So a writer could write a sci-fi novel about mars and sell that to a ready audience.
An entrepreneur could create models of the planets and sell those to schools.
A movie maker could make a new movie with a space theme.
Not to mention actual technical innovations that could come out of new knowledge gained. Moreover, kids could be motivated to take up science and engineering for future jobs in 'STEM' fields. If this unlocks the imagination of even a few creative people, they could put back more than $100m of wealth into the economy.
No wealth was shot in to space, or literally negligible amounts of it. The wealth is the know-how, and expertise that can replicate such a mission again. Which exists in tact on earth.
One of the goals of the mars mission is - to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission.
In other words, this is just the beginning.
From -
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c25/mission-objective.aspx
The 'other wealth' you talk about is pocket change, in comparison to any public project.
Why do you assume Mars has zero wealth? Over the long term, this "loss" of wealth will result in helping humans (not just Indians) harness that wealth in Mars and other places.
That is a trivially vacuous statement. Everything has an expenditure. It is the net benefit that counts. Even breathing takes energy.
Why, why, why must people assume I'm being blindly antagonistic? I just don't get it. You quote me and then reply as if I said something stupid, and "correct" me by saying something I agree with and never contradicted.