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Indian Mars Mission Has Completed 95% of Its Journey Without a Hitch
First time accepted submitter rinka writes India's Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan, has made some progress since we last discussed it. The mission is on target and has completed 95% of its journey. It will reach its destination before the end of the month. Scientists will undertake a "challenging task" on September 24 when they will restart the onboard liquid engine, which has been in sleep mode for nearly ten months, for a critical maneuver of the spacecraft.
Beware of the Indians. The Indians will overtake the world just as the Chinese did. Just as the Persians did. Just as the Europeans did. And just as the Americans did.
Its the last few feet that count
or is that meters
Learn some grammar, rinka.
Do they mean hitch as in hitchhiking? No surprise!
I've driven to LA and now I will undertake a "challenging task" of finding her and getting past the bodyguards.
I wish them the best of luck, but the headline reminds me of the joke about the optimist falling from a building...
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
You know, just to be sure. Dear Friend, Please do the needful and report back, we'll close this ticket for now.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
As opposed to what? Pictures of red rocks that are still alive?
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Usually is the bitch. Good luck!!!
Indians have a great standard of living... if you belong to the right caste. The problem with India's poverty is not wealth or politics, it's religious. Regardless, India has a better health care system than the US and better Internet connections.
Going to space brings about jobs and wealth. Going to war costs jobs and wealth. At least they've got their priorities straight.
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This is like saying that an airplane has flown 95% of its journey without a hitch when it is takeoffs and landings that get most airplanes. Only a small percentage have issues while trucking along.
This is the same with interplanetary missions. They rarely go wrong as they drift along in them middle of nowhere.
But the coolest fact so far with this mission is that it apparently cost less than the making of the movie Gravity. That really makes you think that if the defence budget was cut in two and the cuts transferred to NASA then where would the space program be?
Generally speaking, the hitches happen most commonly during landing, takeoff, and then trajectory-establishing burns. The in-between parts that make up the bulk of the time spent aren't all that risky.
Clearly a scam. Just like the moon landings and Father Christmas.
Just saying... ;)
Nonsense. The life expectancy in India is 10 years shorter than the US. It wasn't until just this year it was considered to be polio free.
The mule wandered away.
If they used a standard design that NASA uses that as soon as the two chemicals touch they go BOOM! the only issue is if the valves open or if there has been any leaks.
Honestly this stuff isn't rocket scie..... oh wait.....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The whole point is the first 1% and the last 1%, otherwise, the Mars Observer is probably still going strong having completed several thousand % of its original trip to Mars...
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Now they will discover that Mars is actually made of delicious channa masala!
Polo free - that sucks.
Fuckers
Just curios on how many other mars missions have even made this 95% in their first attempt?
95% is not a milestone. There's nothing significant about it. They're just sending out press releases at random moments in the trajectory because they want to get publicity additional times without actually doing additional things that deserve publicity.
Lots of flights, no matter which type, do 95% OK, it's the last bit that's critical.
"Going to space brings about jobs and wealth."
Please provide evidence for this. See , Russia beat you in almost all the space firsts. So move to Russia if you believe your own nonsense.
... And do the needful.
It's == it is
This is not difficult.
I don't understand why most Americans on this site have such an inferiority complex. For the fuck's sake, USA is the front-runner in the space technology. If India tries to achieve a small feet in space tech, why does it bother these people so much? Scientists at NASA would be excited seeing some other agency achieve any such feet using a different method. What I am seeing is that, the people who actually contribute nothing in the field but brag around saying 'my country' did this only have this kind of opinion.
If you are seeing excited Indians, no need to feel jealous, let them be, you don't need to come and bash India. Indians are not bashing US when NASA achieves it's milestones.
Had it needed toilets it would still be grounded.
If the question says, how many seconds or how many kilos, then its obvious what the units are , even tho they are missing.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Way to go, India! I knew you had a space program, but I had no idea you were sending an orbiter to Mars. You make us all proud!
Thanks for that interesting info !
Why not? The USA did pretty well in the 1940s despite a similar situation.
On a similar note: do we use an Arabic number system or do they use a European one?
It's a bit of a trick question since it looks like it came from India.
History is not clear cut. Just because we eat fried potatoes does not mean we have a civilisation based on the Incas.
while 95% of the population still live in extreme poverty and could make more use of the billions wasted on this project
Nah, sorry, this argument doesn't work. Far more billions are wasted on completely useless military activity than the relatively miniscule space program of all nations put together - and the space programme at least has a use ...
As 'The Hawk' says, we urgently need to set up an off-world colony before the next asteroid strike wipes our species out. We had an unexpected visit from such an asteroid whizzing past inside the orbit of our geostationary satellites just a couple of days ago - this house-sized lump of rock was only detected for the first time about a week before it arrived. Who knows how long we've got before one of these things actually collides with us. Apparently such an event is now overdue in geological timescale terms.
More space programme please.
If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church.
Medicine is cheap. Was there last week. Bought three items for a total of about 3 dollars that would be ten times that in Australia.
cant wait
Egyptian stuff was all the rage in Victorian England. Influence depends on more than some idea of superiority. Does the massive cultural influence of Hollywood make New York inferior? OK - stupid question, but it's in the same set as what you appear to be suggesting.
I suppose it depends what your goal is, that might be great in a country like the US where most people are living relatively comfortably (even the poorest in society aren't really suffering outright starvation and disease) but where military expenditure is high that you have a point.
But in India you have hundreds of millions living in abject poverty where starvation, lack of shelter, lack of availability of education, and widespread lack of treatment for disease are real issues.
