Slashdot Mirror
Indian Prime Minister Formally Announces Mars Mission
neo12 writes in with the news that India plans on being the 6th country to launch a mission to mars. "Making the first formal announcement on the country's Mars mission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said India will send a mission to the Red Planet that will mark a huge step in the area of science and technology. 'Recently, the Cabinet has approved the Mars Orbiter Mission. Under this Mission, our spaceship will go near Mars and collect important scientific information,' he said addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of the 66th Independence Day."
I am always surprised to see so many countries going at it by themselves, if we pooled resources, we would be maybe a couple of steps forward, instead of sending orbiters and robots.
India claims it can send something to orbit the Mars for $100 millions.
Can anyone believe that?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Romney announces he will outsource NASA to india.
Supposedly 30% of their households don't have electricity and the remainder suffer from regular blackouts, and they want to go to Mars?
How about a simpler mission first: get from one side of Delhi to the other without hours in traffic.
LOL!
They could pay for the entire mission by broadcasting on pay-per-view TV a live (well 8 minute delay lol) robot fight on Mars! Battlebots was the shit back in the day. Naturally, they could take it to Mars and make a fortune!
I thought Zambia never made it after this 1964 attempt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL5gEpkATTA
They were regarded as crackpots back then and still are, I guess.
Later, this failed attempt from Congo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR97o_FuX-c
Rats. Bad luck.
So, who is the sixth country?
1st world - US allied
2nd world - Soviet Union and China allied
3rd world - Non-allied
This is a Cold War term. The Cold War is over, so stop using it. Saying that the US is becoming a 2nd world country sounds ridiculously stupid to someone who understands what these terms actually mean (meaning that the US is becoming an ally with the Soviet Union and rejecting its alliances with NATO).
They don't appear to be able to keep the power on long enough for anyone to see it broadcast...
Now that America is becoming a 2nd world country
About time this damn Cold War ended. I thought I'd never be able to leave my bunker.
And there are only two countries that have successfully landed on Mars (by landing year):
Japan launched a probe, but it failed to achieve orbit (it "missed the planet") and China had a joint venture with Russia that never left Earth's orbit. Wikipedia has a nice graphic illustrating the history of Mars exploration.
Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh comrades?
...North Korea to announce a Mars mission. They have a good track record for space stuff so far. :raises eyebrows and nods head:
Corruption in India is unlike corruption in other places on earth, for in India, corruption is the norm, not the exception
Funds spent on anything - including education - would be reduced 80% to 90% by the time the money reaches the intended target(s)
And the Indian government's announcement that they will spend $100 million dollars on the Mars exploration project (BBC is reporting it as I type) means the project actually cost in between $10 million to $20 million dollars
Incredible, simply incredible !
If the Japan announces that they are going to explore Mars, I would have put more credence on it than this announcement from India
I'm sorry, it's not that I'm anti-India or something - but things that sound too good to be true, may be just that, too-good-to-be-true
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This is excellent news. At last we can stop sending them billions in aid every year. Seems like they have plenty of cash.
If America was heading toward Communism, I would certainly notice.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, it heads back to the same feudalism that it tried to skip, not unlike Russia that was thrown into development of modern Capitalism that it also tried to skip.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
How about India putting a person into Earth orbit first. It's not so easy.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
I don't know why it would be so difficult to put a spacecraft in orbit around Mars, or land on the place. I mean, it's not rocket science... hey, wait a minute...
Well, the Indian economy has slowed down considerably, investor confidence is down, and years later, many of the problems noted in the posts above still remain to be solved. While this mission had been previously reported in other sources, the linked article was published on August 15--Indian Independence day--so the official announcement by the PM sounds more like the kind of feel-good pitch that one can expect in any 'address to the nation,' in most places in the world. The Chandrayaan mission was similarly announced 9 years ago during an independence day speech by a former PM, and completed 5 years later, although the costs ($90 million) were substantially higher than initially announced. Given that track record, it seems highly unlikely that this project can be pulled off in $100 million, although I suppose like any government initiative, the project probably has a better chance of getting funded if the scientists asked for that amount than what it might actually take (say, 10 times as much?), and then ask for more later! :-) At the end of the day, any kind of government investing in science is a good thing, and the recent Mars Curiosity landing is more evidence that a space mission captures people's imaginations like nothing else. Hopefully, this mission will have that kind of effect on the next generation of students in India.
