Slashdot Mirror
Planning Phase Complete For Indian Moon Mission
alphakappa writes "According to news reports, India's low-cost moon mission -- Chandrayan -- has completed its planning phase and will be deployed in 2007-2008 as planned. The interesting aspect is that the entire mission is expected to cost only around USD 88 million. How do you think space technology will change as a result of these low cost missions, satellites and space vehicles?"
This is the finest news to come out of India since my job went there, lol.
They will outsource the whole project to themselves...
How do you think space technology will change as a result of these low cost missions, satellites and space vehicles?
It won't. When you do it for too low of a cost it will fail like Beagle 2 or Mars Polar Lander. Faster, better, cheaper doesn't work. Once they start killing people and still try to be cheap their space program will come to a halt fast.
Even if it's "only" USD 88 million, I think this money could be much better spend, especially in a country like India where a lot of people don't have access to basic modern comfort...
>How do you think space technology will change as a result of these low cost missions, satellites and space vehicles?
Following the steps of software development/services ; outsourced to India ?
(which btw might not be a good thing after all !)
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
$88 million is only a start. As space technology improves, expect to see greater cost savings and possibly very inexpensive space travel to anyone who wants it. But first, we need to increase reliability and speed of our current space vehicles. Otherwise, the cost savings would not be worth it.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
India is a country in which a veritable sea of people is living in appaling conditions. OK, the mission is only ~80 million dollars, bravo for them. But what is the point? Are they going to get any crucial new data on what the Moon rock is made of?
Or is this solely a demonstration of power? A sort of an international dick-waving contest? You are not grown up until you send some expensive junk to the moon or something? Those eighty million might have bought the country one more university or one more hospital - which, I believe, have a better chance of saving / educating a person which makes an important scientific discovery than that pile of junk has of making a good return on its moon trip.
Why, why? Poverty in rural India is an enormous problem and a socio-economic gulf is emerging between city-dwellers and the rural population. Improved irrigation is desperately needed in those areas, and after that we can start talking about electricity and phone services. This is a massive problem. Additionally, infrastructure in the cities also needs very serious work - some IT firms have their own generators because the grid is too unreliable. Essentially, India is struggling to support its growth. This space mission is quite simply money spent on Indian pride that can only matter to so many considering the direness of the circumstances mentioned above.
ISRO has established space systems like the:
ISRO has also developed the satellite launch vehicles PSLV and GSLV to place these satellites in the required orbits.
Here's the complete list of ISRO's geostationary satellite system
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Why?
India was denied cryogenic engine technology(for the heavy satellites it launches(which is currently done by Ariane x) in 1992/3 by Russia because of the dual use potential.
So India started developing its own cryogenic technology. It was supposed to be ready by 1999. Now, 12 years later, it is still not completely ready. Its gotten there 60-70 % but there is still a ways to go.
Unless you see an actual launch in 2007 of this moon mission I would be skeptical.(Forget moon mission, sending a man into orbit itself will be a big deal for India, moon mission is a far off dream(pun intended.))
China took a long while to send a man into orbit. India is going to take an even longer time to achieve that. 2007 isn't even that far away when talking about time frames for space programs.
And finally, when the heck were space programs within on close to their budget? 88 million? More like 500-900 million $.
Until then its speculation, speculation and more speculation. Geddit?
Lost cost space;
Some Indian engineer will confuse grams for Tola's and the thing will auger into the moon at 68.0e4 kph.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
perhaps, but the alternative is definately a BAD thing.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/140
stendec@gmail.com
Granted, we've made significant accomplishments in space travel since then, and the cost per shuttle mission is surely less (I seem to recall around $10 million per, but I can't find any numbers). But still... only $88 million to get to the moon? Where exactly are they going to save money?
Of course, India is a very populous nation. Perhaps they're losing money on every mission, but they're going to make it up on volume.
6 comments and already half of them are whining about why can't India spend money on education and hospitals. So the USA and Europe have no poor people, no uneducated people, no sick people who can't afford healthcare? News to me. Any number of recent stories on slashdot have talked about spinoffs from India's space programme that have helped, and are helping, the Indian people (satellite education, improved weather forecasting and cyclone alerts, remote sensing and crop monitoring, etc...) And has it occurred to you that the moon project could be a money winner in the long run, if India can do it cheaper and better than others? India is already getting a non-negligible share of the satellite launch business, as well as saving a lot of money by doing its own launches instead of depending on Ariane and others. But no, next time an India story comes, it will be another "oh look at all those poor illiterate people, why are they running a space programme" flood of comments, mainly from Americans who're hardly literate in their native language, judging by the writing samples on display.
