NASA has made history as the American aerospace agency announced that it successfully flew its four-pound ‘Ingenuity’ helicopter from the surface of Mars on 19 April.
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The team behind the development of the spacecraft has confirmed the news of the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet on early Monday morning.
NASA has named Ingenuity’s flight zone “Wright Brothers Field”, as a homage to the aviation pioneers’ revolutionary flight in 1903.
As per the scientists, this new milestone could eventually help NASA more quickly roam around the red planet to look for signs of ancient life.
To make a brief flight, the spacecraft was made extremely light and given the power to turn its blades extremely fast – at around 2,500 revolutions per minute, so that the vehicle can be pulled into the ultra-thin air on Mars.
The successful flight has given a boost to NASA’s latest Mars mission— Perseverance rover, which is set to explore a Martian crater that once held water and could also find out clues to the history of the red planet.
The Ingenuity helicopter, with four spindly legs, a solar panel and costing around $80 million, arrived on Mars on 18 February while being attached to the Perseverance rover.
If everything goes according to the plan, Ingenuity could make at least four flights in the coming weeks.
The second flight would be slightly higher than the first attempt and could go up to 16 feet. It could fly horizontally for a little bit before landing on the Martian surface.
The first flight was originally scheduled to happen last week. But it was postponed after a problem was detected during a test of the helicopter’s rotors.
The news about the successful flight on Mars has raised hope to explore more distant planets with such helicopters before astronauts visit the planet.
However, NASA has already approved another helicopter mission Dragonfly—to Saturn’s moon, Titan. As per the agency, it would arrive at Titan in the mid-2030s.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.