[HN Gopher] India's Chandrayaan-3 launches to explore moons wate...
___________________________________________________________________
India's Chandrayaan-3 launches to explore moons water rich South
Pole
Author : FlyingSnake
Score : 246 points
Date : 2023-07-14 09:27 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
| MPlus88 wrote:
| [dead]
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Is there any way to get up-to-date coordinates on it? ESA's
| Estrack network seems to track it, but there seems to be no
| public API
| (https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/ESA_ground_s...)
|
| And asteroid-like orbital elements or NORAD TLE's don't seem to
| apply here (?) since
|
| > A two-line element set (TLE) is a data format encoding a list
| of orbital elements of an _Earth_ -orbiting object for a given
| point in time, the epoch.
|
| which won't really be true in its later part of the orbit
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3#/media/File:Anim...)
| and it is changing its orbit constantly
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Got an answer here:
| https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/54239/how-can-...
| srvmshr wrote:
| Honestly I do not understand the subtle trolling here. If any
| country is making a big leap, without biases, just cheer for
| them. Getting to see humanity's progress, one country at a time,
| is a better thing compared to seeing none. When the highest
| populated country facing dozens of social issues, makes a space
| achievement at a tight budget, they deserve our pat on the back,
| not ridicule. Sure, they could be a generation lagging in the
| technology, but they are collaborating with other countries in
| aviation. Spacefaring is getting bigger, not niche. Comparing
| them to ESA or NASA is unfair given the gargantuan budgets they
| enjoy. There is progress and commendable one. Good job India!
| More miles to your rockets
|
| By making comments like "poor country, donate money" and "Brits
| are sending money [...]" (actual flagged comments here) some of
| us are showing inherent racism. One world-one people, guys. It is
| really not that hard.
| [deleted]
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > When the highest populated country facing dozens of social
| issues ...
|
| To put things in perspective: The US declared its "War on
| Poverty" in January 1964. Tried to send rockets to the moon in
| March 1964. Signed the Civil Rights Act into force in early
| July 1964. Got the first rocket to the moon successfully in
| late July 1964.
|
| So it's not like other "space-faring nations" had everything
| sorted out before "wasting money on space adventures". That
| entire "They should fix their social net / railroads / ...
| before entering the space race"-thing is just pulling up the
| ladder behind oneself.
| raj555 wrote:
| comparing india's poverty and social issues (in 21st century
| ffs) with usa's in 60s is like comparing apples and
| orangutans, congratulations is warranted but not patronizing
| alephnerd wrote:
| Not really.
|
| If you extrapolate developmental indicators historically
| (eg. the AHDI [0]), India in the 2010-2020 period is
| roughly comparable to the US in the 1950-1960 period.
|
| None of this is surprising if you have an background with
| US economic history. Similar to India today, the US in the
| 1940-1970 period had an industrialized half (the North,
| Midwest, and Western US) and less industrialized hinterland
| (Appalachia, South, Southwest).
|
| A major component of America's development was because of
| massive industrial projects targeting Appalachia, South,
| and Southwest America (eg. TVA, Space Grants, NASA
| Huntsville, Interstate Highways) along with the expansion
| of the social safety net (eg. Great Society, War Against
| Poverty, Civil Rights Act, LBJ's entire domestic policy)
|
| India is seeing a similar transformation via large
| industrial projects and an expansion of the social safety
| net via welfare programs/yojanas/"freebies".
|
| This can be seen starkly with Rajasthan (INC run) and
| Gujarat (BJP run). Both share a similar culture and had
| similarly laggard developmental statistics in 2000, yet by
| 2019 both have converged with each other [1], as well as at
| the developmental work occurring in both Uttar Pradesh (BJP
| run) and Odisha (non-BJP run).
|
| [0] -
| https://frdelpino.es/investigacion/en/category/01_social-
| sci...
|
| [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states
| _and_un...
| pgeorgi wrote:
| It wasn't meant as a quantitative statement, but you're
| making my point: if even the US of the 1960s (with its
| poverty and social issues) could afford to run a space
| program, how much more India of today?
|
| Any criticism that India's space program resources are
| better spent elsewhere applied just the same to NASA (and
| in some ways still applies, given how backwards some parts
| and aspects of the US are): either people see value in such
| a program (then India is just fine) or they don't (then
| NASA should shut down immediately).