If you want to pick on some budget expense, pick on the military spending - 13.8 billion dollars in 2002-2003. This is a drop in the ocean compared to that, though I agree the infrastructure in India needs a lot of work. Electricity goes out every few days in some urban areas, I'm amazed people can run reliable IT firms.
how this is going to improve the worlds accent heavy tech support.
even if it was manned, we'd hear, "base this is lander, we need coordinates".
"hello, what is your phone number so that we may call you back if the line drops"
"we need the landing coordinates"
"what is the nature of your call?"
"we need the landing coordinates"
"what operating system are you using?"
"windows 95, we need the landing coordinates, give me to someone who knows how to do landing coordinates"
"is this a problem with windows?"
"coordinates!!!!"
" have you rebooted?"
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I'll be impressed when some 3rd world country builds their first jet
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited did that some time ago.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Damn straight.
Let's just have a look at the amount of poverty in the US and the money they spend on weapons. What a bunch of hypocrites!
I think it'll get cheaper.
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
Or, you could try quoting my complete sentence...
"I'm not sure I'll be impressed when some 3rd world country builds their first jet either."
But yeah, I'm not impressed still, unimpressiveness confirmed.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Spacecraft have always been custom built for the task. While this may have its advantages, it also means that you are constantly reinventing the wheel - a costly and often unreliable process (Witness the Genesis and Beagle 2 probes).
I have always believed that the way to reign in costs of space missions is to use standardised components - you use the same delivery/landing system until you have something thta's proven to be better.
That means that companies can make thousands of the same components cheaper because they don't have to spend money redesigning them or resetting their production machines. The problems with each component are also well understood and can be planned for because of the extra experience with them, meaning a higher chance of success with each mission.
This article here has a little more info about the lunar mission, and a small backgrounder on the EDUSAT, which was covered on Slashdot last week.
Do you send a moon mission without successfully completing an manned/unmanned orbital mission around the earth itself?
I mentioned the manned mission because that was what China accomplished last year BEFORE it undertakes moon missions(manned/unmanned).
And for the costs and time frame- I stand behind my statements.
http://www.deltawing.go.ro/iar93.htm
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Maybe NASA needs to closely follow this development. Political consideration aside that is, if they want to consider methods for cost-effective of exploring the Final Frontier.
I mean, they've outsourced all sorts of IT and Tech-related jobs to India, why not also the various NASA Space Programs, at least the small but expensive components.
Will sys-admin for food
Or is this solely a demonstration of power? A sort of an international dick-waving contest?
[[I could be wrong about my history here, but I believe the reason the US-Soviet space race was so important was to show the other side that they could send nukes across the globe without launching a manned bomber.]]
Think about it, NASA was largely developed by Wernher von Braun. The same man who brought us the V2 rocket. It is now said he built that rocket with the ideas of someday going to the moon. Either way, it is has been said that Hitler could have ruled the world with nukes and V2s.
Point: India has nukes. If they want to hold the world hostage or become a true nuclear power they need to be able to send rockets/missles around the globe.
At first it sounded good, but now it's somewhat scary. Dirty bombs don't scare me much, ICBMs... that is another story.
Get your Unix fortune now!
1) Go to space
2) Land on the Moon
3) Go back to Earth
There, I finished planning-phase of my personal lunar-mission. Really, it's not that hard.
I wonder that is the fourth step "Profit!"?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
With real competiot it will really get cheaper. Launch prices are so high that Ariane program got back to the funding sates more than 20 times more money that they put in. I think it is time for them to take in account new competion from sates like China, India and Brazil and to settle only for 3-4 times the money. This exagerated launch costs take a heavy toll on the satellite business and space exploration projects.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
This is the country that just a few years ago was going to turn Pakistan into a sheet of glass with their nukes - and now they're putting an unmanned "probe" on the moon?
Replace the word Probe with Missile Platform and things get a LOT scarier...
Well, it is a great achievement for India. It is of great Indian pride. and I fully support it. As someone pointed out, calculate the cost per person and it comes out to 8 cents per person. Thats so cheap.
Most of the responses here are "why? what's the need? first take care of poverty.... blah blah" But many people just see india as place to outsource projects. Well, this is mission is just to prove India's ability to the world what it can do even if other nations don't give some technolgy to India. It is matter of self esteem and national pride to see an indegenious mission. Also, it is not the space where only U-S-A can work. It is about equal opportunities for everyone instead of keeping power with the few.
And poverty? Do you think they are just sleeping and doing nothing? Well, eliminating poverty in country over 1 billion population is going to take time. So, why can't these two missions go hand in hand? definitely yes!
