India join race for Mars

[Montmorency]

Space Exploration has a very big trickle down effect. The technologies developed and implemented end up featuring in other devices and other technological advances so whilst the initial costs are high, they end up paying themselves off and more in the wider economy and community. So the investment will help those efforts down on the ground by making the nation more prosperous.

True in principle, but one may question the magnitude of the effect when the overall investment is rather low and/or short-lived.

There may well be tiered thresholds at and beyond which there are large leaps in ROI ratios. The trick then is to optimize between potential ancillary ROI and more direct investments or maintenance in other areas of state remit, most commonly infrastructure and social welfare benefits. In fact, though, one could also argue that similar ancillary effects arise in a similar manner (i.e. tiered thresholds) in such cases as infrastructure or welfare spending, which adds multiple dimensions to the equation.

One big actuarial cluster...

[HopAlongBunny]

First images and write-up:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-first-images/

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...One big actuarial cluster...

Actuaries love nothing better than a tangled pile of data to sift through....you would make them very happy.