Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Sent a Rocket To Mars For Less Than It Cost To Make 'The Martian' (backchannel.com)
Ipsita Agarwal via Backchannel retells the story of how India's underfunded space organization, ISRO, managed to send a rocket to Mars for less than it cost to make the movie "The Martian," starring Matt Damon as Mark Watney. "While NASA's Mars probe, Maven, cost $651 million, the budget for this mission was $74 million," Agarwal writes. In what appears to be India's version of "Hidden Figures" (a movie that also cost more to make than ISRO's budget for the Mars rocket), the team of scientists behind the rocket launch consisted of Indian women, who not only managed to pull off the mission successfully but did so in only 18 months. Backchannel reports: A few months and several million kilometers later, the orbiter prepared to enter Mars' gravity. This was a critical moment. If the orbiter entered Mars' gravity at the wrong angle, off by so much as one degree, it would either crash onto the surface of Mars or fly right past it, lost in the emptiness of space. Back on Earth, its team of scientists and engineers waited for a signal from the orbiter. Mission designer Ritu Karidhal had worked 48 hours straight, fueled by anticipation. As a child, Minal Rohit had watched space missions on TV. Now, Minal waited for news on the orbiter she and her colleague, Moumita Dutta, had helped engineer. When the signal finally arrived, the mission control room broke into cheers. If you work in such a room, deputy operations director, Nandini Harinath, says, "you no longer need to watch a thriller movie to feel the thrill in life. You feel it in your day-to-day work." This was not the only success of the mission. An image of the scientists celebrating in the mission control room went viral. Girls in India and beyond gained new heroes: the kind that wear sarees and tie flowers in their hair, and send rockets into space. User shas3 notes in a comment on Hacker News' post: "If you are interested in Indian women scientists and engineers, there is a nice compilation (a bit tiresome to read, but worth it, IMO) of biographical essays called 'Lilvati's Daughters.'"
Nobody sensible would consider that a meaningful comparison either.
Second the Martian made a profit, and the mars mission hasn't. So the Mars mission actually had a much higher net cost.
Says more about what the editors are obsessing over than anything else.
Yep India is a literal shithole per square inch when compared to other countries. Yet, they all have smart phones and waste vasts amounts of time waiting on cows to cross a highway with no street lights or turn signals. Grown ass men playing games or drinking tea all day while women of lower castes do all the work. Everyone wiping with their left hand and may or may not have a shit soiled washcloth to help out. No toilet paper. Weird toilets if you find them and hope you like spraying water up your ass. Yet, they eat with their hands like forks are evil. And Hinduism has a God for everything, so traditions can get really weird. Be glad most of us live in a place where at least religious conservatism that does exist only has one God to listen to. It's a wonder they ever get anything done. I know people are going to hate me for saying this, but India is what happens if a country looses it's cultural and religious biases. I cannot think of a better model for multiple cultures and religions than India and it is a complete economic shit hole. Money makes a person White but a caste religion prevents any hope of advancement. So when Indian women fly a rocket on that kind of a budget and successfully, it's a miracle. NASA should take notes, but less spending just means less money for next year. That's probably why.
Following the loss of Mars Observer ($813 million), NASA adopted a new low-cost philosophy of "Faster, Better, Cheaper" Mars missions. Mars Pathfinder was the first FBC mission and was a resounding success. Mars Climate Orbiter was then sent to Mars with a launch rocket cost of just $91.7 million, for a total mission cost of $327.6 million. This was the mission that was lost due to a English vs. metric mixup. The problem would've been caught on the ground in preliminary testing, but that testing had been eliminated as a cost-saving measure. A month later, Mars Polar Lander was lost due to (we think) the descent software misidentifying vibrations from the deployment of the landing legs as contact with the ground, cutting off the descent engine about 40 meters above the ground.
NASA subsequently abandoned the low-cost philosophy. Better to lose an expensive mission due to bad luck, than to lose a bunch of cheap missions due to dumb mistakes that would've been caught if we'd paid for some simple but thorough testing.