Hooray for 'deft' but I have been posting here for a while longer...... I've seen way to many cooler things than just another rambling on this website.
Are you seriously sugesting they should refrain from advancing themselves because the US (which is well known for sharing wit the rest of the world) has done it before?
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
One of the reasons why they can keep the cost down is the lack of safety. In India, human lives aren't considered very valuable. And, before you mod me as flamebait, let me tell you where I got this from. I was visiting India at the time where the tensions between India and Pakistan was high. Both countries threatened with nuclear weapons. The indians I spoke with all said the same thing, when I asked them if they weren't concerned with a nuclear war: "So they drop the bomb on us, and 50 million people die. Big deal, we're still a billion people. So we drop the bomb om them, and kill 50 million people and win the war."
Of course, this point of view is very different from our western view, and very difficult for us to understand. But we do spend a lot of money on safety - not only in the space industry, but elsewhere. And that can make a big difference in project cost.
Underholdning.info
This is actually a program secretly funded by the evil Indian Software companies to quickly get Indian developers flown cheap to US companies like Google setting up offshore research centers on the moon. :-P
- cnb
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
Kennedy 1962
His vision was not exclusive to the US. A national effort, borne of indigenous ability and resources, will do more for India and others like India then all the social programs and government bureaucracies you will ever imagine in your wildest nanny state dreams.
India, go forth. Take your $88 million and show us how it's done. Best wishes.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Maybe Joss was onto something with the low-cost aspect.
I expect that they'll create a corner on the moon so that they can build a shop on it. :D
..rather interesting to see the most highly-rated comments on /. are those who deride the Indian space programme and yelp about the poverty and the living conditions, and expound the wealth of their knowledge about how this 88 mil could be used towards creating more hospitals and so on.
How many of you know about India's space programmes though?
Did you know that India has been working on space programmes since the 60's?
Or that it had a comprehensive space progamme, that included a satellite system, a remote sensing satellite system, polar satellite launch vehicle and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle ?
Or that when United States arm-twisted Russia in April 1992 and July 1993 not to sell the cryogenic technology know-how to India.
Or that India's cryogenic engine came of age on April 18, 2001 when India bustled into the exclusive GSL club?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
.... its the rest thats high cost
88 mil!? Shoot, I could something to the moon for about $100. Just give me a wrapping paper tube and a, uhm, "few", ESTES rocket engines!
Sidenote breaking the fun:
Do you think it would be actually possible to break the Earths gravity with just ESTES rockets? And why hasn't India tried?
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
http://efil.blogspot.com/
I am suggesting to change the project name from chandrayan to search for US flag.
I think they will have cheaper accidents.
That's it - I'm moving to Shelbyville.
India's a country, right? Wow, that is so cool. I wish I was a country and I'd fly around the sky like a cloud-country. Hey, that would be cool - a cloud-country. We'd never have drought, though the rest of the world might because we'd be interfering with blah, blah, who cares. I bet India is jealous because they have drought I think. Mods - this is on-topic, if you don't get it, just move along.
weeDDDDEEEEEweeeeeDEEEEDDDDDE. Slashdot culture is so pathetic - everyone acting a certain way, moderation forcing people into line. I remember the good old days when this was just a haven for thoug.. no, it was never like that. Got to be honest, you know. Got to be honest. Liebestod. The only true answer to love is death.
Mars polar lander for example, including all the after costs, was only $328 million, and that was for a MARS mission, and a LANDER, not an orbiter.
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/msur98.htm
"The Mars Surveyor '98 program spacecraft development cost 193.1 million dollars. Launch costs are estimated at 91.7 million dollars and mission operations at 42.8 million dollars. "
So an $88 million estimate sounds about right.
Well done, India, that's what I say.
I've seen a lot of the other comments, which are all along the lines of general - and stupid - derision, asking 'why, oh why'. Yes, India has many problems with poverty etc, but so has USA, Russia and China; in fact Europe are the ones that have the best record on those issues, so perhaps only Europe should ever send things into space, don't you agree?
No I think all these objections are more to do with the fact that India is not America and most Americans hate the fact that others are able to do these things and rely on themselves rather than the scraps the US allow them. There was the same sort of sentiment when the European equivalent of GPS was launched: 'Why, oh why'.
Well I'll tell you why:
1. It's not American - people in the world often prefer to do things independently of America, often because they don't trust the benevolence of America.
2. In the case of India's space program - China and India are rivals in many areas, they are both on the verge to take the place at the top economically in the world. China has put a man in space and annouced plans to put one on the moon, and India feel they have to demonstrate that they can do it too.