| throwawayffh wrote:
| Right. One colonised and one colony
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It's not an either/or situation. Developing space technology
| has historically helped the most vulnerable in India. From
| better weather prediction to help with protecting crops for
| farmers to helping prevent natural disasters, space tech has
| played an important role.
| bimbam1024 wrote:
| Looking at the number of school children cheering for the
| launch, that in itself is worth the investment. The spark in
| curiosity in a child is worth a multiple the amount invested.
| nashashmi wrote:
| When it comes to sci/tech/space exploration, it is difficult to
| segregate nationalism or anti-nationalism from the science and
| technology ambitions. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, it
| provoked the US to do the same, with a whole bunch of
| snickering. When the Chinese started their space ambitions, US
| became more concerned and argumentative. When the Chinese
| excelled in supercomputing, Obama tried to rally the nation
| towards unity in science/tech.
|
| Snickering is part of the equation. And counter-snickering with
| big launches and achievements is also part of the equation.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| There was _one_ immediately flagged comment saying these
| things, relax.
| pknerd wrote:
| Found some negative comments by Indians but then this is a
| typical attitude of subcontinent, people hardly celebrate good
| things. I experience same here in Pakistan.
|
| Anyways, congrats India, this is not something casual. The entire
| ISRO team deserves the applause.
|
| PS: Dumb question, why is it taking so long to reach to that
| region of moon?
| nojvek wrote:
| Congrats india and wish they make the rover work this time.
|
| I'm a believer that humans may take 100s of years to be multi
| planetary, but we'll be making increasing semi-autonomous
| intelligent rovers that help us build habitats in space.
|
| Mars and moon is 100% robots. It's an incredible achievement to
| put intelligence on other planets.
|
| A rising tide lifts all boats.
| pipes wrote:
| [flagged]
| me551ah wrote:
| Why is the UK even sending aid to India when their own economy
| is contracting?
| gsky wrote:
| for colozing india for 200 years maybe which brits dont talk
| about
| reacharavindh wrote:
| May be they aren't, and just misclassified funds so that
| their public would feel ...
| coder_san wrote:
| *A Foreign Office spokesperson said: "Since 2015 the UK has
| given no financial aid to the government of India. Most of our
| funding now is focused on business investments... "*
|
| More often than not, reading beyond just the headlines can be
| helpful.
| vineethkm wrote:
| >One major investment in an Indian bank, intended to expand
| financial services for the poor, in fact led mainly to
| expansion of the bank's credit card business and corporate
| lending.<
|
| How and why is 'investing' called 'aid'? I would like to see an
| itemized bill for the whole 2.3B please.
| sidcool wrote:
| Congrats India. There will be people here saying "Poor country,
| donate money" etc, but this is necessary. It will boost the
| economy and inspire the nation. Some people just don't get that.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Yeah and India isn't even that broke that people trot out the
| same argument every time. There's way more money being wasted
| in just Mumbai's municipal corporation.
| seunosewa wrote:
| How will exploring water on the moon boost the Indian economy?
| tekla wrote:
| By boosting domestic knowledge and talent in the creation of
| advanced materials and machinery such as turbopumps,
| knowledge of fuel injection technology, programming, and
| electronics
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| To explore water on the moon, you send a rocket to the moon.
| Think of the rocket as the top of a very tall pyramid. To
| build the rocket, you need to build expertise in a lot of
| different areas: both at the science level (physics,
| chemistry) but also at the engineering level (material
| science, fabrication technologies, fluid dynamics, software
| engineering, jet pump technology) etc etc..
|
| You can think of these as lower levels of the pyramid that
| support the rocket at the top. Each of these require people
| to learn these things at a very high level. Local firms must
| learn to manufacture complex components at high tolerances,
| universities must produce graduates who are good enough to
| tackle these problems, government departments have to build
| the expertise to manage these projects. Forming even more of
| a broad base of the pyramid.
|
| Once you have built the rocket, all this expertise doesn't
| just go away. All these trained people, and the processes and
| institutions that created those trained people, will not go
| away. They will go into other areas and solve other problems
| in a much better fashion than if they had not been trained
| such.
|
| If you instead try to build a car instead, the pyramid will
| be much shorter, and the type of expertise required will be
| much less. The training processes will be worse. The
| spillover effects into the economy would be much less.
| Ketan-fullstack wrote:
| like how investing in computer science in the 80s helped?
