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India's Chandrayaan Lands Impact Probe On the Moon
yaksha writes to tell us that the Indian Space probe, Chandrayaan, has become only the fourth nation to land a probe on the Moon. The 35-kg Moon Impact Probe touched down in what officials are describing as a "perfect operation." "Developed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of Thiruvananthapuram, the primary objective of MIP is to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon. The probe will help qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions. This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance is also intended using MIP."
This is "Patrick". How can I be of assistance?
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
It's Cheese!
(if you mod this down, the meme will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine)
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
So how long before there is a bollywood musical on this?
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I don't know if "landing" is the right term for it, exactly. That doesn't seem fair to people and devices that actually... don't splat when they "land."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
the Indian Space probe, Chandrayaan has become only the fourth nation to land a probe on the Moon
It also must be the smallest nation to ever accomplish such a feat!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Is it a lander or did it impact?
When I book a flight, I want to know the landing time, not the impact time.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
One thing I wonder about is why to spend all this resources to send an impact probe? I mean, why don't you send a probe which can do more and just in case fails and crashes, there you go, there is your impact probe.
Indian officials have announced the first 7-11 on the Moon will open in early 2009.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Wonderful day. Proud to be an Indian.
This does not change India's status as a "player" in that respect. It does not need very much range at all to hit Pakistan or China. It is so close to Pakistan that it would be -very- difficult for either side to retaliate in the case of a nuclear attack if there was any amount of hesitation, which does make the situation dangerous (for fear of false positive indicators of an attack) but this does not change that.
Yes, if there's another successful nation on the planet, we're dooooooomed.
Talk about insecure.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
ahh.. American Relevance in the new century fades a little more. Just hope we don't go kicking and screaming.
--
Keep One eye open on Craigslist, Search Multiple Communities, Free Trial http://www.bigattichouse.com/oneeyeopen.html
meh
Get some images from another country of the original American landing site? They have the probe in orbit, as does China. It would finally put to rest (or verify) the conspiracy theories.
is a story fretting about nasa funding shortfalls under the obama administration
so the larger take home message is that yes, while the american space program is but a shadow of its former glory, the global space race is alive and well, with china with its space walks and india with its moon landings, rising in prominence. the eu, australia, japan, brazil... lots of nations are in the game, no longer is it a cold war chest thumping exercise between the ussr and the usa
well, its still a tribal chest thumping exercise, but there are a lot more chest thumpers ;-)
and you can fret that such a low brow motivation should fund such a high brow cause, but personally, i think in this case, the ends justify the means. with all of our problems we have in the world, its amazing we can get any space funding at all. and if we harness nationalistic pride to propel mankind into space, so be it. i don't care how we get there, as long as we get there. the higher and nobler causes can only be served by getting us into space
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
India/Chandrayaan has become only the fourth nation to STAGE a landing a probe on the Moon...
Come on...you know that nothing has ever been on the moon but sunlight
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
It might be nice if they had bothered with an official web site that contained any decent, up-to-date information about the mission. The "News" section is basically just the home page with nothing timely, and the latest entry on the "Press Releases" page is four days old.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Feynman
The Chandrayaan Constitution was twittered!
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
"Done for" in what sense? Just because someone else gets it better doesn't mean you get it worse.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Wish I'd saved a mod point earlier.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
"comment of quality of Indian programmers"
6. Comment on quality of English of Indians.
"Seriously - why is it so hard to just appreciate somebody and say something that is actually relevant to the story?"
It's the second stage of: first, they ignore you, second they laugh at you, finally they fight you and you win.
Are you implying that if they hadn't done this, there would be less poverty in India?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Oh $hit..while you were on phone for IT support, your home just got foreclosed
You know, I'm going to tell you something. It may seem like the sensible option would be to take the space money and put it elsewhere, but that isn't true.
India's INSAT series have been very helpful in the past, and people were saying this when those were launched. ISRO has a nice commercial launch program and this will only improve perceptions of their ability and reliability.