Thus, it seems odd to suggest we should blow money to try and save some people in the future from a theoretical eventuality that may or may not happen in the next hundred, thousand, tens of thousands maybe even hundred thousand years when there are people we can spend that money on helping survive in the hear and now. Just because a statistically likely event that works on astronomic timescales is overdue doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow, the nature of such timescales is that it may not happen for enough generations that we can solve poverty now and still have time to head to the stars too.
Let those nations that can afford more space investment do so, whilst those that can't actually make an effort to stop suffering on their home soil before they start getting ideas about reaching for the stars.
What in the world is a liquid engine?
Thought you all would find this link interesting: http://www.hindustantimes.com/specials/coverage/marsorbitermission/marsorbitermission/mangalyaan-on-track-5-things-to-know-about-india-s-mars-orbiter-mission/sp-article10-1263914.aspx
The mission was designed to map methane on Mars, but MSL has found none so the results could be disappointing, but just getting to Mars orbit will be a big achievement. There are no sacred cows on Mars and no methane, alas.
Back in the 1970s Indira Gandhi unveiled a program to update the Indian educational system, especially the higher education, with an emphasis on computing. The portion of the world that was not laughing at the idea of Indian computer programmers and technicians was berating the Indian government for wasting money that could have been spent feeding the poor. Today that expenditure of several billion rupees over the last few decades brings in many tens of billions of dollars in investment and revenue to India every year.
Americans now have such a short attention span that any investment that requires more than a couple of years for payback is unthinkable any longer. This is the real reason why Asia is today's industrial powerhouse, they don't hesitate to build a factory or power station that will take ten or twenty years to be paid off. American executives won't spend a penny on something that doesn't improve the stock price before they move to their next post in the game of 'executive musical chairs'.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The problem is you're taking that evidence and extrapolating it to "Asia" is a powerhouse. In doing so you're effectively feeding off the success of countries that have done exceptionally well like China when the reality is that different countries in Asia have had very different experiences. China has grown rapidly but Japan has stagnated, India has disappointed whilst in South America, Brasil has completely outflanked it.
Whatever India's policies, one thing is clear - it's not done very well compared to China and Brasil so those policies most definitely have not paid off. Starting from a low point with over a billion people India should've done much better than it has- it's policies have been largely a failure- not as big a failure as they could be sure, India is still growing well, but it's nowhere near it's potential, not even close, and it still has massive problems where little progress has been made despite neighbours like China making far greater progress on those issues (access to education, poverty).
Japan has stagnated,
Today. Apparently you've forgotten the entire period from 1946 to 1999. Like I said, short attention span.
China's overwhelming advantage over India and much of the rest of the world is its 5000 years of centralization, plans that would have been non-starters in a decentralized government and economy, like One Child and the open development of the Great Firewall, are acceptable there. Brasil is a special case, drastically underpopulated and resource-rich, while India is the exact opposite. You're not even comparing apples and oranges, more like apples and Barkaloungers.
Where would India be today without Indira Gandhi's education program? One only needs to look at its neighbors Pakistan and Bangladesh to see, and that was the intent of the British when they left behind a deliberately non-functional government. Where will India be in half a century if it continues to slowly and thoughtfully expand its space program? Neither you nor I can even guess, except to say far ahead of where it would be without that completely home-grown, internally-sourced, high technology industry.
Stand back and take the long view, look forward a generation or two. Other cultures do it, which is why Japan, China and India have repeatedly risen from the ashes like the phoenix.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
But we're not talking about 1946 - 1999, that's irrelevant to what's happening now. It's like going back 300 years and saying, well, look at the growth of the UK with it's empire, obviously that means it's kicking ass in the world! It's meaningless.
"China's overwhelming advantage over India and much of the rest of the world is its 5000 years of centralization, plans that would have been non-starters in a decentralized government and economy, like One Child and the open development of the Great Firewall, are acceptable there. Brasil is a special case, drastically underpopulated and resource-rich, while India is the exact opposite. You're not even comparing apples and oranges, more like apples and Barkaloungers."
If you think you can make India a special case by arguing that there is something different about the country then you're severely misguided. We all operate in the same world economy and all countries have their differences. Whatever differences you want to argue for India you can't hide from the fact that it has failed to take advantage of the same growth in largely ex-3rd world nations that China and Brazil have seen. We have evidence of why it's failed too - India's great outsourcing of services plan was too much of a leap and it failed because it didn't have the talent required to support those sorts of high
"Stand back and take the long view, look forward a generation or two. Other cultures do it, which is why Japan, China and India have repeatedly risen from the ashes like the phoenix."
What you're effectively saying is "Yes, we've fucked up in the short term but maybe it'll all be okay in the end!" that's nonsense, it's pointless speculation. Maybe India will also collapse and split into 20 different nations, predicting the future is a mugs game. What matters is the heard and now and the much more predictable near future - it's still clear that whilst India's neighbours like China have massively prospered, India has failed.
Your whole argument is based around "but the past!" and "but the future!", it's a pathetic attempt to hide from the reality of the recent past, the current, and the near future and it shows a profound lack of will to accept reality and instead make up a pretend future in the hope it'll come true and somehow absolve your nonsense arguments about why it doesn't matter that it's failed in the present.
Any space program has its spinoff technologies which lead to industries which leads to jobs which leads to people coming out of poverty. Its the difference between opening a factory in a town and a soup kitchen. The money is much better spent on the factory than the soup kitchen.