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Why India's Mars Probe Was So Cheap
schwit1 (797399) writes "Alan Boyle has some interesting thoughts on why it cost India so little, less than the budget of the movie Gravity, to build and send its probe Mangalyaan to Mars: 'The $74 million Mars Orbiter Mission, also known by the acronym MOM or the Hindi word Mangalyaan ("Mars-Craft"), didn't just cost less than the $100 million Hollywood blockbuster starring Sandra Bullock. The price tag is a mere one-ninth of the cost of NASA's $671 million Maven mission, which also put its spacecraft into Mars orbit this week. The differential definitely hints at a new paradigm for space exploration — one that's taking hold not only in Bangalore, but around the world. At the same time, it hints at the dramatically different objectives for MOM and Maven, and the dramatically different environments in which those missions took shape.' Read it all. It gives us a hint at the future of space exploration.
Honestly, is there no lever the Indian government won't sink to to save money?
Faster, Cheaper, Better.
Pick any two....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Its not easy to compare costs for projects done by different governments. There are different accounting standards for what is "in" and "out" of the project costs. I know nothing about the rules in India, but in Europe, scientific / engineering labor is not included in the "project". I expect the Indian probe was less expensive than a comparable NASA probe, but maybe not by nearly as large a margin as it seems.
This doesn't detract from the mission being a great success for India.
Faster, Cheaper, Better.
Pick any two....
You meant India started the Mars probe program all the way back when they just got independence from the UK?
The article spells out the differences - the India probe took longer, weighed less, has fewer experiments, and probably won't last long. Meanwhile the NASA probe got there quickly, weighs 4 times more, has twice the number of experiments, and can serve as a communication relay for probes on the ground.
I can drive across country in a $5000 car, a $50,000 car, or a $500,000 truck. Each of them have different purposes and will get you there in different ways. To say NASA needs to only use the $5000 car isn't in our long term interest.
It was so cheap because India relied on the R&D done by developed nations. And then it forgot to include the cost of its own R&D for the program. It just included the cost of the mission in an as is where is condition. Vallah!! we have a cheap Mars mission. How else can they score some brownie points? They are certainly not the first to go around Mars. But hey, if they say they are the first at being the cheapest to go to Mars, well that's a first in some way!! And they scored some brownie points.
If you just want to put something around another planet it doesn't cost that much. If you are designing and building equipment that has never flown in space before it costs quite a bit more. And the whole scientific reason for going in the first place is to collect data. And it's not just the number of instruments or what they are measuring but how good are they? Just like benchtop equipment as you want more precision in your equipment prices escalate rapidly.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
comparing interstellar research and exploration to consumer capitalism really is like comparing besan to jackfruit. The goals are entirely different, and the reward as well. Gravity, the film, may have cost more to produce than the Indian mars mission, but its jusified by a seven fold return of $716,392,705 dollars at the box office. wealth is its goal. After a month, the film will go on to blu-ray, netflix, and other less lucrative outlets. After a year it will be nearly forgotten. in 5 years Sandra Bullock will be getting AARP membership notices. in 10 years George Clooney will be well into the average age for a hip replacement surgery.
Mangalyaan's six month mission is about collecting data that will be studied, reviewed, and scrutinized for far longer than the age of a "Gravity" blu-ray. It will continue to pay dividends long after its orbit has decayed. its actions pave the way for discoveries into planetary physics and science, not coffee mugs and concession sales. Mangalyaan's science may one day help solve some of the most complex questions in astrophysics, or it may help start colonies on other planets. Mangalyaan's goal is science, knowledge, and progress toward a bright future.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Faster, Cheaper, Better, Contractors
Pick any two....
(Contractors count as 2)
I see this story as a symptom of a seemingly natural progression in scientific and technical endeavours. The cost of advanced technology in general is being driven down by market forces, so the barrier to entry is lower than it used to be even for space shots. And people are starting to sense economic opportunities in space. So the cost is coming down as the capabilities and sophistication are going up - that's the story of the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath.
It may not be long before there will be a viable business model based on salvaging space junk - especially if man-made objects orbiting Earth continue to proliferate.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Faster, Cheaper, Better.
Pick any two....
Cheaper, Better
And ultimately the cost of anything hinges largely on labor? Even capital equipment which is just built with labor again? Or fuel, extracted with labor? And R&D, labor, labor, labor.
