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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.
Its the last few feet that count
or is that meters
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.
uh huh, with a third of their population living in poverty, on $1.25 USD purchasing parity a day, they're going to be world beaters?
If you combine the populations of India and China, isn't it something like seven times the population of the United States? Yet, we're having more of an effect on their culture than they are having on us. What does that tell you, friend?
I'm no astrophysicist or aeronautical engineer, but it seems to me that at least 99.9% of any space vehicle's journey to any other planet in our star system is going to be uneventful and easy to manage; it's the end of the journey that's going to pose possible difficulties. The paper ball you toss at the trash can flies through the air uneventfully -- but whether or not you get it in the can, have it bounce off the rim, or miss the can entirely at the end of it's flight is something else entirely.
Not that I'm trash-talking Indian engineering or scientific ability. I work with enough Indian engineers to know better than that. Now if they could just learn to solder worth a damn. XD
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Just saying... ;)
"What do I think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a very good idea."
Remember that conversation?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
We'd have a lunar fighter program that cost a trillion dollars, couldn't fly to the moon, and would never be expected to fight another lunar fighter since the lunar cruise missiles would have already wiped out the enemy moon bases before the fighters were deployed, if there were any such thing as enemy moon bases. It wouldn't matterâ"the damned useless lunar fighters would be built anyway because the contractor wisely promised jobs located in each of the fifty states, ensuring that Congress would never question the program.
Oh, were you hoping that science would be done or something?
Polo free - that sucks.
Fuckers
Just curios on how many other mars missions have even made this 95% in their first attempt?
Do Indian businessmen wear clothes of European origin in design, or do American and European businessmen wear clothes of Indian origin in design? That's piece of superstrate culture right there.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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.
That's because in the 1940s everyone else had basically blown each others countries to smithereens. India is competing in a stable non-war torn world. In the 1940s the US was one of the few countries whose homeland was largely unscathed by the war.
It's easy to do well when you're the least badly crippled country going than it is to when you're one of the most crippled on the world stage.
Dude, you are totally out of line with this non-racist post. Please read what everyone before you has written before you open your big yap and show respect to someone else.
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).