" Britain used WWI to do exactly the same thing"
I knew WW1 to be an evil imperialist plot created by Britain somehow, organised by the King contacting his cousins the Kaiser and the Tsar, no doubtl
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/08/mars.revi ew/
"Combined, the 1998-99 crop of Mars missions -- Climate Orbiter, Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 -- cost about $320 million. That's about a 10th the cost of the Viking mission that successfully landed two spacecraft on the red planet in 1976."
So $83 million should be plenty to do this mission.
Probably you are not aware of the fact that Sanjay Kumar is from Sri Lanka and not India.
But then again, I wouldnt be much surprised if you blab "Sri Lanka? ok, another Indian state". Get your facts ascertained from your "Indian" wife.
It is still an impressive development. However, the cryogenic engine that they are using is a Russian import. The Indians build their own fuel tank and pumping system... Quote from the article "India is using the (Russian) engine as a component in the GSLV, but without a technology transfer." "It is a technology which has never been used by India before," Narasimha (Director of Indian National Institute of Advanced Studies) said.
Tough talk from an Anonymous Coward,
:P
and how do you know Sanjay is from Sri Lanka I belive you might be some kind of zellot your self
I'm sure that my Indian wife would knot know or care where sanjay is from "posibaly my father-in-law might"
I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
Hey if you have a fucking problem with your in-laws, I can suggest a few other sites for you. This has got to be the dumbest racist post I've ever come across. "Indians suck because my father-in-law who's an Indian is an idiot". I'll say he's an idiot, how'd he let a fuckwad like you bone his daughter? Sit the fuck down in your trailer with your mega-super-ludicrous-sized 4 pounds slab of cow, and munch away, while watching Jerry Springer. Enjoy your life.
First of all I love my inlaws!
/. you hyper sencitive what ever you are. I see all kinds of nasty racist things here you must go out of your AM raido mind reading this tripe.
next if you don't know what your talking about shut the fuck up aswipe!
have you ever seen greek wedding? well evverything was invented by _______ (fill in to suit your needs)
I'm suprised you are reading
Sorry if I offended you I was only gooffing hell I'm of Irish desent I get a load of jokes myself.
Heres to going to where a few men have gone before with a remote controle car
I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
Stop linking to stupid articles to prove your point. It doesn't make a damn difference to what I stated.
Let me ask- If India's cryogenic engine technology was/is ready why the fsck does the Indian Space Research Org STILL have to rely on the Ariane rockets to take Indian satellites(INSAT series) into geo-stationary orbits during 2004,2005 AND 2006?
The INSAT satellites are too heavy even now for India's cryogenic engines. That begs the question If the INSAT satellites are too heavy, how the heck does ISRO expect to send rockets to the moon?
The cryogenic engine rockets are only capable of small loads. ISRO launched a rocket in 2002 or 2003 that carried an experimental payload. The payload was some unimportant satellite(wouldn't matter if it failed or succeeded). The rocket was sent up mainly to test the cryogenic engines. The rocket was successful but supersizing is a completely different engineering nightmare.
If the ISRO is capable of taking a rocket to the *moon*, why can't it take Indian satellites 36,000km above the earth?
Why does it have to rely on the Ariane?
In another comment in this thread I mentioned about the Chinese space program. As a first step in their space program, they sent a manned rocket around the earth. Only then are they planning further missions. This was the case with the US and Russian space programs too.
Reality speaks for itself. So RTFA.
I have been in Bangalore since last October on assignment :p Since I have been here I have lost count of how many jets the Indian Airforce lose. IAF vs the ground seems to be a losing battle. There was some fire in the space centre too a few months ago. Track record is not to hot with the basics, so overtime and over budget :p
Just like everything else in IT. If India can get to the moon cheap, then NASA will outsource projects to INDIA.
Hmm... a Slurpee machine on a lunar mission command capsule.
The president of the country is a missile scientist and has been involved in many of the most significant adavances in the Indian missile/nuclear field. http://www.geocities.com/siafdu/kalam.html Although, in the Indian system, the president has few executive responsibilities and powers (the prime minister is the head of government), the amount of respect bestowed upon the man is a sign that scientific accomplishment is held in high regard in the country. Little wonder that this mission and other high technology endeavors do get their well deserved allotment of resources. -mp-
-mp-
I didn't know that Kumar was Sri Lanken and I'm Indian I think it's funny.
... they can finally settle the debate over whether or not the moon shot was a hoax.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
How to reduce the cost of a moon mission
This is not an automated signature. I type this in to the bottom of every message.
