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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.'"
Just once can we let a girl do something without showering her with praises for doing it with a vagina? How about praising them for a remarkable scientific achievement? Or for sticking to a tight budget? Or for helping mankind? Or for their dedication. Every time I did something if someone brought up the fact that I also have testicles I would quickly get the idea they think testicles hold a person back. Cut this shit out. We'll never, ever move on until people like whoever wrote the summary stop holding us back.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
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.
The symbol of Equality and Justice is the empty scale. We get this from Socrates defining Justice and Equality. When a person or group puts bias or favoritism on the scale, the arms move. The natural response is to add favoritism or bias to counter the first. However, no to people, groups, issues, circumstances, or conclusions are the same. It is impossible to get back to equality while something exists on the scale. Now when you look at society, you can have a scale with countless pans for every person and group. The more people attempt to add and remove bias, the more difficult balance becomes and the harder it is to return to justice and equality.
The only way to obtain equality is to remove all bias and all favoritism.
Anyone with training and education in Philosophy, especially at higher levels should know and understand the lesson. Yet we have countless "leaders" pushing for identities nearly everywhere.
No, I don't think it's accidental. Yes, I think people who understand this can push back and promote a better society.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Really. Not a snark, not a joke, I mean it. Its really fantastic that they managed a Mars mission on an extremely tight budget. Its a really difficult project and they did a fantastic job.
This sort of ultra-cheap approach might allow lots of probes to be sent to less studied bodies.
Says more about what the editors are obsessing over than anything else.
You know how there are always complaints in these comments sections about how stories are not "tech" enough? Well, here's a story about a fucking rocket to Mars, and this is what's showing up in the comments section.
I've just realized that it's not the Slashdot editors or the stories they select that don't have enough tech in them, it's many of the commenters.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The $651 million for Maven includes all the support costs for the mission. The salaries of the controllers, paying their share of time on the Deep Space Network, etc... Does the $74 million include the same thing? If not, then it's a comparison between Apples and Baseballs.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Maybe TFS should have noted something about how this feat was accomplished (you know, the "tech" angle), instead of going on about "flowers in their hair."
I'm not complaining one way or the other, but given that summary it should be obvious what kind of comments are going to follow.
What is this 2015?
**Life is too short to be serious**
.. the martian took millions of people to Mars!
"Girls in India and beyond gained new heroes: the kind that wear sarees"
When I was a boy one of my heroes was Marie Curie, and it didn't particularly bother me one way or another that she had no penis. So
a) why would these women be a hero only for "girls in India and beyond"? Their achievements had nothing to do with their womanhood, it was technical.
b) why would these women not be heroes for "boys?" Do their vaginas disqualify them from the possibility of admiration by humans with penises?
Hollywood should be sending money to fund women making space rockets instead of movies ?
How does that model work to fund more movies?
And when that model sucks all the money out of Hollywood - how do they send money?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
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.
Have them make 'The Martian' then also, to save money. Not sure about Bollywood theme music, though.
Table-ized A.I.
The Mangalyaan is old news. India is already working on Chandrayaan 2 which will have a lunar lander and Mangalyaan 2 which may have a lander. China is working on a space station. Yes its cheaper to do stuff in India but the focus should not be on just the cost, it should be on India building up capability to do stuff. BTW the reason its cheaper to do stuff in India is salaries can be lower as the salaries of the working class are at survival levels. Something to grow out of not celebrate.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Watch the white male supremacist mob freaking out and foaming at their mouths. Pretty disgusting.
Ladies -- let me congratulate you and let me tell you that I am (I'm a Westerner and a man) pretty ashamed of the behaviour some of those like me put on display.
You work hard, you have dreams. That's the spirit. Those old white guys do neither, that's why they are so sad. Might they slowly die out.
all this story does is make extremely wealthy corporatists drool and jizz their stockings. the idea that the brightest minds could be coerced into working for less is all they're fucking born for. it's sad that everyone involved was not paid significantly more money.
My! Having a bad day (or bad outlook on life), are we?
I'm not one either, but: let's remodel your home, or buy a car, or write software exactly to your specs. Or just do something expensive like build a spaceship campus. Fine. The people that did your job may not be the brightest but are smart or (hopefully) they wouldn't be there
So why are YOU cheaping out on THEM ? Forget paying what they asked for, forget trying to manage or lower the costs, pay them 99.9% of your net worth -- they're worth more than the pittance they want!
Oh, don't wanna? Me either. The more you have left, the more things you can do or have done. And by the way: the engineers obviously thought it was worth it or they wouldn't have done it in the first place. Economics.
The corporate beancounters look at ROI and risks. They don't like money sinks; that's their job. Someone else gets to decide whether to actually act or not -- whether the intangibles outweigh the tangibles (beans) in their judgement. Given enough losses and everyone loses their job.
Sounds like you disagree with, well, all of them. Become a wealthy corporatist and show them the error of their ways -- but if outgo always exceeds income, you won't be there long.