| seriously what's the objection when india spends a small
| fraction of its budget on space.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Also, you foster the need for (and respect of) very competent
| people, which has a positive impact on the whole economic and
| social culture.
|
| Imagine one day the first Dalit in space, what message it would
| send.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| I'd hope it doesn't need a Dalit in space to sort out the
| discrimination, but if that is what it takes -\\_(tsu)_/-
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| When Elephant walks, dogs bark. Elephant doesn't give two hoots
| to them. Keep. walking India!!
| stinkypajeets wrote:
| [flagged]
| himujjal wrote:
| Yeah. This is what people miss. I have always seen Space
| missions as an investment into the future.
| pseg134 wrote:
| I think people would be more inspired by functional basic
| services and increase railway safety.
| Ketan-fullstack wrote:
| if only countries can multitask but of course they can only
| work on space OR railway safety. such a shame.
| tekla wrote:
| No one is inspired by this, its simply expected.
| db1234 wrote:
| What makes you think India hasn't been investing in railway
| safety? While the recent accident was unfortunate, number
| of railway accidents have been decreasing over years. Here
| is an infographic:
|
| https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/30152.jpe
| g
| __void wrote:
| given that space is hard, any progress in this direction
| has real and practical repercussions for all of humanity;
| for example, knowing how to handle metals, chemicals,
| mechanical systems, logical systems (production chains and
| industrial production), lighter and more powerful
| computers, human biology and so on
|
| furthermore, the fascination with space missions generates
| hordes of inspired children who will study and thus this
| plant the seeds of scientists for future generations who
| will solve tomorrow's problems (in practice, it is a long-
| term investment)
|
| of the race to the moon we now have the practical and
| common use of transistors and chips, led, batteries, pace
| makers, medical pumps, thermal insulation and dozens of
| other things we use and take for granted every day
|
| to prefer little and bad immediately at the expense of much
| and good in the future is a very short-sighted and stupid
| attitude
| paxys wrote:
| In every such comment thread I read a hundred justifications of
| "people will say India is a poor country but...", yet literally
| no one has been saying it. Congrats to everyone involved in the
| effort, now move out of the victim complex.
| Narishma wrote:
| Scroll to the bottom of the comments and you'll usually find
| them downvoted there.
| [deleted]
| sidcool wrote:
| Read comments at bottom and on Reddit. There are literally
| tens of such comments.
| paxys wrote:
| Okay sure, but why are the top 100 comments on every such
| article replying to the bottom 10 comments? Who not just
| ignore them and celebrate the achievement instead? The only
| thing the white knights are doing is giving them more
| attention.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Congratulations India! The more countries that have independent
| space programmes the better.
| nashashmi wrote:
| > more ... independent space programmes the better
|
| the fallout of this is spacewar. And billions killed. it is a
| new frontier for sure. And I am not looking forward to it.
| dumdumchan wrote:
| How is it more dangerous than nukes and ICBMs?
| nashashmi wrote:
| It is dangerous because of nukes and icbms.
| danjc wrote:
| There aren't that many people in space so should be over
| quickly.
| otikik wrote:
| That's unnecessarily pessimistic. It's like saying that the
| fallout of medicine is biological warfare.
|
| Spacewar is _a_ possible future, and I will not deny that.
| But one could apply the same pessimistic view to _not going
| to space_ as well.
|
| "The fallout of not going to space is resource wars. Billions
| killed, their bodies harvested in order to extract water and
| nutrients".
| nashashmi wrote:
| Imo, both positions are extreme. I mean to play devil's
| advocate here. As I think you are doing too.
|
| However, it is not "unnecessarily" pessimistic. There are
| actual fiction books, congressional hearings, military
| strategies in motion that play out such outcomes. The US
| has a space force command. And missiles to space have been
| sent to knock out targets.
|
| Calling it a fallout, implies when all things fail and hell
| breaks loose.
| pyeri wrote:
| Here is the rocket launch video [1].