You are one more reason Pentagon and its cronies are able to sell the idea of Missile Shield to the american people. The threat of a dirty bomb is far more greater than that of "axis-of-evil" lobbing a few nukes your way.
Seriously, we are going back to the cold war era, when everyone lived in perpertual fear of the commies nuking the heck out of us. Later we realized that Russians love their kids too, but now we just cant be sure about the terrorists (do they have kids too?).
Soon we will start looking in fear at the shadows, look with suspicion at our fellow human beings, believe everything our Govt tells us and close our mind to everything else. I wish we cease to exist by then, it would be a shame to live on like that..
Rapid Nirvana
You might have asked how the Yugo's low cost would change the cars we drive.
Let's see if it works, first.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Disclaimer : the following anecdote was not verified by me first hand, but given what I know, it sounds very reasonable.
Circa 1978, the Morvi dam in the state of Gujarat burst. The flooding and the resultant loss of life and property was huge. The event made front-page headlines in India. One of the more curious aspects of this incident was apparently that the Indian government was clueless about the occurrence of this disaster, but the US spy satellites in orbit detected the event. The Indian government was informed by the US about the disaster.
At that time, ISRO (the Indian space agency) had been in existence for many many years - but their funding was more of an afterthought. This incident opened the eyes of many to the strategic value of a space presence. As a result, circa 1982, India put its first satellite into space.
People in the US may not appreciate the usefulness of a space presence. The following information was gleaned from a documentary funded by the UN :
India went onto launch many more satellites - a lot of of them for weather forecasting. The neighbouring country of Bangladesh is located in the delta of two major rivers. Flooding is a perpetual annual problem. Subsequent to the Indian weather satellites being available, the UN sponsored the use of the weather forecasting data that was available to provide an early warning system for flooding due to cyclones (known as hurricanes in the US). The first year this was done, the loss of life was 150,000. The previous year it had been 300,000. And no, I am not making these numbers up.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
You can get as many fscking breaks as you like, as soon as you crawl into the hole that you were spewed out from.
/., there are invariably a few twats who believe in "yelling-till-blue-in-face" to prove their argument.
/. a better place for others
Ever heard of a Satellite lauch vehicle? Or heard that several satellites of comparable payloads were placed in orbit by indigenous launch vehicles?
For every reasonable discussion I have on
Troll along.. make
http://efil.blogspot.com/
i guess you forgot that the FIRST JET was developed by a Romanian ... Romania being a 3rd-world country by any current-day definition.
i'm too lazy to research it, but i'm quite sure several "3rd world" countries already develop jets.
and the answer u deserve is :
In Romania, 3rd world countries "jet" on you.
A. It won't.
This model already has changed space exploration quite a bit. Cassini, now doing its work around Saturn, is a very different sort of robotic probe from everything else in the news mostly because it obeys the old model: everything in one big attempt, custom-built, extreme redundancy in systems. That's the all-eggs-in-one-basket, classic way of doing it. And Cassini's a big success so far.
For a long while now, though, NASA has also been firing much lower-cost, higher-risk probes out. Those are simpler probes, designed to do two or three types of things, they use systems that aren't all custom-made for their purpose, and as a result they're higher-risk but cheaper and you can do more of them. Each probe has a more limited set of goals. You lose more, but when you lose one you haven't lost everything. The development cycle is shorter, so you're not wedded to technologies that were current ten years ago when your project started up.
Beagle's lander was just a miss. The Mars Express orbiter with the same mission worked successfully. You accept those chances if you're going with this model.
Cost of Cassini mission: "$3.26 billion, including $1.4 billion for pre-launch development, $704 million for mission operations, $54 million for tracking and $422 million for the launch vehicle." (NASA)
Cost of the Pathfinder mission that landed in '97: under $150 million. "The mission has the primary objective of demonstrating the feasibility of low-cost landings on and exploration of the Martian surface." That's NASA explaining its mission objectives. The rovers over on Mars right now are the descendents of that mission.
There's real tension between these approaches, and real tension between the costs and benefits of putting people up there vs. these unmanned missions. But change space technology? Low-cost missions have already done that, no question at all.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
>> How do you think space technology will change as a result of these low cost missions, satellites and space vehicles? I think my position is best expressed by: "It's raining '53 DeSotos."
Astro
Just what the tired and hungry space traveler needs...
LUNA QUICKIE MARTS!
[Apu]
Are you going to pay for that?
[/Apu]
Sounds like they got eyes bigger then their belly.
3 /schoolfeeding/19c.html/
Somebody tell 'em it's not made of cheese.
http://http//www.wfp.org/appeals/flashappeals/200
Smile.
