India just landed on the Moon for less than it cost to make Interstellar
www.independent.co.uk
Some houses cost less than Indian space agency spent on getting to the Moon

India just landed on the Moon for less than it cost to make Interstellar | The Independent::undefined

  • dejf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6215·
    1 year ago

    I respectfully disagree with you. It’s a bit misleading to compare average incomes like that. I would assume the income disparity is nowhere near as large for valuable scientists and engineers working for a national space program. In addition, you are only comparing labour costs. Some materials can be cheaper in India, but certainly not by a factor of 25 and certainly not all of them. Therefore, I wouldn’t say the article is braindead.

    • AureumTempus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      273·
      1 year ago

      The difference in income is by about 9-10 time. Salary for a NASA scientist can go in the range of ₹1 to 2 crores (converted from dollar to rupees). For a ISRO scientist however, they may earn in ₹10-15 lakhs.

      I’ve made a comment explaining why the mission was so cost-effective, you can read it here. But yes, salary is not even one of the main reasons.

      For people who are not able to understand lakhs and crores, it’s a part of the numbering system used in India. For the international numbering system equivalent, you can read this comment.

        • AureumTempus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          133·
          1 year ago

          You mean the international numbering system? It hasn’t got anything to do with the metric system the former is a positional system in the power of tens and the latter a decimal-based system of measurement, but I can understand that most people outside of South Asia might probably not understand, so here you go.

          I’m taking the salary of NASA employees from this page - this is about five years old, so I’m sure the new wages would be slightly higher. GS-15 are the top-level employees at NASA, who earn around $105,123 to $136,659. $136,659 is about ₹11,295,344.66.

          From this site, we see that ISRO scientists earn around ₹720,000 to ₹2,400,000). S Somanath, the chairman of ISRO, has disclosed to the local media that he earns about ₹250,000 per months, so on a yearly basis, it would be around ₹3,000,000, which is almost accurate with the salary given in the above site.

          Taking the highest range of salary, 11,295,344.66/2,400,000 ~= 4.71 approximately. I’d imagine that low-level employees earn about 8-10 times less than their NASA counterparts. Now, this is not the best way to calculate the difference in wage, perhaps I should’ve taken the mean and gone about with it, but it should still give you a rough idea about how misleading the “25 times less income” claim is.