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/erbmjha/status/1679780106422681601
| jsdeveloper wrote:
| Landing the probe at moon will be the apt reply for both :
| critics and supporters.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| For the engineers interested in the technical details of the
| mission
|
| https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3_New.html
| stinkypajeets wrote:
| [flagged]
| herdcall wrote:
| Congrats to India on the successful launch, you can't
| underestimate how inspiring and source of pride this would be to
| Indians, especially the young aspiring technologists. Having said
| that, the hard part is in the landing though, which happens only
| mid next month.
| screye wrote:
| Nice to see this. India is poised to have a large aviation and
| manufacturing industry, yet all the hard-skills are in the west.
| (GE, P&W, Boeing, Airbus). ISRO and Brahmos can serve as a DARPA-
| esque seed for upskilling highly talented aviation engineering
| talent.
|
| With HAL, Air India and the aviation industry going private,
| there might be more opportunities for prospective aerospace
| experts to build out their own industry after stints at
| ISRO/Brahmos.
|
| India produces amazing mechanical engineers. As compared to other
| difficult to break in industries (Chips, Hi-tech agriculture,
| Genomics), India is actually well situated to break into the
| aviation industry successfully.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I think India will succeed in its space ambitions. I hope this
| one makes it! But aviation in general, not as much. China
| doesn't have the ability to make engines for its own commercial
| airliners yet. India doesn't have the industrial capacity to
| build the airliners themselves right now. HAL can build a few
| but India still depends on Russian jets.
|
| Air India going private isn't a sign of success in the
| industry. The government ran in into the ground, it got
| purchased without much of that debt, and the Tatas have limits
| to how quickly they can remove the tenured "government job"
| bureaucrats from the system. The government is still doing air
| India major favors by heavily restricting access to Indian
| passengers by foreign airlines (just this year they denied
| emirates an upgrade from 50000/seats a week, and denied a
| United/emirates codeshare agreement). This ends up hurting them
| too since they are limited to 50000/seats a week. One place I
| will give Indian aviation major credit is the air traffic
| upgrades they've done over the past 20 years. They are almost
| as safe as American airspace with some of the busiest airports
| in the world.
|
| I think India has a lot of potential though, especially in
| medical fields, I mean 2/3 of the world already has Indian
| vaccines don't they?
| eldaisfish wrote:
| [flagged]
| 1024core wrote:
| [flagged]
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Instead of pointing out that many US rocket designs were
| German ones you launch into a personal attack. There is
| nothing wrong with borrowing technical work, just that
| rocketry is complex, needs investment and has a very long
| path to benefits.
|
| Shameful.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| If it is common why point that out?
| 1024core wrote:
| > you launch into a personal attack.
|
| Because I'm tired of seeing these bigots come crawling
| out of the woodwork any time India does something nice.
| soligern wrote:
| They were based initially on western designs but are built
| domestically and I can assume improved on.
| 1024core wrote:
| Just like the US rockets were based on the German V2
| designs. You don't see much mention of the US copying
| Germans whenever the US launches a rocket; and yet here we
| are.
| soligern wrote:
| It was the same with the Chinese around 20 years ago on
| the internet as well. A significant number of people in
| the west don't want India or China to succeed. Asian
| countries know how to deal with this though- just don't
| engage, ignore the opinions of that segment of the
| western population (in the case of China, literally block
| them out with the firewall) and keep chugging on. You
| silence them with results.
| blahblahblah10 wrote:
| I am not an expert on their space program or the provenance
| of rocketry inventions but they seem to have developed both
| the cryogenic engine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE-20)
| and the boosters in-house
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikas_(rocket_engine) -
| according to the article, the initial design was based on the
| Viking engine back in the 1970s but haven't they developed it
| more since then?!). It also seems the payloads are also built
| in-house. I would be very interested in more details though.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| that's exactly my point. Those engines are incremental
| improvements on existing designs from the 1970s and 60s -
| hence why you will find this tech in western museums. There
| have been improvements - certainly - and the engines are
| now made almost entirely in India but the original point
| stands - the designs are not indian hence why we should
| temper our expectations of where Indian aerospace can go.
| They currently occupy the niche of cheap space launches and
| that is based on excellent work by ISRO and their partners.
| blahblahblah10 wrote:
| That's a valid argument but still a bit strange. One
| could make the same argument about:
|
| - chip design - modern processors are not fundamentally
| different from 8086, which also belongs in a museum.
| Sure, there's much higher transistor density and advances
| like pipelining, branch prediction, multiple cores etc.
| but fundamentally it's still the same physics and design.
|
| - machine learning - aren't modern deep networks just
| scaled up versions (with some new architectural
| components although one can argue that even these were
| discovered in the 80s and 90s) of old ideas that still
| use gradient descent and backpropagation. this too sounds
| like incremental progress.