That's all without pointing out the implicit false dichotomy in your comment. India can solve its problems, we, as a people, in incredible short sightedness, have chosen not to. Corruption is rampant, but the only people who can stand strong against it (the informed, educated middle class) is happy because they have good salaries. The poor cannot do anything, they have little power. The rich won't do anything, they benefit. We're in that lovely no-man's land where it is better for the individual to take what he's got and live it nicely. I don't mean this as a condemnation of any political philosophy, or India itself. I am Indian, and I am like this, and I can see that everyone else is, too.
Why worry? The more the Indian economy grows, the more employees it needs, the more salaries get driven up. Large Indian software companies are already helping drive up the cost of outsourcing IT jobs to India. Fair enough, it will mean more competition to some extent, but more likely it will long term drive up demand for IT skills worldwide (outsources are already scouring China, and even African countries are seeing investment - some Indian outsourcing companies are even sub-contracting to companies in these countries).
Good day Sir, this is Patrick only.
What do you need IT support for?
To start your foreclosure paperwork?
The answer should be obvious. Slashdot has a narrow selection of geeks, most of whom are into computers per se, rather than in other 'geeky' stuff. Hence, most stuff not related directly to computers results in stuff like this.
Read the exoplanet story comments from a few days back, for instance.
There they go littering up the Moon again. It's bad enough that it's a 'fur sure dust catcher, but now it's becoming everybody's waste receptacle as well. What is the rest of the galaxy to think of us?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Excellent Dude!!! Great retort.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Here are the first images from MIP.. Image 1 Image 2
I've seen a few moons I wouldn't mind probing.
Corruption is rampant, but the only people who can stand strong against it (the informed, educated middle class) is happy because they have good salaries. The poor cannot do anything, they have little power. The rich won't do anything, they benefit. We're in that lovely no-man's land where it is better for the individual to take what he's got and live it nicely.
So basically just like the US. Got it.
Unfortunately, you're not the only one. A lot of people are deluded in precisely the same way. There's a old human instinct that gets misapplied in modern times such that when someone in Florida is successful, someone in Michigan gets excited about it, proud of the accomplishment and hopeful for his future prospects in the world, whereas if it's someone in Berlin or Baghdad or Beijing, the same person in Michigan gets depressed, takes no pride in it, and worries about his future prospects in the world. This never made a great deal of sense, and makes virtually none at all in the modern world with a global economy.
We enrich ourselves the most (both monetarily and culturally) through our interactions with those more closely on par with us economically. Our best trading partners are the G8, and we all profit immensely from their success. Our most harmful relationships, both for our own economies and citizens as well as for those we exploit, are with third-world nations. The imbalances in those relationships hurt us all in different ways.
The moral of this story is quite simple: the sooner India, China, and other third-world nations "get their acts together" and rise to "first-world" status, the sooner they come to be on par with us in the same way our G8 partners are, the richer we all will be. An impoverished and thus cheaply exploitable India is a far greater threat to us than opportunity -- a rich and prosperous India would be a far greater opportunity than threat.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
doot doooooo doo-doo-doo.
The place used to be spelled "Trivandrum" when written in English, since no one can pronounce the other name- Not even Indians from outside Kerala. .Britishers called it Trivandrum when it was capital of the Travancore (Thiruvithamcoor) dynasty .Now it is the capital of Kerala state and they decided to "keralize" the name again.
Malayalam is like many other Indo-European languages, you can join a couple of words together to get a new word. Thiru - means holy, Anantha - is infinite, is also a name in Indian myth, puram- place. So in all the name means "Holy Anantha's land" - it was so called because there is a big temple there
We can only hope that their prosperity also brings them a feeling of superiority and entitlement as well as a strong desire to spend the weekend watching sports from their couches. That should slow down their ascendency a bit.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
I was waiting for that - Stop all progress because someone somewhere needs something. Maybe you should stop shitting and flushing because someone in the world needs some water
Taking X from one side of a scale and putting it on the other means that you have a relative deficit of X on the side that you took it from. I doubt that anyone in this thread has enough insight into India's governmental budgets to know how precisely how much we're talking about, but I don't think it's a stretch to assume that the money would otherwise have gone at least partly into projects aimed at combatting poverty.