They have enough money to build nukes and stuff. Why are we donating billions in financial and military aid every year?
First world, second world had nothing to do w/ the Cold War. First world meant the first known world to Europeans at the time, which was Europe, the Middle East and the Mediterranean coasts of Africa (think the kingdoms of ancient Egypt, Carthage). The second world was what Columbus discovered - the Americas. The third world was the rest of the world that went on to be colonized by European powers - most of Africa, India, South East Asia and so on.
No call center jokes yet? I'm disappointed.
I believe India is spending too much money. For the paltry sum of $50 million, I'll launch an unmanned probe in the general direction of Mars. That's half price!
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Serious question, why does it seem that Mars is the only planet we're interested in? According to this wiki page, there have been numerous flybys, probes, and landings on mars, as well as two rovers. There have also been explorations of venus, though no rovers due to the heat, just two soviet landers. There have been flybys of Jupiter and explorations of jovian moons.
Saturn though, there have only been four flybys. Neptune and Uranus were only observed up close by Voyager 2. And there is a flyby planned for Pluto.
Why isn't there more interest in the further planets? Is it simply that it will take longer? Seems like the sheer number of explorations of Mars would make some of the further targets more interesting.
Steal the NASA one
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Slashdot has interesting and informative posts on many topics, but I don't know why everything goes to hell the moment India is mentioned..
1) It doesn't take a hugeass rocket to send an unmanned probe to Mars. The amount of energy needed once you're in the right orbit to escape earth's gravity is minimal. So it's not that crazy to imagine India doing it given that they already got a probe to reach the moon. It's the next step, not a massive leap. Putting a lander on the moon or Mars, or manned spaceflight would be a much bigger step. So the figure of 100 million is not outlandish and it's very possible and a logical progression given the current technical capabilities of the Indian space program. In fact, India may well be able to use one of their existing rockets for this, the hard part is making sure interplanetary probes get captured into the orbit of the target planet, instead of missing it completely (something that's not that hard to do and multiple countries have aimed and missed in the past, I remember a Mercury probe that ended up orbiting the sun).
2) Yes, India has overwhelming amounts of corruption. The space program is one of the better run organizations though.
3) Even though India is a poor country, due to the sheer size of the population the amount of money the government controls is huge. Not USA/China huge but at least the size of large European economies. 100 million is pocket change. And not spending it on a research mission to Mars that can help advance technology in the country doesn't mean it would go towards feeding hungry people. Just like reducing 100 million of the defence budget in the US won't put that money into schools or universities or healthcare or whatever.
4) It has little to do with the slowing Indian economy (even if it grows at 5% that's far more than most other countries in the world right now).
5) Talk of burning cars or powerless villages is just bigoted racist arrogant illogical bullshit.
It all depends what the hourly salary is of the people working on it. Maybe the Indians aren't counting the cost of pork projects to have this bill pass?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Didn't America have a massive blackout in the North East a while back? And have rolling blackouts for years in California? And have massive flooding because of poor water works?
Which one is the third world nation again?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So I can rephrase that one for you:
2. America heading towards a centrally-planned economy? Check.
No. Centrally planned economy (as implemented within each and every large company) works just fine. The problem is, their strategy is based on destruction of the rest of society, and that works as intended, too.