Southland Corp., owner of 7/11 stores, was up $1.50/share today in news that there is no competition for their stores on the moon! In other news, Southland announced a new Slurpee(TM) training center opened in conjunction with India's planned space program...
They have to figure out how to make an closed environment that can sustain three adults eating chichen vindaloo for 10 days.
JP.
--- Worst tagline ever.
First of all, you Americans need to stop thinking that you can solve the world's problems. You have been told this for decades, but you apparently haven't got it yet. I'm not going to bore you with your own history, but I will point to the marvellous job you did with Iraq.
Secondly, it has become very clear that the majority of you think of India in a very one-dimensional way. e.g. Everyone in India is uneducated and living on dirt farms without modern conveniences. I would like to point out that the Indian state of Kerala was the first in the world to achieve complete 100% literacy, a feat that no state of America or Western state (to my knowledge) has been able to accomplish. India has a wealth of educational opportunities and very few Indians do not take advantage of this. I have been to many cities in the US, and I must say that my own home city of Cochin has much better living conditions overall than most of what I saw.
Also, many states of Southern India are more heavily wired than most states of the US. I know of very few people who do not own a mobile. In addition, you can't drive half a kilometer on NH-47 (a National Highway) without passing by at least three internet stations.
For the longest time you have believed you are the only ones "allowed" to have technology and this is very untrue. India has problems, I agree, but claiming that every penny needs to be spent on "hospitals" and "schools" makes absolutely no sense. Obviously you do not know how your own country came up to its level and the role technology and the space program played in it.
The bottom line is you don't understand India or any other nation, and you never will. Don't think you can solve our problems, at least until you've fixed your own.
Also, on a side note, please stop whining about losing your jobs to us (while sitting fat on your couch sucking disability money). This problem is entirely your own.
Recent cenus data indicates that the average "poor" household in the US has two color televisions and at least one car... In other words, most of the US poor are living in conditions roughly equivalent to that of "middle-class" Indians.
That's nothing against India, BTW. They've come a long way since colonialism and are making rapid advances - in my opinion, probably more rapid than the "Western" transition from an agriculture-based to industrial-based and on to information-based society. As a firm believer that wealth is not some fixed sum that must be redistributed, I say "More power to them!"
For India, $88 million is high cost. India has many hungry, suffering kids. $88 million could feed a lot of kids.
That Indians would waste $88 million on a space adventure while Indian kids are malnourished speaks volumes about the inferiority of Indian culture. Consider also the skewed ratio of male babies to female babies in India. In 1998, the ratio was 1.11. It has risen to 1.20 in 2004. The normal ratio is 1.05, which is exhibited by Western nations like Japan, Canada, the USA, etc.
Also remember all those nice things which came out the space program ?. Like pacemakers or kevlar ? . See now India has to develop SuperComputers big enough to compute the path to moon ... Like the Space Race of the 60's , this too is a war fought in peaceful result-oriented fashion than a traditional military escalation. But India's still sending a clear message - We have the technology.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Anybody remember the slogan of the "New NASA" just a few years ago? Faster, Cheaper, Better. Then one faster, cheaper rover was lost, and they more or less scraped it, at least in PR. I think it's still a good idea, but the thing that is really going to drive down costs is private enterprise, not government funding.
A good parallel is Columbus, who had funding issues with his government. He finally secured it, but it wasn't until business figured out ways to make money off of it that trips to the New Land were in reach of the average Joe. (Granted one of those money making schemes was immoral- let's not kidnap Africans to harvest moon rocks this time.)
Point being: it's great that governments kick-start exploration, and even better when they do it on the cheap, but they should do it as a means to an end, promoting commercial exploration.
And just to make things clear: my gripe is with the submitter of the article (and the way they portrayed the costs) not with the Indian lunar mission.
Last I checked, most big budget movies run into the $100 million range. If the Indians can put a man on the moon for less than it cost to make Spielberg's last flick, then I'm seriously impressed.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Should'nt they be fighting over slaves, and rushing to dig gold, and claim land, like US did, 50 years after the independnce?
All I can see coming from you is a pissing contest on here when your job is outsourced. Get a life and learn to mow lawns. ;-)
apu contacted for hazardous mission.
all pork rinds 20% off.
If America can't or won't return to space and progress to the best of our abilities, then another country must. We will never know what we could learn, what greatbenefits could be derrived from new strides in technology, unless we make the attempt. The nations that do venture further into the frontier of space will progress and evolve while those that do not, either out of fear or lack of ambition, will not. Even those nations that try, and fail will have learned much that they could apply to more attempts.