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And now offtopic: Perhaps I'm a wealthy corporatist. (I'm not.) "millions of people are starving", ie the poor. Yep. Lets give them, say $74 million, that'll fix it, right? Nope? How about more? How much more? Oh, now they want to eat a second time? OK, more money still. When do you stop; when they're not hungry? OK, done. Oh, you're tired of rice and beans and want something better? OK how about steaks (India? How about fish and chicken?) Oh by the way those poor by definition can't pay, so the people DOING all this are doing it for free, as well as transportation and energy. Humanitarians! Or they're not, the Government is paying for it. But what's that? In general the people; government is simply the controlling steward. Fine. As above, this works great until you hit zero resources, then EVERYONE is now hungry with no one to "save" them. That worked well -- until it didn't.
So: how do you continually feed the poor without going broke or forcing the providers to do it for free in which case they'll become broke? Solve that and you can literally BECOME your own wealthy corporation with the accolations and adoration of billions.
News: Bakeries allowed to buy subsidized flour are supposed to use 90 percent of it for bread and only 10 percent in cakes and pastries.
Even with subsidized flour, bakers say the official bread price -- currently 250 bolivars a loaf (35 US cents) -- does not cover the cost of production.
Bakers are increasingly nervous.
Really, I feed bad for the poor and gave 10% of my income to charities. (Used to, my income has wildly changed and I've got to figure out a new number.) But I'm not a humanitarian, 10% is about as much as I'm willing to go. And that money goes exactly where *I* want it to, not someone else deciding for me. And I'm not doing anything for Venezuela -- they're not my country and too far away. I'll help my local poor here; the actual humanitarians can help them.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
The cost of living in Delhi is, for a one bedroom apartment in the center, 16400 rupees on average which is about 250 USD. The average cost of living in New York is 3900 USD, so that's 15.6 times more expensive. Taking that into account, the converted cost of this mission was 1.15 billion USD, making this a pretty damn expensive mission, especially considering that it had a smaller and less capable spacecraft than US efforts.
And before you tell me that New York is so expensive: so is Delhi if you're an Indian.
This is why so much work has moved over to low wage countries. They're _cheaper_. And it is only a great example of how to run a project if your dream is to have the kind of living conditions that Indians enjoy.
Wish they had one for meaty programming topics.
I, too, would like to see more posts about programmable meat. I await the day we can encode instructions into a cell and have it turn nutrients and energy into something that resembles edible meat.
So does that also mean it is now cheaper to have India actually send a man to the moon than to have Hollywood fake it?
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At least they're still nowhere near as self-absorbed, self-obsessed and ignorant of the rest of the world as Americans.
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The Martian might have cost more to make, but in the end it made a half billion dollar profit. Comparing the profit of the two projects makes just as much sense as comparing the costs, doesn't it?
Median pay for aerospace engineers in the United States is around $82K per year.
Median pay for aerospace engineers in India is around Rs 820k per year, which comes out as about $12500 per year.
So you still get a very substantial difference in favour of Indian costs.
Ezekiel 23:20
"If you are interested in Indian women scientists and engineers....'"
Sure!
Are there easy-payment plans? What are the shipping rates like? Is there a warranty?
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.
I would sincerely hope that any space mission will net a far better return for the entire human race than 2 hours of fictional bullshit on the big screen, so I think we can stop with this rather silly comparison now.
2 hours of tape for which people paid $630,000,000 to watch. Personally I prefer the footage of actual mars missions but even at the price of nothing you still get far fewer eyeballs then the fictional, "human drama" centered bullshit
"Mission designer Ritu Karidhal had worked 48 hours straight, fueled by anticipation." ...and a 55-gallon drum of coffee.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Instead of "Houston, we have a problem" we'll have "Mumbai, do me the needful."
But this isn't Asians working over here on H-1B visas. This is the beginning of the market for space moving overseas. And the customers who are doing the investing aren't necessarily Americans. So they don't give a rat's ass about investing in OUR liberty.
America may not rise again. India is still largely a poor country. Most of the population lives in small villages with poor infrastructure as subsistence farmers. But India's advantage is the will set this group aside and get on with it's nascent space program. Meanwhile, our politicians have to kow-tow to a bunch of moron rednecks that think Noah was real and the earth is 6000 years old. Or a bunch of liberal retards that anguish over hobo tent camps while letting city infrastructures decay.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, this is a submission that's clearly trying to divide engineering into an us-versus-them situation, in this case along gender lines.
Uhm... no. There were two submissions merged; the second one-sentence summary may be excerpted from something longer. For the "main" submission, there are a number of differences mentioned in TFS (USA vs India, NASA vs ISRO, expensive vs cheap, slow vs fast development time), and the comment section has chosen to focus on one particular difference to the exclusion of others. That says more about the comment section than it does about TFS.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Building a casino isn't exactly rocket science. Hell, even Trump can do it, so it can't be that hard.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
for women.