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India-Pakistan

Indian Mars mission leader criticised over temple visit

2013-11-08

[Pak Daily Times] The head of India's space agency, basking in plaudits after the launch of the country's first voyage to Mars, was brought down to earth Thursday by criticism of his decision to seek divine blessing for the mission.

K Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), visited the famous Lord Venkateswara temple in southern India on Tuesday where he reportedly placed a replica of the Mars spacecraft at the feet of an idol.

Later in the day Radhakrishnan oversaw the successful launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission, known as "Mangalyaan" in India, which is on an 11-month journey to study the Martian atmosphere.

India's rationalist organizations, which campaign against religion and superstition in the diverse but officially secular country, slammed the widely publicised temple visit.

"There would have been nothing wrong had he gone there in his personal capacity. But to go there as chairman of ISRO and ask for heavenly favour is nonsense," Narendra Nayak, president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, told AFP.

"It sends a wrong message to the common man who will think God can sort out all his troubles," said Nayak.

Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, also flayed the ISRO chief who was congratulated by the prime minister and president on Tuesday.

"What sort of message are we sending out to the world? It's a shame for our country that prides itself on its secular credentials," he told AFP. India is attempting its first inter-planetary journey with a spacecraft built in just 15 months on a budget of $73 million, a fraction of previous attempts.

More than half of all missions to Mars have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003. Only the United States, Russia and the European space agency have succeeded. A front man for ISRO could not immediately be reached for comment.

Posted by:Fred

#5 Ranger 7 was just slam awesome, the 20 seconds to impact b/w low rez film freaked me right out. LOOK AT ALL THE DAMN CRATERS!

Posted by: Shipman 2013-11-08 13:10

#4 Of course there are always peanuts. IIRC the mars polar lander mission that failed somebody forgot the peanuts.

Lucky legumes

Per the flight director's checklist, about an hour before the scheduled landing (based on the time that the signal from the rover will reach Earth, about 14 minutes delayed), the mission manager will begin one of the few, but important actions, he and his team can take as Curiosity faces its "seven minutes of terror" from entry to touchdown. [Mars Rover's Nail-Biting Landing in Pictures]

He will pop open and start passing around the peanuts.

"The tradition of the peanuts at JPL goes way back to the 1960s and goes all the way back to the very first missions we sent to the moon," MSL flight director David Oh told collectSPACE.com from his mission control room console on Saturday. "We had seven [robotic] attempts to go the moon before we succeeded, and on that seventh one they had passed out peanuts in the control room."

Ranger 7, which in July 1964 became the first U.S. space probe to successfully transmit close images of the moon's surface back to Earth, made the peanuts into a tradition.

"So ever since then, it has been a long standing tradition to hand out peanuts whenever we launch, whenever we do anything important like land on Mars," Oh said. "We can use all the luck we can get."

"We have plenty of peanuts. The mission manager usually assures that we don't run out," said Arthur Amador, MSL's mission manager.

Posted by: Snavise Cholurt4299 2013-11-08 06:41

#3 Needed indeed, and let it be Jewish !

Krauthammer's Law: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise.....First, it turns out that John Kerry - Windsurfing, French speaking, Beacon Hill aristocrat had two Jewish grandparents. Then Hillary Clinton - methodical Methodist -unearths a Jewish stepgrandfather in time to run for New York senator. A less jaunty case was that of Madeleine Albright, three of whose Czech grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and who most improbably contended she had no idea they were Jewish. To which we can add the leading French presidential contender (Nicolas Sarkozy), a former supreme allied commander of NATO (Wesley Clark) and Russia's leading anti-Semite (Vladimer Zhirinovsky). One must have a sense of humor about these things. Even Fidel Castro claims he is from a family of Marranos.-em>

Krauthammer, Things That Matter, p67.

Posted by: Besoeker 2013-11-08 06:33

#2 Can't hurt. And, people need some sort of religion---otherwise they fall for pseudo-Marxist superstitions.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2013-11-08 06:10

#1 God CAN sort out all your problems. The question is why would He bother? He made Gravity. He made the Laws of Celestial Mechanics. He made Mathematics.
But.... It's up to you to flush your own toilet.

Posted by: Spereting Tingle4064 2013-11-08 05:53

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