From TFA:
Today, NASA reviews each step of mission development closely, almost "to a fault," Betts said. That kind of attention to detail doesn't come cheap. Nor do American engineers. According to PayScale.com's global survey, aerospace engineers are paid a median annual salary of $9,773 in India, and almost eight times more — $75,940 — in the United States.
How about comparing the CEO pay of the US aerospace companies vs. the Indian ones? Inflated CEO's salaries are parasitic on US company earnings.
hahahhahahaha.. Oh man. You are hilarious.
Anyone who thinks American bureaucracy is over bearing and paralyzing clearly hasn't dealt with other government.
My experience with the India's bureaucracy was that it is the worst. Sudden fees(Bribes*) , being shuffled to other family members fr more sudden fees*. It's realy bad.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
http://www.bbc.com/news/102276...
I have good news for you** the American Bureaucracy is pretty damn efficient and honest.
*really bribes as in, it's going into this guys pocket.
**sadly, like most Americans these, you won't like facts and just ignore this good news it it's counter to you belief.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Maybe it was so cheap because it doesn't seem to do much, and nothign that hasn't already been done, it is considered a "demo" and study in interplanetary missions.
As a bragging point it seems great for India, I'll try to remember that next time I stay at the Taj West in Bangalore, you know where I can walk a block and see the most crippling poverty that you can imagine.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
And I'm going to go with, it has a cripplingly corrupt bureaucracy covering up the overwhelming amount of actual research, development, labor, infrastructure and overhead costs.
TFA pointed out that India is a lot more forgiving of failure and fast iteration than the US is today. There's a lot of truth to that. Our soundbite culture has basically left us where politicians can screech at "that waste of money" like a scientific experiment of dubious value. Even as a staunch fiscal conservative, my response to that sort of thing is... so what? Are you really going to tell me that what's eating the federal budget alive is $2M to study the reproductive habits of spotted-ass field mice as opposed to, say, massive fraud in Social Security Disability, Medicare, government contracting and having a civil service that doubles as a jobs program to artificially inflate the middle class? More often than not, government failure on an engineering effort is the result of the government's byzantine procurement regulations crashing head-long into an unaccountable bureaucracy that doesn't stick to the plan. At least that's the IT side of it. I would imagine that even NASA has a share of that.
Oh, India's government totally has a large (and corrupt) bureaucracy: As usual, basic information courtesy of Wikipedia.
Say what you want about the US(and there's plenty to say), you won't be paying "facilitation fees" to report a crime in the US, and none of our national elected officials are currently under any serious suspicion of murder.
Now, I'm not sure what exactly this means about the interaction between space research and cost, but the "lack of bureaucracy" is a bit out of touch with the reality in India.
I'd lean towards:
A. Everything being more expensive in the US. That's the first world for you. Everyone involved here wants a decent standard of living.
B. We have a hugely entrenched corporate aerospace industry, that has their hooks in every space project.
Could be something else too, the world's complicated, but "bureaucracy" is a bumper-sticker explanation that doesn't accurately describe differences between the US and India.
Really, the US police only investigates crimes if reported by wealthy people!? I don't know what kind of parallel universe you live in.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"...aerospace engineers are paid a median annual salary of $9,773 in India, and almost eight times more — $75,940 — in the United States."
I would have guessed that $75K figure would be higher.
At many (not software or computer hardware) engineering discussion boards you'll see technical questions coming in that seem to have easy or obvious answers. They are often from overseas engineers or tech people who are unfamiliar with rules of thumb or common methods/processes or have trouble with terminology/English language. It's not because of a lack of competence.
I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that US police are far from perfect. They don't always do everything they need to, a small some are actively corrupt, and there's definitely bias in enforcement.
But at the same time, it's not nearly as bad here as it is in some other places.
you are ignorant, go read the list of capabilities of craft the US sent to Mars 40 years ago, let alone recent missions. The Indian's thing is a bowling ball by comparison
That is because in the US, it is the upper crust who are allowed to bribe. Regular everyday bureaucrats and gov. officials are fired/prosecuted for bribing. However once you climb above the bottom tier or two you find a good old boys network full of corporate campaign donations, lobbyist dinners, regulatory capture, backroom deals, etc. The corruption is there, but the public is blinded to it, because at least the police busted that person expediting taxi licenses for coke, and the clerk that was deleting parking tickets for half price. Oh and football!