|
| - commercial aircraft - aren't modern planes just
| incremental advances of 50-year old planes (the 747 is
| from the 60s). sure, they are more efficient, use lighter
| composites etc.
|
| I guess my point is that either (a) technology as a whole
| has been making incremental progress when viewed from a
| certain lens, or (b) that while, superficially, a lot of
| technology still follows designs discovered decades ago,
| there have been substantial and deep improvements at
| various lower levels of the "stack".
|
| Maybe a concrete way of looking at this particular issue
| would be to compare metrics like efficiency of the
| engines (is amount of thrust * time thrust was produced
| for / amount of fuel used = change in momentum / amount
| of fuel used, a useful metric?) or just raw amount of
| thrust produced? Then one could argue that an engine is
| essentially still the same as ones from a few decades
| ago.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Your thrust argument is borne out in the time it takes
| indian rockets to reach lunar orbit compared to even the
| USA's saturn rockets from the 60s - a week in 2022 versus
| hours in 1970.
|
| I'm not sure your comparison makes sense. The ability to
| develop chips is what i'm pointing out. That does not
| exist everywhere and developing that today is a
| monumental task. This is why chip design is limited to a
| few countries and fabrication to even fewer ones.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Are there any sources for your claim that "India's critical
| space technology is not designed or developed in India" as
| relating to recent missions such as this one?
| mindaslab wrote:
| India first wished to purchase its way to space, but due to
| US embargo it was forced to develop its space program in
| house. Thus, it's very cheap to launch Indian rockets these
| days due to lack of imported parts.
|
| In fact Indian rockets use computers fully made in India, and
| I think none of its software is taken from anywhere.
|
| There were several attempts to derail its space program like
| mysterious deaths of Homi Baba, Vikram Sarabhai, arrests of
| Nambi Narayanan and defaming Madhava Nair, but Indian space
| program like a tortoise has put one foot forward every time.
|
| The limiting factor for ISRO is not design and R&D, but it's
| the capacity of Indian industry to deliver. I think its
| rocket development is open source, any Indian industry can
| take its blueprints and volunteer to supply parts.
|
| How they [ISRO] stir up such a passion amongst their
| employees is a mystery.
| whinvik wrote:
| I haven't seen any mention of HAL being privatized before.
| screye wrote:
| Govt. is reducing its investment in HAL and HAL had an IPO in
| 2018. [1][2]
|
| Ofc, Indian institutions are averse to privatization. So it
| has been a slow process. That being said, the direction of
| change is towards steady privatization.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/indian-govt-
| proposes-s...
|
| [2] https://theprint.in/economy/rafale-snub-no-death-knell-
| hals-...
| melling wrote:
| Within 50 years, India will pass the United States to become
| the second largest economy:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/10/india-to-become-worlds-secon...
| enkid wrote:
| Economic projections like this are notoriously bad. For
| example, two editions of the same text book used the exact
| same graph showing the Soviet Union would pass the US is
| about 20 years... Despite the editions being twenty years
| apart.
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01/so.
| ..
| screye wrote:
| Sometimes you're Argentina, sometimes you are Spain. [1] Same
| people, same starting point, different outcomes.
|
| [1] https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/argentina/sp
| ain...
|
| Have to wait and see. Only time will tell.
| weekendvampire wrote:
| This is fascinating. Any particular reasons for the
| disparity?
| sremani wrote:
| Spain benefits from being part of EU, Argentina does not
| have a "support system" like that and sanctified practice
| of bankruptcy. In the long run, Argentina will beat Spain
| but that requires them getting their shit together, which
| is a big if.
| screye wrote:
| There is a joke in economics.
|
| > Simon Kuznets, the winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in
| Economics, famously stated there were four types of
| economies in the world: developed, undeveloped, Japan and
| Argentina
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Mostly the EU. Almost every other reason is at best
| rationalization in comparison. The same goes for Poland.
| though people from those countries don't necessarily like
| to admit that the reason they are richer than their peers
| (in this case, Argentina) is mostly due to geographical
| luck.
|
| But Argentina also has a peculiar, almost hard to believe
| tendency to shoot itself in the foot economically
| alephnerd wrote:
| Argentina had a lack of Institutional Capacity due to a
| very volatile political culture compared to Chile or even
| Brazil.
|
| Daron Acemolgu's career making paper "The Role of
| Institutions in Growth and Development" [0] touches on
| this exact dichotomy.
