Slashdot Mirror
India Plans Mars Mission in 2013
New submitter susmit writes with news of India's new goal for launching a satellite to Mars in 2013. From the article: "India plans to launch a mission to Mars next year, putting an orbital probe around the red planet to study its climate and geology, top space department officials said on Thursday. ... A 320-tonne Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket will be used to carry the orbiter spaceship, blasting off from the ISRO launch site at Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Another senior official at ISRO, requesting anonymity, estimated the cost of the mission at 4.0-5.0 billion rupees ($70-90 million dollars)."
Sending a probe to Mars without any electricity, damn..... We're really lagging behind in terms of innovation :)
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Cheap $70-80 million if they stick to the budget. Now I want to know why it costs 20-50 times more in our developed western nations.
Better that than a Wal-Mart.
An extra 80 million dollars?
Not after the pork gets handed out.
I refuse to believe they can deliver a mars orbiter for 80 million USD.
I'm skeptical as well. I'd love to see them succeed, but I think it's more likely this will turn out like the $45 Aakash tablet computer did. Often when the price tag on something seems to good to be true, it is.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
India had the world's largest economy before the white racist bastards from the so-called-civilized world plundered and looted India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India
*achievement unlocked: the first to say curry in a thread about india*
other targets include saying
-rootkit in a sony thread
-you're holding it wrong in an apple thread
-flying chairs in a microsoft thread
And in the meantime, they can't keep the electricity flowing across their country, and have no decent sewage system for 80% of their citizens.
Something makes me think they should be paying a bit more attention to these issues....
Cheap $70-80 million if they stick to the budget. Now I want to know why it costs 20-50 times more in our developed western nations.
Ah, because ours tend to actually make it to Mars. I can launch a Mars mission for a $1.98 it doesn't mean it'll actually reach Mars. The US spend billions reaching the Moon but other than one accident on the launch pad and one time we failed to land we made it there. It's one thing to say you are going to Mars but failing to achieve a lesser goal I have my doubts.
Because it's probably gonna be more than that and then I'm quite sure something is gonna fail somwhere along the way. Just a few days ago one third of the population of India has been without electricty for a few hours. How about the government invest their money into a stable power grid first.
So am I.
A large part of the cost may be due to accounting.
They use an existing rocket; zero development cost there. While Nasa would probably either develop a new rocket just for that mission, and put all the cost of development on the Mars mission, so they could re-use the rocket later at much lower cost for projects they don't have budget for.
And there are probably many more places were just accounting cost to one project or the other (little is developed exclusively for one project) can make or break a budget.
I wonder how much the salaries are for highly trained scientists in India is compared to the US? I assume relatively a lot for India, but I also suspect they have a lot of highly trained people that work for peanuts compared to USD (a la outsourcing). How much does the actual hardware really cost?
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
but I think it's more likely this will turn out like the $45 Aakash tablet computer did. Often when the price tag on something seems to good to be true, it is.
I've been watching India closely for the past 2 decades and the one conclusion that I got is that India likes to talk big, and after that, nothing
Of the numerous projects that they've announced, India achieved only one - the Chandrayaan moon satellite project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1
As for the others, I'm not that confident that they can deliver, on time, and/or on budget
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Just making it there is not necessarily useful though: http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric_1_mars-orbiter-climate-orbiter-spacecraft-team?_s=PM:TECH
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Maybe they've budgeted all the savings into tech support.
"I am very sorry sir, but I cannot continue helping you until you have first rebooted your orbiter."
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Unlike some other counties, they know how to use the metric system. ;)
(j/k)
Because we keep using our legacy contractors. You'll note that after Lockheed Martin's failed (miserably failed, I might add) x33, they weren't included, or even considered, for a Human rated space capsule this time around. While Boeing got a significant amount of funding for their CST-100 capsule, SpaceX got nearly the same funding as Boeing ($400+ million), which is a step in the right direction. The fact that SpaceX already has an unmanned rated capsule flying in space goes a long ways towards seeing their (much cheaper) hardware flying humans through the atmosphere and in to space... and back).
moox. for a new generation.
can they get a meaningful amount of weight out of orbit and en route to mars for that money even?
Not right now, but it is not completely impossible. Right now raw material and fuel cost is below 1% of mission cost (often much much less), so we are nowhere near the physical limits on launch costs.
In fact, fuel is so cheap that if all a space elevator saves is fuel, it isn't worth building.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Sour grapes?
Yeah it's just another butt-hurt American who can't believe that some country he always thought of as technologically backward, because Hollywood always portrays the third world as dirt roads full of chickens, is actually capable of pulling something like this off. Space used to be the exclusive doman of America (fuck yeah!) since they "won" the space race. The only problem is they declared themselves the victors before the race had really even begun. Now as the tortoise overtakes the sleeping hare, he just tells himself that it doesn't matter, he reached that milepost 40 years ago, there's still plenty of time to sleep...
Your time is over you bloody idiot
This is where you are wrong. Because some societies are resilient. Yeah there are crises, but we keep bouncing back. It's a question of character. Mind-set. Getting shit done, instead of wasting time blaming someone else.
You bastands have killed and destroyed locals culture in the name of fucking enlightenment. But ...your time is up.
It sounds like you would be more than happy to do exactly the same thing. So er, are we both evil then? Or is it just bad when "I" do it? This is called a double standard and it demonstrates that all your rage and hate is actually founded on pure bullshit. So whatever, dude. Drugs are bad, mm'kay?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I was wondering where the concern trolls were today...
80 mil won't make a difference to either, to begin with.
Besides, drought is a climatic condition. I don't think it makes much difference how much money you throw at it; it's not going to suddenly start raining.