Silence is a state of mime.
The very end of the article states that hopefully future missions will use solar sails for an even cheaper project price. One tiny, miniscule little rock and there goes the sail. It's like dropping a bowling ball on a parachute. I don't know why people think it's a good idea. It isn't!
It's easy to come in at a much smaller amount when you're not dealing with the rampant corruption in US government contracts. If the Indian government was willing to spend $900 on toilet seats and hammers then the Indian contractors would be screwing their government like our contractors screw us and our tax payers.
The difference between India and the USA is that in the USA you bribe an official to look the other way while in India you have to bribe an official just to get them to do the damn job you were already paying them to do in the first place.
Nope no graft in India no sir
Mars needs MOM's. OK, Disney, where's my kickback? :p
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
Sounds like the Indian government sat down with a Betamax of the old Andy Griffith show "Salvage 1" and a notepad.
Maybe this sort of thing varies by location. My wife and I lived in a fairly rural area two years ago and our house was robbed. Our local police showed up immediately and they were very thorough to the point that I thought it was comical. Nothing that was taken was that high dollar or important. Also, the detective in charge of our case came back to the house three times to personally give me an update on what they had found. I got the feeling that the local cops were bored. Anyway, I think location really makes a difference in how the police treat these sort of crimes.
Are you implying that the US Government overpays, spending money and managing projects in a wasteful or inefficient manner? I say good day to you sir!
Whatever the cost, it just got over a billion people excited about space again.
They outsourced it to Bangladesh ;-)
> Faster, Cheaper, Better.
> Pick any two....
F35.
Your argument is invalid.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
> Faster, Cheaper, Better.
> Pick any two....
F35.
Your argument is invalid.
Cheaper than an F22, faster than a Cessna.
You are right, and wrong. The US system does support corruption but it falls short of traditional bribes i.e. cash for performance. In the US cash rarely flows between two individuals directly and the cash is rarely used by those being "bribed" on their personal affects such as home, cars, etc. This sort of bribery gets caught.
The reason only the rich can participate is because "bribery" in the US doesn't provide cash to support ones life, it is more of a trading of power. I.e. you have this type of power and I have that type of power - lets combine our power to make money / stay in power "legitimately". Often these deals aren't as "cozy" as one might expect. In other words, these people will backstab and jockey for power and money and would do the same even if everything was public (it mostly is if you have time to look).
> Inflated CEO's salaries are parasitic on US company earnings.
Yeah, let's look at that! In just the last three months, Apple CEO Tim Cook was paid $10 million dollars. Over those three months, Apple customers bought just over $40 billion of Apple products. So one of every 4,000 dollars you spend on Apple products goes to the CEO. If the CEO wasn't paid at all, an iPad would be ten cents cheaper! Enslave CEOs, so we can save a dime!
Say what you want about the US(and there's plenty to say)
And you call this covering up US corruption? Look, bro, I know you need the US government to be evil and the worst thing ever, for whatever political beliefs you've got there, but frankly, most of the world is doing worse. We have a lot of really reliable and good institutions to help deal with corruption. We have plenty of problems too, but we're simply not under the evil tyranny your overextended teenage rebellion needs.
The fact that a lot of what you're saying here is also objectively wrong(Seriously Clinton "killing" stevens?) is kinda secondary to the fact that you're brewing up an image that's unhealthily paranoid in general.
I hate that you're a bit right. I love India so much. However if anyone wants to move there from abroad, there are actually people that you will need to hire, in order to be a middle-man for these bribes. They make sure that you bribe the right folks, at the right price. It's crazy, but honestly, that's how it is there.
However I think that when on the world-stage, they are able to work with each other in ways that seem to be impossible for Americans. In fact, if you are a American, and travel to India, try to just pay attention to how they get things done. It's fucking CRAZY! Just when you think you understand why they're doing what they're doing, they do something that blows your mind. I guess it's like (Americans) watching Cricket.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
More likely, your local police felt like your case was somehow tied into a potential revenue stream for the department.
My car was stolen a few years ago and I called in to report the crime. When I asked when they were going to stop by to investigate they responded with "why should we go there, your car isn't there anymore."