Yes it will be costly, in terms of time, resources, money, and lives no frontier is ever cheap. However, hoarding money and resources because explorig a frontier could be dangerous is nothing but stagnation.
I believe that's enough rambling from me. Feel free to ignore me now.
Since there's about 1.1 billion indians, they could easily get to the moon about 6 times if they just stood on each others heads.. Pretty low cost! :)
Oh hell, once the Chinese hear about this, they will be itching to get to the moon!!!
They won't need a "Space Vehicle" because they are very athletic. They will just stack one on top another until they reach the moon!!! Last guy up gets to be the first on the moon!!!
The India I see is not the middle class Kerala where everyone wears full sleeves and wants a white collar job.
Oh, yeahI wonder why you don't see that unlike half the eastern world, we are NOT FIGHTING you ?.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
There have been three recent launches of the GSLV using cryogenic engines from russia, putting satellites in geostationary orbit at 36k km. Obviously in course of time ariane will be dispensed with and the GSLV launched for INSAT launches. Also the insat satellites are fabricated in India. All this may pale in comparison to the US' space prowess but these are things that no other country outside the Western Powers, Russia and China have done.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Look at the Chinese. They reject Westernization. Abandoning Lunar New Year to embrace Western New Year is anathema to these folks. Ditto for the Indians.
Japan is impoverished in resources. India is rich in resources, yet Japan is more prosperous than India. India is a failure because of the choices of its people.
we have some obsolete french stuff thats being phased out thats causing the crashes ...
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/06-18-04.asp
General Hal M. Hornburg told USA Today that India's Sukhoi Su-30 MKI multi-role fighters have been successful against F-15 C/D Eagle aircraft in mock combat. In fact, the Indians won 90% of the mock combat missions.
When is everyone finally going to figure out that India did not field the Su 30 MKI in Cope Thunder , they were the Su 30 K's/MK1's .
The Su 30 MKI has more design and performance characteristics similar to the Su 37 while not exactly the same and will be comparable to the F 22
but my job has never been outsourced... its more likely yours has. I dont program, i pay peopel to do that.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
...example of the wonders of low-cost third world labor. When they get around to doing a manned flight, look for their astronaut to be getting about $1.50 per orbit and a goat upon successful completion of the whole trip.
Or if landing is required, Moonshot 7? NASA grumbling: "So we showed them how to do it, and now our mission went to India."
I couldn't help but notice the two kind of replies on this thread. one - surprise and anger ( probably culmination of pentup anger over loss of high-tech and low-tech jobs to India). two - genuine concern and apprehension why India would use money for this purpose when there several poor to be fed and taken care off.
addressing the first case - India has a good space program since 60. ISRO maynot have the kind of money NASA but it has a good ROI. US has denied india in past access to technology and going to the level of presurising other countries to do the same. The reasons, I think were basically comercial .
Examples:
1. India built and sells PARAM supercomputer for quarter the price of equivalent crays after US denied India super computers. only a handfull of countries can boast of this.
2. India is building cryogenic engines for launching spacecraft after US forced Russia not to sell them to India out of fear that NASA will lose the market for lauching commerical spacecraft to a new cheaper compititor.
3. India last elections were held completely electronic. these electronic voting machines were built for a few millions dollars and used successfully. US is still struggling to introduce electronic voting technology mainly because the technology is too fancy (read more profits for corporates ) and hence many problems. India used the KISS concept and built it with simple s/w burnt on microprccessors. there was a good article in MSNBC abt it sometime back... try a google search on it.
4. the big hoopla abt bad s/w being written in India as a result of outsourcing....wonder why companies like google still have offices in india ?
5. India conducted nuclear tests in may 99 after figuring out the orbiting spy crafts trajectories and moving men and equipment almost 1000 miles to the remote desert test site when the spy craft were not watching. the result - nobody in the world knew abt the test till the India PM announced it.
6. have you heard of health tourism ? if not check it out .
I can go on....
So bottam line- people in other countries can do things better and cheaper than in US. Not in all cases but where ever they choose to and have some funding.
Now to address the other case -
many spacecraft have been launched to help telecomunication access to remote regions, spread long distance education (television based classes ), weather and other uses. you can take those millions of dollars and feed people but how long can you do it ? how will you come up with the money to feed again and again ? only by providing people with access to technology and jobs. how will u get access to technology ? the cheapest way is to come up with the technology.
I like your spelling though. Did your father-in-law teach how to spell too? Irish aye!
Do you know how many satellites they have launched since inception?