Whether or not it's an appropriate allocation of funds is a subjective matter, but the money has to come from somewhere.
Found these... thought they might be of interest.
ISRO Press Release
http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Nov14_2008.htm
Pictures fro Chandrayaan Moon Impact Probe
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/moon_images.htm
The Hindu Article (with diagrams of ISRO Chandrayaan probe)
http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/15/stories/2008111550580100.htm
I'd be curious to know how what percentage of their staff are PR guys (probably way less than NASA), rather than engineers etc...
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
I read a whole bunch of "wisecracks" and trolls about India and stereotypical bigoted comments about 7-11 and call centers, etc.
It is sad that geeks such as some on Slashdot choose to try and divide and disrespect as opposed to integrate and celebrate what is surely a quantum leap in what technology and engineering has enabled India/mankind to do.
When technology levels the playing ground, it becomes imperative for those whose hegemony is threatened change from their jingoism to a more mellifluous tune.
As an American I offer you and your country congratulations and welcome to the Moon Club! It is indeed a feat to be proud of.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/15/stories/2008111550580100.htm would be a better source for the story.
When you look closely at the shuttle, hubble and the mars missions, the US still has done some very awesome stuff since 1969. Nothing has the low orbit payload capacity of the shuttle, nothing compares even closely to hubble and the US is the only country to have soup-to-nuts mars missions (launcher, etc).
Combating poverty is not the governments job. If the poor dont want to be poor anymore they can work harder and pull themselves out of poverty. The govt is meant to do things the private sector cannot and at present space exploration is something the govt cant do. If the money was not spent on space it could be spent on some other research but poverty alleviation or as I call it bread and circuses is a waste of money.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Of course combatting poverty is the job of the government. The government exists for the people, and it is in the interest of the people to escape poverty. You say Indians can work harder and pull themselves out of poverty as if there are jobs waiting around the corner for anyone willing, which absolutely is not the case. Your inability to understand the magnitude of poverty in India, and the responsibilities of a democratically elected government must make it easy for you to make the arguments you're making, but they don't correspond with reality.
flat, that is NOT a good landing.... Even autogyrating helos with crash meshing under the seat might allow survival but, a bad enough one might impart damage to the spinal column, just slight enough to permit walking, and then WHAM! Turn/twist in the wrong number of degrees, or lift a too-heavy load for an instant...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The moral of this story is quite simple: the sooner India, China, and other third-world nations "get their acts together" and rise to "first-world" status, the sooner they come to be on par with us in the same way our G8 partners are, the richer we all will be. An impoverished and thus cheaply exploitable India is a far greater threat to us than opportunity -- a rich and prosperous India would be a far greater opportunity than threat.
That's not entirely true. The comfortable lives people in rich countries enjoy is because they can outsource labor to poorer countries. An iPod costs only $200 because they guy making it in China makes only (say) $200/month. Now if it were manufactured in the US, it would probably cost at least $300.
This'll have a rippling effect on prices of all commodities. For eg people whose services we depend upon, like cooks and waiters will demand more money, since their money will now buy less. As a result eating out will become more expensive, as will everything else.
I grew up in India before moving to the US. My comfortable live in India and now in the US was/is possible because people who I depend on directly and indirectly make a lot less than what I do.
I read a whole bunch of "wisecracks" and trolls about India and stereotypical bigoted comments about 7-11 and call centers, etc.
It is sad that geeks such as some on Slashdot choose to try and divide and disrespect
What's wrong with humor?
This is a moment to be appreciated and savored, but like all powerful moments there is room for humor. Where you see division I only see making fun of stereotypes that are being shattered by this very story - in a way a kind of slow farewell to them.
When we as a species have lost our ability for humor, or the ability to take a bit of ribbing and laugh at ourselves and others at times - well then bring in the cockroach masters, because are are hardly good for anything but foodstuff or powering giant computational engines with our body heat.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/moon_images.htm
Watch Out!!
77 million usd is all this program cost India. Many a dot com companies get purchased for more money than that... Proud to be an Indian...
