Unfortunately all the national space agencies seem to suffer from this. Both NASA and ESA also seem to think that people are tuning in to watch the smarmy politician talk rather than the robot making its way to space/landing on another body.
It's also because these agencies are reliant of politicians and government institutions for funding. So there is a balance between "showing what the public actually cares about" and "keeping this guy happy so we can keep up funding / congressional support / etc."
To his credit, Narendra Modi has increased ISRO's budget a lot. Many years they have received more than promised! So he kind of deserves to rake in the limelight.
On the other hand, political speeches on such occasions go down as most remembered historically. The infamous quote "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." was obviously said by some politician! (or at least with non-technical motives)
The full version of that section is more amusing but forgotten
>> But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may as well ask: why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon {applause} We choose to go to the moon... {applause} We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard -- because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills -- because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. (And the others too)
(as spoken and delivered at Rice University in Houston, Texas, referencing the Rice-Texas American football rivalry, where Texas is a 10x larger university)
I think it is a sign of habitual cynicism that you assume "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." was said by a politician. I think people feel like they are defending themselves from being manipulated by not accepting anything on its face as sincere. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.
That's correct about Freud! I was referring to Magritte, who made the painting "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." By which he meant the image of the pipe was not actually not a pipe. Which means .. well I think you would have to read about it and I am not sure I am using the reference in the right way.
I believe Freud and the cigar is about our thoughts and impulses sometimes not having greater meaning in our subconscious. Magritte is about something different.
No sarcasm, just wondering. Armstrong could have been cancelled or something. I might have missed the Two Minutes Hate [0] when he or lunar exploitation was on.
Could just be a misuse of infamous but could just as well be intended to refer to the fact that Man and Mankind mean the same. You need an article in front to transform "One small step for Man" into "One small step for a man" to refer to Neil himself stepping.
Wikipedia (see elsewhere for link) has good coverage of that. "A" was intended to be said, but when humans say lines like that it is common to miss a word here and there. There is no way to know for sure if he said it and the technology of the time didn't pick it up, or if he misstated his own quote.
Exactly! This has been my own head canon too since like decades! I was actually surprised to read in this thread that "infamous" is a negative interpretation of famous which seems like a revisionist and recent interpretation. The English language also evolves through the ages and so do the meanings and interpretations.
They want to go down in the history books the way JFK's "we choose to go to the Moon" did without experiencing the "mind-blowing" event afterwards that made the speech historical.
I believe the chairman of the space agency also used the Prime Minister's mention of future projects to note it as confirmation that those projects will indeed happen i.e. be funded. That was pretty smart at @ 01:07:00 in the video.
That was very memorable- grainy photos projected on a wall while nasa admin (old white guy) briefed Biden? Jwst had a pretty well planned out program for first images including events and it just got crushed.
That is condescending nonsense. Pretty much everybody would prefer to see rocks from outer space than hearing politicians congratulating themselves and the unity of our country.
Yeah it's more likely this is a case of wants of decision makers being prioritized over wants of the audience. This event is an avalanche of prestige. Of course politicians want to soak it up.
Nope. Same reaction from a wide variety of people including my wife who's not in tech and doesn't know what HN or YCombinator are. She was like "let the team speak already!"
So what you're saying is you'd need to be an uneducated imbecile to prefer politicians speaking to live space footage.
I think you're selling uneducated imbeciles short; surely even they prefer the space footage. Only the politicians doing the speaking prefer themselves.
SpaceX livestreams didn't get super popular for having a politician on them. They got popular for showing exactly what's happening with enthusiastic presenters narrating it.
Most people find speeches and politicians boring. They wanna see rockets flying, robots moving, etc.
The first launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon with astronauts on-board holds the record for the most concurrent internet viewers on a stream tracked by NASA at 10 million.
Of course if you drop the internet requirement, Apollo 11 still is by far the most live viewed at 600 million viewers.
That makes sense for Apollo 11. I expect that one won't be beat until we land people on Mars. I figured SpaceX had some much bigger viewerships than 10's of thousands. (I've watched several myself.) That number must have been on the more (now) regular things like vertical landing the same rocket for the Nth time! Thank you for the update.
