Article on mars. mission
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NASA’s projected cost of its Mars mission stands at $679 million. In contrast, the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Mars mission has spent $600 less to launch the same mission (Burke, 2013). Nevertheless, ISRO has been heavily criticized for its huge spending on this mission.
Critics argue that this money should have been used to alleviate poverty in a country whose over 320 million citizens live below the poverty line. Moreover, this quest has been branded as an attempt to “steal an interplanetary march on India’s regional rival, China” (Ajey, 2013, p. 1). The Mangalyaan (the spacecraft), which was launched on November 2013, is the first mission to the red planet by an Asian country.
In any given country, the allocation of resources should involve prioritizing and sequencing by the government. This implies that, based on the concept of opportunity cost, priority should be given to projects that are beneficial to the people. The writer of this paper argues that India’s mission to Mars indicates a lack of prioritization by the national government and therefore, a waste of resources. It would have been better if India had spent these funds on its poor people and country instead of spending it on the mission.
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