WHAT? Where did you get that bit? Anyone who can read any indic script can read it perfectly. Latin characters though...
It does make sense.
The global economy means those on the top need those on the bottom to work for nothing and live in squalar.
When someone else is moving up the ladder, and you are on top, that is not a good thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The probe's population is entirely microbial, mods.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Yes, if there's another successful nation on the planet, we're dooooooomed.
For your sentiment to make sense, you'd have to be confident that America still has what it takes to go to the moon. Is that the case?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I wonder if any of the probe's development was outsourced?
German, a legacy language of Europe, has that 'long-word' syndrome. As if they had to pay extra for spaces. And, Holymuddafugginchrist, they have some reallylonggoddamnwords in German.
_Sprocket_ used the idiom "[to] wash one's hands of it", which is a double meaning because we were already discussing the process of hand-washing.
Just so there's no confusion.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Hah, that's funny, the Americans are preaching socialism to a country whose constitution starts
"WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN *SOCIALIST* SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC ..."
Helloo! Haven't you figured it out yet? Where have you been?
China and India are PART of the conspiracy.
.
- aqk
F U
It seems ISRO is going to send a rover next to the moon in 2012 on the Chandrayaan-II probe.
:-)
IMHO, ISRO should conduct something like the Lunar X-Prize, where independent groups can build their own rovers loaded with instruments.
Not that ISRO lacks the required expertise ('course) but such a competition would generate considerable interest among students in the whole nation and rope in more participation from Indian Universities. USA's DARPA Grand Challenge is an excellent example.
I really hope the aims for Chandrayaan-II are very high, so that the Indian tech industry will have to work very hard to accomplish them all. Besides one doesn't send a rover to another celestial body quite often. So this rover should be really high tech!
Don't worry, there are still plenty of nations to economically exploit in turn by India and China as they rise. We've still got the whole Africa, for one!
Why are you replying to me with this comment? Neither am I American, nor am I preaching socialism by stating the obvious truth that a democratically elected government exists to serve the citizenry.
The govts job is not to serve individuals , it is to serve society and do not everything which needs to be done but only that which needs to be done AND cannot be done by the private sector. jobs are best generated by the private sector. The govts job is to provide the regulatory framework like enforcement of contracts, environment standards, carrying out of unprofitable basic research which allow the private sector to create the jobs needed without endangering the safety of society just to increase profit margins. Job creation, poverty alleviation, CHARITY are things best left to the private sector(Mind you a properly regulated private sector not the American model where its OK to be unethical and break laws as long as you bribe/lobby the appropiate politicians or were classmates at an IVY league school with the guy supposed to be regulating you. Thats just crony capitalism which privatizes the profits and socializes the risks)
India tried the socialist model but it didnt work. Hopefully India will not do the mistake of following the crony capitalist American model and stick to pure well regulated capitalism like Scandinavia.
So again I say India needs to spend on space till the day it becomes commercially viable and then shift the funds to the next area of basic research. No amount of dole, social security, welfare, disability benefits will solve the problem of poverty. All men are NOT created equal and there will always be more successfull and less successfull people- the govts job is not to pick winners or give consolation prizes to the losers- it is to keep the game fair.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Of course serving individuals is part of the governments responsibilities, as the government exists for individuals, and is funded by individuals. The majority of jobs are in the private sector, but the private sector sometimes needs incentives to sustain and develop otherwise unprofitable jobs, and that is part of what alleviating poverty constitutes. You don't seem to know at all what a government is.
Perhaps you should stop and ask yourself if the current problems in India are indicative of a private sector which is capable of managing the labour shortages and general poverty on its own. The answer is right in front of you.