Uhh, if you've got money and the cops know it, then they'll treat you much better than they do poor folks. The police know that lawyers know the law much better than they do, and if they suspect that you have $10G to blow on a lawyer, they give you much much more space to be right than us commoners. And in that way, hell yes they will investigate shit to the Nth level, if you're wealthy.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Maybe "pick up to two" is more fitting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I see the petty bribery overseas and raise you a FEMA horse judge.
American Bureaucracy is a global laughing stock and a classic example of why nepotism produces failure. See also the NSA's sprawling outsourcing that had the world going "Booz what? They really outsourced military intelligence?" after Snowden. Of course there are many places far worse and of course it wasn't such a joke a few years ago, but pretending it's good now is not the way to recover from such a sad state of affairs where, much of the world, even India I'm sure, can be shocked at things like the blatant corruption with Rapiscan and the TSA. "Washington connections" are the secret of many things, like Enron lasting so long, Trump escaping serial bankruptcies and a pile of other things that make you wonder if the Mafia just put on suits and moved to a different city.
If the US spent six times as much in order to reduce the risk of failure, that would be STUPID.
It would make much more sense to send two cheap probes and have one fail. That would be one third the cost.
India? You kidding?
If you mean that their bureaucracy doesn't weigh them down with issues of equality (be it race, sex or any other bullshit) or environment, then I can see your point. But India not suffering from insufferable bureaucracy...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ever thought of asking the neighbors if they had information? How about asking the apartment management if they had any video?
You know, there are lots of other kinds of evidence other than DNA.
I'm not sure what connotation you are implying, but this is a good thing.
That the general public and general worker is not accustomed to bribery is a good thing.
Yes, it would be better if the upper crust didn't bribe as well. But understand that bribery for the average person is horrible.
Being pulled over by police looking for a bribe. ...
Getting your passport takes a bribe.
Teachers take bribes for grades.
Those are issues that would affect and ruin most interactions of most regular people. Thank god, us regular people are 'not allowed' to bribe. Most of us who grew up in countries like that know what kind of environment it is.
Let's face it if it is a choice between BIGCORPA and BIGCORPB getting a big government contract and there is bribery involved, it doesn't affect the average person on a day to day level. Yes, it is wrong. Yes, it should be fixed. But you cannot compare this high level corruption to the day to day corruption that infects your daily life.
(Seriously Clinton "killing" stevens?)
That's weird, it's the second time I've seen that referenced in the past month.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
NASA tried the "faster, better, cheaper" (FBC) approach in the 90's with roughly a 50% success rate. UK also tried a "cheap" Mars lander, the Beagle, that was a bust.
If India can demonstrate they can KEEP going cheap and be successful, then we can conclude they are on to something. NASA's FBC also looked good at the start.
It's too early to tell for India. And even if they could get up to a 70% success rate, the 30% failure rate could be seen as a national embarrassment by some standards. Although, maybe a 3rd-world country may be more tolerable of such, being seen as underdog newbies.
It's also hard to plan science and control staffing if 30% of your probes are duds; and by sheer probability, 2 or 3 could fail in a row even at a 70% average, leaving a decade of gaps.
Table-ized A.I.
Well, I'd imagine the cost difference is because we have engineers/developers/etc who make about 10-20 times the amount of their Indian counterparts. Yes, NASA pays exhorbinant costs (take a look at how much private companies are paying for their shuttles vs NASA) . You also have to compare American cost of labor/parts vs India. Now can someone run the metrics of cost of services/goods of India vs America? Take that factor into account and give us an adjusted price difference
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Check out the cheap ride in the "dog seat". Good spots reserved for family members.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
When big pharma patents a drug and makes it so expensive people die, or they push a drug that is useless and even dangerous.
When Monsanto controls a significant portion of how food is produced.
When you cannot look to a local provider for nearly anything (internet, clothes, etc), because either they cannot compete or their prices are too high for everyman.
When laws are passed that curtail your freedoms in exchange for better profits to the few.
It does infect your everyday life, and I would argue that your have even less power to confront it as you would a direct bribe.
Silence is a state of mime.
At this rate, it won't be cheaper than the F22.
Ill just leave this here. Feel free to ignore it if it doesn't match your version of reality.
NASA can't hire enough engineers. Why?
NASA faces looming engineer shortage.
The ones they have are leaving. Why?
