The Indian Mars probe cost less than the movie Gravity.

I'm sure many of you have heard about this already, but I still thought it would be worthy of a forum post, so:

Quote :

The Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mars this morning, making India the first Asian nation to reach the red planet.
The Mars Orbiter Mission cost £45 million ($74 million), or about three-quarters the amount to make the Oscar-winning movie Gravity about astronauts stranded in space.
It arrived in orbit around the red planet after a tense 300-day marathon travelling more than 420 million miles (670 million km).

Today I also read about the Japanese company planning on building a space elevator by the year 2050. I'm finally starting to feel that going to space might actually become a possibility for the common man in my lifetime.

Kinda makes me sad and happy. I am happy that at least someone on this planet takes space exploration serious.
But sad at the same time, that the western world use more money on pleasure and entertainment than on science. Dont get me wrong: I love movies. I love big movies. But I my hunger for knowledge about the universe is also great. The western world should not turn into Roman empire in its last days. I just miss the days when the Western world had big thoughts and ambitions (besides in pop-culture).

To be fair, if NASA launches any kind of probes to Mars they will cost 10 times more than this no matter what, because everything from materials to labor is more expensive in the US.

On the side note: I've also seen people commenting that is ethically wrong because India has millions and millions of people living in poverty and they should be helping them instead and blah blah blah. Umm... India has over 1,2 billion people and a gross domestic product of over 5 trillion dollars. So this little space mission means virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things.