As for that,their space program is a roaring success already....ISRO is not some low quality manufacturing company and infact carry many satellites for other countries who cannot launch it on their own. Hav a look at their milestones : http://www.isro.org/mileston.htm
India belongs to a elite club of six [US, Russia, China, Japan and the European Space Agency are the others] - who control a lucrative satellite launch market.
Cribbling about India takes you Nowhere.
Just what we needed....
Apu in space, "Would you like a Slurpee with your Oxygen?"
(It's a joke folks, don't flame me...)
Something isn't right. A new suburb in Bangalore costs $2bn, an expressway costs $87m and a mission to moon just $88m!
Like the Chinese, they could get there just by standing on each others shoulders...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Isn't that the point of the moon mission?
Stop saying 88 millions are spent. IT IS AN INVESTMENT that almost for sure WILL PAY OFF.
:-/
Remember that space-research result in many kinds of knowledge because so many different problems must be solved. Some of that knowlegde turns into products that aren't used in space. Those products are sold for profit. The rest you can figure out for yourself!
And I haven't even mentioned the motivation effect in the Indian population...
I bet I could find many examples from NASA, but I'm too tired...
So said the Raiders !!
I'm sure some poeple on /. are racist, but get a reality check. Most people are just ignorant.
Perhaps it is you that needs the reality check. Ignorance, especially willful ignorance, is a cornerstone of racism. What's truly amusing is how many who don't consider themselves racist in the least engage in unconscious racism all the time. This is also willfully ignorant, because it is being willfully ignorant of oneself.
If the article was about Canada trying to send a probe to the moon, do you think that most people would have the first clue about the Canadian space program and its accomplishments?
If the article were about Canada's space program, comments about Canada's economic status and suffering millions wouldn't get modded up as insightful. You wouldn't have posters suggesting that the money would be better spent on a hospital or feeding the hungry and then getting that post modded up as insightful.
Slashdotters wouldn't accuse the Canadians of "diplomatic dick waving" and get modded up as insightful.
You wouldn't have the not so well hidden rage at outsourcing if it was about Canada.
When someone said something as a joke, it would get modded as either funny or as a troll, not insightful or interesting.
I say this is because of racism, but it could also be that Canada is really nothing more than the 51st state of the United States, with the delusion that they have sovereignty. We let it slide, like we do with Texas, that other state full of delusional idiots. At least Canada contributes some pretty good comics to our Cultural Hegemony. Judging by the criminals that come out of Texas and move to Washington DC, Texas is sort of an Australia in reverse.
Which brings me around. . . You shouldn't feel bad about being a crummy Canadian. At least you're not Australian.
Update: I just read your links to the CSP and it's accomplishments. Funny, I never thought of hitchhiking as an accomplishment before. Maybe someday your country won't be second rate and be able to launch things into space with it's own rockets. Sheeesh, no wonder you're our 51st State. Backwards people like the Indians have more ambition than you do. Maybe if your country didn't practice a luke warm form of socialism, you could afford a REAL space program.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
If many countries suddenly decide to start sending cheap space vehicles to the Moon, there will be a lot more debris from the inevitably high failure rate of the missions. That said, the actual number of successes would like ly dwarf the number of successful US moon landings and colonization and possible control of the Moon would likely not end up in US hands. Maybe the US will get in on this soon enough to keep that from happening though.
Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
Are you fucking insane? This post should be modded "insightful". Metamods mod the mod "unfair". Jesus Fucking Christ.
I joked about Canada and got modded as a troll. Now if I made comments about dot heads, pakis, and people who use towels for headgear, I'd have gotten modded insightful.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
On the other hand, no, the $88million wasn't the government's money to begin with, it was the people's money that the government took. In a democracy the government claims they're taking the people's money to do something better than the people would have done with it on their own, but it's still the people's money. In a feudal society or theocracy or some other kinds of governmental structure, the money actually _may_ be the government's (that doesn't mean that it wasn't taken by force, but it was done as a personal action by the rulers and their henchpersons, so it's really their money for whatever they feel like spending it on.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The argument that the space race or various military arms race programs were worthwhile because they brought us all these cool non-space spinoff things like communications satellites, velcro, and Tang is bogus. Yes, those things were potentially valuable, but they not only diverted money from the applications that the private sector could have used for other applications, they diverted a lot of really talented engineers and scientists from working on private-sector applications. What kinds of things would they have built if they hadn't been making rockets? Would they have improved the energy efficiency of cars, airplanes, and houses by 10%? Would they have built the Franistan that would have revolutionized the industry? (You've never seen or used a franistan, but that's because the team that would have invented it were improving military helicopter gunnery systems instead.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks