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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!
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.
I had no idea what besan or jackfruit were... I will now stop comparing the two.
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.
It would make much more sense to send two cheap probes and have one fail. That would be one third the cost.
It would cost less than that, since much of the cost is NRE. But if the chance of failure is, say, 10%, that does NOT mean that the chance of both failing is only 1%. Failures are not random independent events. Failures are often the result of design or programming flaws, so whatever made the first probe fail might also make the second fail if they share design features or code.