a Chinese communication satellite which failed in little over a year. Its successor struggles to compete with commercial providers: its annual revenue in 2015 was a measly $3.3m.
According to this website [1], "China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and its relevant organizations reached a decision to build and launch NIGCOMSAT-1R with no extra cost to Nigerian customer".
The Ethiopian government has been engaging in pretty brutal repression for the last year or so. Much like the famine in the eighties, this one is also tied up in systematic deprivation of groups outside of the ruling elite.
The article fails to mention that U.S./Global Fund/Gates Foundation are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of their own money on Ethiopia's humanitarian crises [0][1][2], so there's a pretty strong incentive for Ethiopia to spend their own money on other things.
> ...but at a time when 5.6m Ethiopians need emergency food aid because of a drought, it seems an odd priority
As other commenters mentioned it's an odd argument - putting it into perspective I understand the writers point
It's not just drought that's crippling the country; huge youth unemployment, wealth [little of it] distribution & the government itself are some of the major issues
With the state of emergency being extended for another 4 months & Internet censorship at all time high - space program is an unlikely prioritized endeavor imo
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 83.0 ms ] threadWhat an odd argument. These are the same folks who complain about poverty in India anytime ISRO launches a new rocket. Like every country that has a space program, you cannot wait until you solve all your social ills before you develop your human capital. Investing in science and technology is something that every country should proudly do even as they try to resolve poverty, infrastructure and social issues. They need not and should not be mutually exclusive.
I can understand a poor - but not totally destitute - country to invest in advanced technology, but no, I can't understand why in a country where thousands every year die or are severely affected by hunger, is investing in space technology instead of helping the immediate needs of its citizens.
It would be like a family in a household were you are about to die of hunger or of some disease by lack of treatment, made their priority to pay your university tuition fees instead.
A space program would obviously create jobs, but 1) does it create as many jobs as infrastructure work, per unit of currency spent, and 2) does the output that it produces materially benefit the public?
Basically, it's not a question whether they should spend money on space program, or on handing out free food. It's a question of whether a space program is really the best bang for the buck in terms of creating jobs and other benefits.
And you could argue that it might be, because the space program will produce important long-term benefits. But short-term benefits will produce "interest", so to speak (if you can get more people out of poverty today, you'll get more people who can become scientists tomorrow - and it might not even be the same people, but their kids). So such an argument cannot be a mere hand-wave - it must present the numbers.
Perhaps you aren't aware, but this very scenario and others similar to it happen throughout the animal kingdom and in human species. In the wild, mothers often abandon their sickly or less fit children to focus all their energy on ensuring the survival of their most fit offspring. It is also possibly a reason why poorer people, especially farmers, tend to have more children than urbanites as a sort of morbid insurance. The more children you have, the greater the chance one has at surviving. Parents do often put more resources into the child that shows the most promise. It's a valid survival strategy. I'm just stating that what you think is crazy is actually pretty rational and is practiced.
That said, if you don't have programs like these, then the best and brightest are simply going to leave and you'll experience brain drain, making it that much harder to endemic problems. There is more than enough food to feed the world, these destitute situations arise mostly because of corruption or government incompetence. 6 yr old me had no interest in solving corruption and/or economic development and I imagine I'm not alone.
In the "animal kingdom" both things are part of physical abilities, in here one of physical the other is intellectual.
In any case, one would think than in the XXI century we would be more advanced than expecting a nation to prune the disabled/destitute part of their population by letting them die of hunger/disease while they launch rockets into space.
I was in no way advocating for a culling. I was just pointing out how that wasn't the best analogy as it seemed you were trying to compare it to something ridiculous when in fact it is a common phenomenon, sadly.
> In any case, one would think than in the XXI century we would be more advanced than expecting a nation to prune the disabled/destitute part of their population by letting them die of hunger/disease while they launch rockets into space.
But we aren't. It's sad to say, but a cursory look at history finds that a significant amount of progress and technological development was fueled by human misery and suffering. American society still allows for perverse incentives like the opportunity to profit off of health care and incarceration when the moral hazard is so glaringly obvious. Welcome to profound disappointment. I believed in the promise of the Internet to create a more informed, compassionate, open, and enlightened society. Look how that turned out. What I've realized is that people haven't changed. We're still the same species we were 70,000 years ago. Our collective knowledge and institutions have evolved, but we haven't.
http://www.astro.noa.gr/en/main/
Your argument is a classic case of the broken window fallacy. The state taketh, the state giveth. Nothing is gained.
On the other hand it's a Chinese built satellite with a foreign launch, so there's minimal Ethiopian human capital involved in actually getting the thing off the ground, and so the real question is whether one big outlay to some entirely foreign OEMs and launch providers represents better value than purchasing the relevant satellite data (and continuing to leasing the use of communications satellites) from an increasingly commoditised entirely-foreign-owned and run commercial satellite market as and when they need it in the form they need it. Without access to the relevant financials, it's very hard to know the answer.
Making the data open would be one way they might achieve that big advantage.
The Economist has a reputation for being a little parental with India, from what I know. Though this article sounds like pure speculation, they do come off a little colonial at times.
When I lived in Ethiopia (Haile Selassie was still emperor so it's been a while) there were many nights of the year where the starlight was bright enough you could walk around without a flashlight. Nights with a full moon almost felt like daylight. You could see stars at the horizon.
Not that it's the same scale, but U.S. has ~.5M homeless [0], and I'm very happy that NASA still exists.
Saying that a government shouldn't have a space program because people are starving, without first mentioning every other piece of inefficient spending, seems misleading.
And yeah, while it does seem like they could maybe get similar benefits from the private cubesat's mentioned, there are good reasons for developing countries to work towards domestic technology instead of relying on imports.
[0] http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessnes...
My point is just that arguing "don't spend money on X, Y is more important" only makes sense if X is literally the least important thing.
But as far as scale is concerned, it's worth noting that the US spends about .5% of its budget on NASA (again, IMO totally justified). The economist article doesn't mention how much Ethiopia plans to spend, but to get a super rough estimate, their current $3m investment [0] is only about .025% of national budget [1].
[0] http://www.sciencealert.com/ethiopia-has-launched-the-first-... [1] http://www.ena.gov.et/en/index.php/politics/item/1435-counci...
Right now in India 12%-22% (again depending on metric) of population live below the poverty line, and we have quite successful and useful space program.
The perfect time is always now.
I hope the Ethiopians fare better than the Nigerians.
[1] https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/chinese-long-march-3...
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/oct/20/s...
To be clear, I'm not at all against foreign aid.
[0]https://ethiopia.usembassy.gov/u.s.-response-to-the-ethiopia... [1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grant... [2] https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/portfolio/
As other commenters mentioned it's an odd argument - putting it into perspective I understand the writers point
It's not just drought that's crippling the country; huge youth unemployment, wealth [little of it] distribution & the government itself are some of the major issues
With the state of emergency being extended for another 4 months & Internet censorship at all time high - space program is an unlikely prioritized endeavor imo
PS: I am an Ethiopian