|
| [0] - https://rei.unipg.it/rei/article/view/14
| civilitty wrote:
| Geography is destiny.
| [deleted]
| rr808 wrote:
| People used to say that about China too, now China has
| started its tumble out of the sky. At least India has better
| demographics.
| dirtyid wrote:
| If PRC is tumbling, everyone else is collapsing.
|
| PRC demographics, as in actual ability to coordinate and
| exploit divident is SIGNIFICANTLY better than India's whose
| trending toward's PRC demographers worst nightmare. 100s of
| millions of undereducated and underemployed youths while
| their brightest get brain drained to advanced economies.
|
| PRC has the best high skilled demographics in recorded
| history in the next 30 years. It's only after mid century
| demographics / risk of Japanification is an issue. PRC
| demographic collapists (i.e. Zeihan tards) thinks PRC is
| going to tumble sharply from where she is now and soon, but
| really she's going to stagnate or fall slowly from a
| significantly higher position decades from now.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > PRC has the best high skilled demographics in recorded
| history in the next 30 years
|
| Like I have said a couple times in other threads you have
| commented on, just because other people spew
| misinformation doesn't mean you can either.
|
| "China's overall education rate is one of the lowest in
| the middle-income world ... Comparing China's human
| capital with that of other countries, it is not only
| systemically lower than South Korea, Ireland, and other
| "graduates" out of middle-income status, it is also lower
| than virtually all other middle-income countries." [0]
|
| This does not mean economic collapse or demise, but there
| is a very real human capital issue at a macro-level. That
| said, policymakers in the PRC know this and have been
| working with SIEPR at Stanford for over a decade on
| rectifying this at a policymaking level, but there are
| some very real systemic issues that mean China c. 2023
| cannot be compared with countries at a similar levels of
| development such as Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia,
| etc.
|
| [0] - https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-
| brief/trackin...
| sremani wrote:
| Middle income trap is real. You do not grow like your teens
| and 20s in your 40s and 50s. Economies become big and
| complex, the character of the system changes and if the
| underlying demographics do not fit the growth model it is
| in danger.
|
| Republic of Korea, Japan got rich before they got old.
| China got old before it got rich.
|
| India disappoints both its optimists and pessimists. It is
| a middling country with growth spurts here and there, which
| is admirable in its own way.
| soligern wrote:
| I don't know if you can call 7-9% growth for the last ~20
| years (with the exception of 2020 during covid) spurts.
| It's a consistently fast growing economy, at massive
| scale, that has maintained steam for more than two
| decades and doesn't look like it's slowing down.
| dirtyid wrote:
| >Middle income trap is real
|
| Yes an no, but mostly no.
|
| No in the sense that one of the authors who coined the
| term did IRC follow up study and explicitly does not
| think it exists.
|
| The mostly No part: middle income trap, according to the
| authors / as metric of development is about countries
| being unable to progress up higher value economic
| efforts, which then constrains per capita income
| potential. But the actual "trap" is being stuck in value
| chain. If one use that metric, PRC is LONG PAST middle
| income "trap", apart from US, PRC has relatively complete
| chain across broad spectrum of sectors in the world.
| Third place is not even close. The question is really
| what if even being competent and productive at everything
| simply is not sufficient to uplift everyone because base
| population is so massive. There's an upper bound on how
| many high skilled talent economy can support.
|
| The yes part is being stuck in "middle income", which if
| you look at world bank revised 2024 high income range is
| 13,846, PRC 2023 projection is ~13,500, it's basically
| there, almost inevitable with a few more years of even
| modest growth even if threshold keeps getting revised up.
| And if you think PRC is massively lying about population
| like some demographers (-200m people) then PRC's been
| high income for a while.
|
| The real question behind these "middle income" rhetoric
| with respect to PRC is can PRC reach advanced economy
| levels of high income, and the answer is unlikely because
| again there's simply too many useless people, 600m+
| living on less than $2000 who got left behind by
| modernization that will drag the per capita stats down
| until they die. On the other hand they will be the first
| to go since cohort skews old. Let that stats settle in
| for a second though, ~40% of population contributes about
| 5% of economy. Once they start dying (2050+) PRC per
| capita will start trending towards advanced economy with
| high % of skilled people wages because PRC population
| with start reflecting composition of advanced economy
| without 200m+ farmers and 100s million more low skilled
| people stuck in informal economy. It's why Xi's China
| dream only targets modest 40k per capita by 2050 (I think
| in PPP terms). BTW even PRC demographers realized in 80s
| that PRC was trending towards old before rich, the entire
| will PRC get rich before old is western rhetoric. And TBH
| relative to PRC demography plan (one of the few examples
| of actual PRC long term planning) - PRC currently doing
| about expection.
