Low-Budget Indian Satellite Launch

Geekonomical writes "On Thursday afternoon, for a mere 15 million U.S. dollars, India launched a meteorological satellite into geo-synchronous transfer orbit some 36,000 kilometres above the equator using a modified version of its highly successful space workhorse, the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV). The article also claims that China spends 12 times as much as this for a launch!"

Comments

Re:..a mere 15 million U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the 1.something, 2.????, 3.profit! joke!! Easily as funny as `imagine a beowulf...` or `first post!`!

I think a slight mod to the lameness filter is required.

Re:implications

[khuber]

Hey Stuck Up british boy! Hows your "empire" ?? OH wait!! ITS AN ISLAND, A TINY ISLAND!

LMAO

-Kevin

META: Slashdot styleguide? (choosing anchortext)

[RobotWisdom]

I've recently started a lowkey campaign to make Slashdot blurbs more user-friendly (click my user-info link above for recent examples, all flagged 'META').

In this blurb, "for a mere 15 million U.S. dollars" is completely random, chosen simply to be near the start of the blurb. My preference is to highlight a word that describes the type of content so I'd favor using "article" in the last sentence.

W3C-doctrine is that the highlighted text should be self-explanatory when it's pulled out of context, as in Slashdot's marginal winnowing of links. I see the argument, but I don't believe it's really workable. (How often do those marginal links get clicked, anyway?)

The most common Slashdot style is to include extra links to the publication, etc-- I hate this because it requires me to look closely at the various choices to be sure I'm getting the right one. Even though the article is at SpaceDaily, there just isn't any reason to include an extra link to their main page, and I'd like to see Slashdot start a styleguide that deprecates that approach.

My previous METAs have all been flagged offtopic, but Slashdot ought to be sophisticated enough to appreciate when METAs need a forum, too...

Re:implications

[Anonymous Coward]

they have made themselves a lot more enemies than India.

You can't say that! You must be a Nazi! How dare you condemn any of Israels policies...? They are immune to world critism, get with the program!

Re:META: Slashdot styleguide? (choosing anchortext

[dmiller]

I've recently started a lowkey campaign to make Slashdot blurbs more user-friendly...

You really need to get out more.

Re:implications

[Anonymous Coward]

And you completely clueless but that hasn't stopped your babbling.

Re:Slightly OT, but informational

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it (more competition) isn't good, that'd be anti-capitalistic (if you define capitalism the American consumer way ;).

Satellites, nukes and the monkeyman.

[naughtypenguin]

I still find it hard to believe that India is this advanced. Not to mention the nuclear capability. For christ's sake they as a nation are freaking out because of the monkey man! attacking people.

Nothing against Indian's or anything. I know a few personally, they are great folks. But I think the technology base in India is a little overstated. Most indian tech workers I have worked with over the past 12 years are a typically well below average when the first get over here. Where as they were some sort of technological whiz-kid in India.

I would wonder what sort of redundant systems they had on this thing. What sort of emergency procedures they had in case of a failure which sent it of course or such. I would bet minimal if any.

Re:Slightly OT, but informational

[Spunk]

how's that for moderating my own comments?

(-1, Redundant)

At this low price...

[bobdotorg]

... maybe we can get rid of that N'Sync guy once and for all.