India Going to the Moon Wednesday

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting report on an upcoming space mission by the Indian Space and Research Organization. You should read the actual article, but I’d like to make a few observations here.

First, the story itself in brief: If all goes well, the Chandrayaan-1 mission will put an Indian satellite in lunar orbit. This would make India the third Asian nation to recently send a probe to the moon. (Japan and China both sent satellites into lunar orbit last year.) As expected, there is some criticism in a nation with such poverty about spending money on space. The project took 4 years to put together, and will cost about $80 million.

On point in particular caught me attention when I read about this mission. It seems to me that $80 million is pretty cheap to get to the moon. Maybe that figure leaves out some things—perhaps construction of a launch facility, for example. Still, why aren’t private space ventures doing something like this?

Another thing the article pointed out was that the mission had support across the political spectrum. The ruling Congress Party was behind it, and even the nation’s Communist Party favored it. At least in words. But I wonder who voted to fund the mission…and who voted against it? Because “support” without money is a charade.

In the United States, both parties largely favor a robust space program. But funding is a different matter.