The root cause of poverty in India is a lack of capital for industry as for 300 years all excess capital was sucked out of the country and stored in London. That London is the financial capital of the world has a lot to do with the wealth sucked out of India. Before the arrival of the British India had the highest per capita income in the world and it will have the same status again one day but 60 years of independence are not enough to catchup on the capital deficit of 300 years of colonialism. Nor is India an undeveloped area like the America or Oceania where there are excess resources for the taking (the easily available resources were all extracted in the last 4000 years of civilization and the resultant wealth was looted in 300 years of colonialism) India needs to catchup and doing basic science and technology is what we need to do as we are not sitting on a shitload of oil (the root cause of American prosperity) nor did we have colonies(the root cause of European prosperity). Wasting time on stupid European concepts like socialism and welfare is the last thing we need to do. Thankfully Nehru and his generation of Anglophile Brown sahibs are dead and gone and we can get on with the task of building real wealth through hard work rather than expecting handouts. And if lack of capital is the problem the governemnt can hardly solve the problem of job generation as the government itself has no capital other than what it raises through taxes and pump priming through government bailouts of a particular sector generates fewer jobs than the jobs lost in other sectors of the economy due to the higher taxes which are made necessary to pay for bailouts. In short governments cant do anything about alleviating poverty other than provide a level playing field- anything else is just playing with lies, damn lies and statistics.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Now you're saying that it's impossible to gather the necessary capital for the government to do something about alleviating poverty, unlike your previous posts where all you said was that it wasn't their job. Now that we're talking about the issue of the government gathering the necessary resources to alleviate poverty, I think we can both agree that allocating resources in other areas leaves fewer resources to be allocated to alleviating poverty, meaning that we came full circle, and that I've seen no reason why my views should be wrong.
Well having cool things to do for brilliant scientists makes sure the brilliant scientists stay in the country instead of leaving and contributing to the success of NASA and hence opening up the tech gap even more. And if brilliant people stay in the country the second string of people also stay back thinking they might have a shot at doing the cool things and while they wait for their shot they do other things which helps the countries tech base and economy. Just to say if Europe hadnt funded CERN saying basic physics is not worth doing Tim Berners Lee wouldnt have been at the right place and time to invent the WEB. Who knows 5 years from now a brilliant young Indian scientist who stayed back in India inspired by Chandrayaan could invent something equally world changing. For the small amount of money spent on ISRO ( its not even the amount collected as parking tickets in any big Indian city) the potential paybacks are huge. Its like being allowed to play the lottery but with tickets cost .001 cents and jackpots in the billions and with only 5 countries playing the game giving you a 20% chance of hitting the jackpot- you would be a fool to not play and instead donate the .001 cent to charity.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Its not really that hard - it's pronounced
Tee-Ru-Va-Nun-Ta-Poo-Rum (the T's are soft, just like the Spanish T)
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
I guess you couldnt understand my language. I do have a tendency to use long complicated sentences. What I said was govt should not use capital to generate jobs as any way govt gathers capital has a cost in jobs. This does not mean govt should not gather capital to use for basic science as the advancement of the tech base has a much larger multiplier effect than welfare (which has a zero multipler effect) and any jobs lost is worth the cost to advance the tech base. Of course if the USA would sell this tech and train our scientists in these technology it would cost even less but nationalist and chauvenestic lobbies like the guys who made their careers on non proliferation will not let basic science to be shared.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Oh, I understood you perfectly well. You went in a circle.
I don't think you understand market dynamics, because you seem to be stuck in a frame of mind in which you think that "advancing the tech base" can somehow make the country economically sound with the more than 75% living in poverty hanging ball and chain from its ankles. It is not possible. It will not ever be possible. The only way out of the current situation for India is to engage as many people as possible, and generate as many jobs as possible, because the rewards of Indian technical innovation cannot feed 800 million impoverished people. You talk of encouraging the generation of jobs as "having a zero multiplier effect", which tells me that you have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about. You're saying that the unemployed are just as productive for society as the employed.
It's amusing how you're advocating the concept of a select few being responsible for the economic fate of the vast majority after deriding the former oppressive forces in earlier posts. You're advocating the repetition of the failures of history depsite obviously knowing about them.
... someone in Michigan ...
Why bring the Canadians into this? They are a harmless enough people. GO BUCKS!
Given the population density issues facing India, It looks like they are probably moving forward with plans to colonize the moon first. From that point forward all of your Support Center calls will be answered by moon people.