|
| >You do not grow like your teens and 20s in your 40s and
| 50s.
|
| This is simplistic. A society with 25% skilled labour is
| going to grow differently than one with 60-80% (advanced
| economy). PRC is former, trending towards the latter.
| She's spitting out OECD combined in STEM talent per year,
| and even with 20% youth unemployment that's stupid amount
| of talent to improve productivity. The TLDR is PRC is in
| process of building 5x-10x the amount of skilled talent
| that pushed the them to 15T economy. It's the greatest
| high skill demographics divident in human history, even
| if net demographics will decline. The question is where
| will that get them? Advanced economy income? My guess is
| no, but will actually happen is PRC talent will
| increasingly compete and take pie from high income
| economies, and wages will start to converge. PRC will get
| modestly richer while advanced economies will start to
| get poorer.
|
| On India, I think they'll be a much less successful PRC.
| Eventually they'll get there, i.e. they'll escape the
| middle income trap in the sense they will probably be
| able to competently develop most sectors indigenously -
| they won't actually be "trapped" by developement. But
| their sheer population 1.6B+ will likely trap their per
| capita by denominator of having so many unproductive
| people - India demographic divident is happening among
| their states with bad HDI. Nevermind unemployed STEM in
| PRC, their youth unemployment rate is like 40% (which
| western MSM doesn't seems to talk about) while being also
| being less educated with what talent they do generate
| being highly suceptible to being brain drained. It's...
| suboptimal.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Middle income trap is real. You do not grow like your
| teens and 20s in your 40s and 50s. Economies become big
| and complex
|
| Very true. Economic growth is going to be rough for
| Mainland China for the next several years, but that
| doesn't preclude becoming a developed country eventually.
|
| China today in 2023 is at roughly the same spot as
| Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea were in the 1980s. All
| 3 countries became developed, but at different paces. For
| example, Malaysia only hit the developed country
| precipice in 2021 (0.8 HDI), Taiwan in the 1990s, and
| South Korea in 2000. South Korea and Taiwan didn't become
| Advanced Economies until the late 2000s/early 2010s.
|
| > India disappoints both its optimists and pessimists. It
| is a middling country with growth spurts here and there
|
| Because India is incorrectly being compared with China.
| India is 15-20 years behind China because China opened
| their markets in 1973-1978, while India didn't conduct
| similar market reforms until 1992-1996. When factoring
| that 15-20 year lag, comparisons start making sense [1]
|
| [1] - https://www.mitsui.com/mgssi/en/report/detail/__ics
| Files/afi...
| kkzz99 wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. China's rise will
| accelerate even further. Growth rate is sinking because
| they switched to high quality development and dual
| circulation, which doesn't pump up the numbers as much as
| low quality development. Looking at Chinese industries,
| they are on the path of full spectrum domination, from
| aerospace, chip development, ai, mechanical manufacturing,
| high tech agriculture, research and so on. Look at the
| number of research fields where China is now #1. Look at
| the industries China is dominating.
| rr808 wrote:
| This guy Zeihan is pretty US centric, but is worth
| listening to. https://youtu.be/ISk9ZpKM9so
| kkzz99 wrote:
| I know Peter Zeihan. He focuses mainly on energy and
| demographics. His predictions have a shoddy record. He is
| your typical "China will collapse any day now" think-
| tanker. In my opinion his analyses are simple and
| unscientific. He presents easy to digest ideas in an
| understandable way, he is also a great speaker. But if
| you actually deep dive into his narrative and the actual
| data, you will soon discover that he is mostly wrong or
| dramatically exaggerating.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Zeihan's a quack. He's PoliSci's Michio Kaku.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > China's rise will accelerate even further. Growth rate
| is sinking because they switched to high quality
| development and dual circulation, which doesn't pump up
| the numbers as much as low quality development.
|
| Don't you think those two are contradictory?
|
| If what you say is the case then why is China struggling
| to retaliate in the chip war?