--
Contrary to popular belief, the secular god leftism does indeed lead to disaster.
lol wut
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
There is the Old World which is Europe and Asia and there is the New World which is the Americas. The Third World is that which is neither the new world nor the old world. Nowadays Third World just means poor countries and it has meant non-alighned countries in the past but there never has been a First World nor a Second World, there has only been the New World and the Old World.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Before an Indian rocket goes to Mars it might be helpful if they, you know, built one? Last I heard, and a brief Google search doesn't seem to show any new progress, they were still using Russian engines on their cryogenic upper state. This was because they've been trying for 20 years to build a working engine, apparently without any measurable success at all. Somehow buying a Proton and trucking it to an Indian launch pad isn't quite the same as "an Indian rocket". Here is the link to last time I heard of actual hardware leaving the ground.
You are getting "first world, second world" confused with "new world, old world".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_world
You're conflating "second world" with "not a superpower". Which is stupid, because the USSR was considered a "second world" country and a superpower, while most of the European countries would be considered firmly "first world" while not being anything like superpowers.
Not that the Cold War lingo really means much these days however you spin it.
We're sending them a holy fuckload of money...
Couple of billions (if at all) for a country with 1.3 billion people... is not a fuckload of money, sorry.
The stated end goal of Communism is a complete abolition of all government control and the abandonment of a monetary system...
I was bourn in USSR. I'm not sure where your idea about abolition of government control comes from (well, ok, it assumed people would be good enough to require no police etc, but you still need someone to coordinate buildling infrastructure etc). Main point of communism that was advertised was abolition of a monetary system. And they honestly tried to stimulate people work harder for fame, not money. It had its downsides, but if you ask people who lived there and have "democracy" now, I don't think most would give a flying fuck about political system.
Austin, we won.
I am officially gone from
$126 M in 2011.
Billions?
NASA is probably going to use Russian engines at some point as well, and the recent Air Force test is really an Australian scramjet with some minor tweaks apparently (the air force design is classified but they haven't been working on the design for very long so it must be very similar to what they were given).
Sometimes it's better to go with something that works instead of painting a flag on your penis and waving that around.
Same applies to the USA. You need to spread the wealth around...
Um, anyone here ever heard of "offshoring"? Know what they pay for engineers in India, as opposed to the US?
Then there was the news story I heard yesterday, questioning as to why India should spend the money to do that. The idea of having dreams, and goals that *aren't* soley monetary, seems to be not politically correct (at least according to the US right, apostles of St. Ayn Rand.
Let's see if the US can actually do something anymore.
mark
This is the thinking that, amongst others, lead to the destruction of the British motorbike and electronics industries. In the US you are going to lose your car industry in the same way if you are not careful. Watch as 60 years behind, becomes 6 years, then 6 months, then because they are at par and cheaper, your industries will crumble.
We in the US don't have to look at the Brits to see the consequences of such thinking. The US used to mock the Japanese as "cheap camera manufacturers" until they swiftly took the entire semi-conductor industry during the PC revolution. The US has never recovered from that (and the way it goes, never will.)
It is true that Indian (and Chinese) technology is shit compared to ours. How could it not be considering they only have a fraction of the experienced found in the US or in countries like Russia or Japan??? And yet, unlike us, India and China keep pushing forward while we kill our neurons watching the Kardashians or the latest antics of Ochocinco. And they will get better (just as the Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans have.)
We are having a whole bunch of fucking Sputnik moments, but we are too busy being arrogant assholes, smelling our own farts while ensuring ourselves that our competitors are troglodytes who make square tires out of shit. The whole fucking world is improving and catching up, and we do not pay notice, not doing anything at all to preserve our advantage. And that's how we will lose.
Yeah I too heard about it. The government is going to liberalise the policy on allowing multinational brands in retail and as a consequence mars bars are going to be easily available. So people can GO MARS. But seriously, its like the previous announcements of the government on world's cheapest laptop etc. A lot of hot air and cryogenic engines from the old sov states. OK
Indian regime is suffering from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger
Let them first fix racism.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Wrong-number-call-rings-social-boycott-of-50-dalit-families/articleshow/15552449.cms
Casteism