The Flight of Gifted Engineers From NASA
Bureaucracy is great when they are getting the job done. Not so much when they slow and often halt progress. They are inefficient with the current management style they use. Bureaucracy run amok is my take on it. Poor decision making and bureaucratic overhead preventing things from being done cheaper. Wasteful money pits where they pour cash and get nothing in return.
NASA Has Spent $20 Billion On Canceled Projects
It's disturbing all these comparisons between the budget of Hollywood movies and a space program. It's ridiculous... the space program may aim to eventually travel to the stars, but Hollywood movies are MADE FROM stars. Imagine if space programs had to build orbiters and probes out of actual stars... now you get the picture. The precious resource that Hollywood movies are made from far outshines any glorified firework.
To look at it yet another way, Gravity took US ALL into space, in a way that probably felt more real to us than if we had actually gone into boring old space. Whereas the Indian mars orbiter didn't take anyone, not even Matt Daemon. It might send back a few snapshots and data hardly anyone will be interested in. We won't even get a T-Shirt out of it. There is no comparison.
Maybe they can outsource their work to India's space agency for $10/hour.
Do you have ESP?
As yes the 35 million dollar space toilet on the ISS
The point is, even if they made NO money, you'd save an entire ten cents on that new iPad. Cut their pay in half, you'll save a nickel on your iPad.
Therefore, the idea that the cost of US goods is drastically affected by CEO salary, or that "Inflated CEO's salaries are parasitic on US company earnings" is ridiculous beyond measure. You're talking about 1% of 1% of the sales price and revenue. It's like saying products are inexpensive because of the cost of printing UPC codes.
> more in a year than the rest of us earn in a lifetime?
Median CEO salary in the US is $740K. If you work from age 18 to age 62, that's 44 years. At just $50K/year, that's $2.2 million- three times what the average CEO makes. If in fact you plan to make less in your life than a typical CEO makes in a year, you might consider completing school. Or showing up sober.
> so whatever made the first probe fail might also make the second fail if they share design features or code.
Yes, if you make two copies of the same probe, two copies of the same failure is likely. However, that would only cost maybe 10%-20% more than making one copy.
I'm talking about do what India did - design and build a system, more or less from the ground up - twice.
Have two companies do it independently, each at 1/6th the cost of the "reliable" version. The two different probes are unlikely to fail in the same way.
Even if they did both fail, you could fix the problem and build two more, while spending less than the 6X reliable approach.
Learjet.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Because police departments are heavily reliant on revenue from seized assets and moving violations. The last thing the police want to get involved with is a violent crime.
Aside from the main point (why the Indian project was cheaper), this article repeats an important error that we've also seen in discussions of US space projects for decades: failing to include the delivery cost to outer space in the headline cost number. It's misleading to give the cost of building the Space Station if it's just sitting on Earth. Oh, you want the Space Station in space?! Well, that will cost extra.
This matters because it massively underestimates the cost to US taxpayers of NASA projects. For example, NASA always refused to concede that launch costs were part of the Space Station program. To be clear, these were extra launches dedicated to launching pieces of the Space Station.
The failure to count launch costs as part of the headline tally also reduced for many years the attention to one of the most important barriers to the US space program -- reducing the cost of putting a kilo of anything into low earth orbit. That is changing, but it took too long.
When big pharma patents a drug and makes it so expensive people die, or they push a drug that is useless and even dangerous.
Would fewer people die if they didn't make it at all? I'm not aware of any useless prescription drugs that are on the market that have been recently approved, either, but I'd be happy if you have a citation. There have been drugs that were demonstrated to be useful that were later demonstrated to not be useful.
I will agree that bribery of a sort is part of why we don't have the NIH doing royalty-free drug development. There is no reason that drugs can only be researched privately. However, simply getting rid of patents isn't going to make that magically happen...
As a general rule I agree that the US Bureaucracy is surprisingly honest. In my experience most corruption in US projects doesn’t come from the bureaucracy but from congress. US government procurement rules are designed to pay off the various political power blocks associated with darned near every person in congress. The rank and file government employees know it is corrupt but they have to follow the law as written. For some items these rules very likely double the cost.
What makes F35 better or faster than F22?
Maybe the business model India used is worthy of attention.
I'm considering a Kick Starter project of sending a vehicle to the Moon to harvest He3. I will use technologies from anyone I chose. I will then sell my bounty to highest bidder. What could possibly go wrong?
Yoohoo, over here.
F35 had other options that got picked: fancy unused bells and whistles, and pork