The whole Prime Minister thing was bizarre to me .. He was like on the mission-control screen with his own panel .. it was just weird lol.. Even in the US where our presidents fancy themselves god's.. it still just had a weird perception from my point of view..
But I'm proud of the people that worked on and executed that mission for them. Obviously a moment of immense national pride, well deserved.
ISRO is primary arm of the Department of Space which is headed by the Prime Minister. So in essence, the Prime Minister is the boss. It is not an independent federal agency like NASA.
I really wish to see a lander mission to Venus. Doesn't look like anybody other than Russia has done it - that too nearly 40 years ago. The environment is so extreme that the technology - especially electronics - would have to be radically different. The data is also likely to be extremely interesting.
You can see the onboard camera view in the background sometimes. And the only truly hard thing about this is getting the political will for the funding, so.
I absolutely agree that they should immediately release data & images for more technically inclined section. However the reason for speeches is entire nation is watching this event across all age group, most of them don't understand technical things, I would say even image of moon surface wont connect to most of them. Basically speeches is the way to connect & artists impression images. To give some example, people thing entire rocket goes to moon, one of the politician was wishing "passengers" on the spacecraft, reputed news channel claiming "breaking new" that there wont be delay in landing as if we can push breaks like in car or traffic on the way. So you get the point, to connect to masses they are speaking in language that everyone understand
One of the most populous countries has become a strong contender in space exploration. Hopefully, it will inspire so many more Indians to push it further and elevate the humanity, just like USA and USSR once did. It's great.
NASA often gets the same treatment, particularly so during the Apollo program when they were getting a lot of money. It doesn't matter the country, a lot of people don't see the sense in spending a single pence on space.
One of my favorite quotes is, "When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger." So pertinent, but also with so absurdly much imagery, symbolism, and metaphor packed into just a few words. But perhaps the most remarkable thing is that that quote's 2500 years old. Technology changes so much, but we largely seem to be the exact same people we were even thousands of years in the past.
Congratulations to India! Every time I read of launches to space, I think (and sometimes say aloud) "wow!" It is awesome in the traditional sense of the world.
It’s brilliant! I think most Indians were really disappointed after the last failure, so it’s really reassuring that despite shooting further we were successful!
I get the point that the US already put people on the moon… but how can you possibly make the leap that there can be no scientific value to additional unmanned laboratories and instruments landing on the moon? Especially since this represents increasing the number of countries who can contribute to this scientific endeavor? If the US elects a president who is not interested in lunar science or has economic problems, then the whole world must wait for the US to decide to resume lunar missions?
An overview of the scientific instruments onboard:
“ Lander payloads: Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and temperature; Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for measuring the seismicity around the landing site; Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations. A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.
Rover payloads: Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of landing site.
Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous Lander module (LM), Propulsion module (PM) and a Rover with an objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for Inter planetary missions. The Lander will have the capability to soft land at a specified lunar site and deploy the Rover which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility. The Lander and the Rover have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface. The main function of PM is to carry the LM from launch vehicle injection till final lunar 100 km circular polar orbit and separate the LM from PM. Apart from this, the Propulsion Module also has one scientific payload as a value addition which will be operated post separation of Lander Module.”
> I get the point that the US already put people on the moon
I didn't mention the US and I'm not from the US (I'm French). Humanity landed on the moon. Over 50 years ago.
If a country today built a 1969 computer I wouldn't marvel at the achievement.
And yes, sure, there are probably many instruments on board. But you can tell from the video -- and all the excitement here as well -- that this is mainly political and politically motivated.
> If the US elects a president who is not interested in lunar science or has economic problems, then the whole world must wait for the US to decide to resume lunar missions?
Or maybe do something else with our limited time and ressources than trying again to analyze the lunar surface and pretend it will be useful? While planting friggin' flags all over the place?
Of course we should? I'm surprised you think otherwise. It's like arguing that we shouldn't have explored the Americas because the Earth was not unexplored.
The Lunar poles have lots of scientific value, particularly for long term habitation, as you can have both permanently shadowed craters with water ice in them and permanently lit areas providing a reliable source of power.