The power blackouts - why exactly do you think that money is not being spent on the power infrastructure right now?
It always rubs me the wrong way when government spending gets systematically and broadly dissed as inefficient.
I've lived in a number of countries and, frankly, public entities seldom stroke me as materially more inefficient than large corporations. The difference is meaningful, inasfar as I've been experiencing it anyway, in only a few cases:
The first and most important is when corruption is rampant. Eg. good luck finding a lost luggage in a sub-Sahara airport if you don't tip the employee; or spending less than a whole afternoon paying for a parking ticket in Mexico if you didn't get the memo that you should tip the cop who hands you the ticket in the first place. This is virtually non-existent in western countries.
The second most important is the heightened awareness of and concern for the welfare of local communities and the environment, either because they like to get the job well done, as opposed to well enough, or due to public opposition. Eg. noone in his right mind would argue that bullet proof vests are wasteful spending for soldiers, irrespective of the subsequent PST costs; and a public entity would need to surmount a mountain of opposition before building a highway or setting train tracks in a wild life reserve. This is virtually non-existent outside of western countries.
Another is silly procedures, but it's arguably not the public servants' fault, and large corporations are notoriously full of them too.
Staff that doesn't give a shit about anything is yet another, but I found this to be mostly cultural: when mostly true, it also holds mostly true at the population level. This is particularly pronounced in developing countries.
The next, last and arguably least important is when powerful public unions successfully bargained for lavish benefits. Eg. a public servant cannot get sacked in France even if he spends most of his day pretending to work. Frankly though, most public servants I've met or interacted with over the years were just as professional as the next guy working for a large corporation -- which is to say, not very, but being a public servant has little to do with it. The real difference is that you're forced to interact with public servants, and you typically do so in times of hardship. (If you ever had to deal with an unscrupulous insurance company, you probably know what I mean.)
Your mileage varies per country, obviously. French public servants, for instance, are very self-entitled and often mocked by the French as the epitome of inefficiency; a quick tour in a Mexican administration, however, will make any French person (correctly) praise his home country's adminstration as one of the most efficient in the world. Much the same could be said of the UK and German ones, minus the public servants' attitude. The US one is competent by my standards, as is the Canadian one. Neither are very friendly nor helpful, but they get things done efficiently. The Mexican one, an absolute mess by any standard, actually shines when compared to the (understaffed) Indian one. And don't even get me started on African countries.
Anyway, my point is this: mock your administration all you want; complain about its costliness; pinpoint its uselesness; but keep in mind that people in most other countries would envy it as a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
There... I fed the troll.
Will all of you in this thread please go back to 4Chan?
Some of us are trying to relax.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Why does every post about India's space program always have the usual idiot posts?
1. The unfunny posts about call centers / 7-11 / curries.
2. The indignant posts about how the money could be better spent Helping the Poor.
3. The armchair economist posts about the corruption/filthy roads/electricity shortages.
Ok, we get it already. Indians are poor, corrupt and overstate their ambitions. You are all butt-hurt about your lost jobs. And ho, ho, they eat curries, and say "do the needful" when they answer your tech calls.
Why can't everyone just appreciate another human endeavor into learning more about the universe we live in, instead of all this pettiness?
Do we not all benefit from Chandrayaan's imagery?
Didn't we detect the recent warming over Greenland using data from India's Oceansat?
Why can't it just be about the science for once?
I'd argue they aren't that bad in developed countries.
In other words, public entities usually aren't much more inefficient than the fattest, slowest, most entrenched corporations out there. That sets the bar pretty high.
Not saying that the bar is high. I find it awkwardly low too. Just saying that apples should be compared with apples -- or arguably with Apple, which reportedly managed to keep a start-up culture.
So we should be happy because it could be a lot worse? Again, you are setting very high expectations for government entities. I hope they can achieve them.
I suspect you don't even have the beginning of a clue of what interacting with a corrupt administration can be like. As a yard stick, consider that the UN and not-for-profits are happy when 25% of any foreign aid sent to some countries actually ends up where it should. You read that right: a 75% loss due to bribery and protection rackets is considered efficient use of funds.
Closer to you and your everyday life, imagine interacting with a rabid IRS inspector that will only stop harassing you if you accept to pay a small fine due to "misapproprietely" reported revenue -- for him to justify the time he spent on you -- and a yearly protection racket so he won't waste your time the follow-up years. Further, imagine complaining to his boss or the judge, getting dismissed, and finding out later on that both get their cut of the corrupt agent's protection racket, and that their own bosses are mafiosi. Far fetched? Nope: at your door step. Bars, restaurants and hotels in touristy areas of the Riviera Maya nearly all either belong to the mafia, or pay lavish protection rackets to one or more of criminals, health inspectors and tax inspectors; and the governor of Yucatan got arrested a few years back for being a mafioso himself.
I presume you don't have to endure this kind of crap. Consider it a huge achievement, because some do, and eventually consider it a cost of doing business.
Once you've seen it, you'll readily accommodate yourself with a good enough/not too corrupt administration on a "could be hellishly worse" basis.
This drivel is modded insightful? It's utter bullshit. For NASA, the money for developing a new booster and for running a planetary probe mission come out of two different pots of money managed by two different centers on opposite sides of the continent. NASA has only developed a new booster specifically for a single mission [NAICT] just once in it's history - the Saturn V. (Note to the pedants - the Juno I doesn't count, it was developed by ABMA and predates NASA.) Other than that, it has either adapted/modified existing boosters (and counted that cost within the cost of the program) or used stock boosters.
No, the Indian probe is most likely cheap because it's low capability and low chance of success. (q.v. Beagle 2.)