|
| https://fortune.com/2023/04/04/china-struggles-retaliate-
| aga...
| kkzz99 wrote:
| > Don't you think those two are contradictory.
|
| No, because high quality development focuses on
| innovation, sustainability and green development instead
| of raw growth via low quality development (construction,
| low-end manufacturing etc.) They could ramp up low
| quality development faster and thus achieving higher
| growth rates in the short term. But they are focusing on
| long term strategic goals.
|
| China just retaliated by issuing export restrictions for
| some rare earths, which is an indicator that they are
| rapidly approaching self sufficiency in many aspects.
| There are still some major hurdles(EUV alternatives, high
| end AI accelerators, software stack) but if the current
| speed of development is any indication, then these too
| will be overcome and probably much faster than many
| anticipate.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > They could ramp up low quality development faster and
| thus achieving higher growth rates in the short term. But
| they are focusing on long term strategic goals.
|
| Mathematically there can be only rate of growth at any
| point in time.
|
| > But they are focusing on long term strategic goals.
|
| You can say the same about US.
|
| > There are still some major hurdles(EUV alternatives,
| high end AI accelerators, software stack) but if the
| current speed of development is any indication, then
| these too will be overcome and probably much faster than
| many anticipate.
|
| It can go this or that way. With access to Western tech
| cut off, rate of pilfering from the West will also
| decrease, so that needs to be factored in too.
| kkzz99 wrote:
| > Mathematically there can be only rate of growth at any
| point in time.
|
| Huh? I don't understand what you mean by that. Different
| development strategies can result in different growth
| rates. Some will just take longer to ramp up but will pay
| off in the long term.
|
| > You can say the same about US.
|
| All major developed economies try to focus on high
| quality growth. The question is who is able to accomplish
| their goals faster/better. Considering the flexibility,
| strategic planning and political will, my bet in on
| China.
|
| > It can go this or that way. With access to Western tech
| cut off, rate of pilfering from the West will also
| decrease, so that needs to be factored in too.
|
| That is exactly why they are doing dual circulation and
| focusing on Latam, Asia and a Africa.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Sure it will. Just like China would surpass the US by 2018
| and then it didn't happen. These only apply if the US does
| nothing and let's these countries do so.
| qazpot wrote:
| 50 Years is too long a time period to make any kind of useful
| prediction.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| I am a believer in India but this is a ridiculous horizon.
| Looks like some intern at GS found out FBProphet.
| sremani wrote:
| It is a projection based on a model. People should stop
| talking as if it is fiat accompli.
| paxys wrote:
| Yet will continue to be among the worst in the world in all
| per capita metrics. Is having a large economy really that
| meaningful when the benefits are enjoyed by the top 0.1% and
| not able to trickle down?
| soligern wrote:
| That's essentially impossible. The birth rate in India is
| below 2 at this point so the population will drop. That
| combined with a larger economy means the per capita metrics
| will improve.
| otikik wrote:
| According to Goldman Sachs, which sometimes fumbles their
| bold predictions:
|
| https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/24/goldman-
| sa...
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| To me whole of India is basically a mini San Francisco. Yes,
| water is not clean, yes even now poor people need to walk long
| distances to get clean water and daily ration of rice at a lower
| price but these are not because the country is in need of money.
| It has more than enough money to handle the basic needs of most
| of its citizens, its government is garbage, inefficient, corrupt
| and ignorable. If we had any CEO of a tech company run India
| (think Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayan), they'd
| make it a relative paradise in a decade, India could easily reach
| the living standards of Vietnam, South Korea etc.
|
| Alas, in that context this technological progress is still a good
| thing because diverting money to more govt bureaucracies will not
| fix anything. At least here we see the money going to somewhat
| good use. Though from what I've heard, ISRO is also a bloated
| bureaucracy, albeit in the same way NASA is a bloated bureaucracy
| compared to SpaceX (ISRO is for all I've heard worse than NASA in
| how bloated and inefficient it is, I'm surprised they ever manage
| to launch anything)
| inparen wrote:
| This is such an good news. I hope more countries join the
| spacewagon. Space is final frontier for humanity. Once we figure
| out consciousness, load it into our AI superlord robots and send
| them for interstellar travel, who knew what they will bring.
| Possibilities unlimited.
|
| A video call with fellow human of another planet will be dope.
| Till then, live long and prosper!.
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(page generated 2023-07-14 23:02 UTC)