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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.
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...
What is this 2015?
**Life is too short to be serious**
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.
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?
When you were a boy, you weren't told all day: "Only girls can study physics." "Boys should stay at home until their parents find them a suitable wife." "A man's place is in the kitchen, or walking 2 meters behind his wife." If you had been, you would probably have reacted differently to a man being successful in science despite such cultural obstacles.
Curie is still a hero for beating the prejudice of her time, but the difference in perception is in the eye of the beholder: boy in a more or less egalitarian society (at least when it comes to the sexes), or girl in a culture where women are not supposed to do such things. To the boy, Curie is mostly a historical example of a heroic struggle. To a girl in India, it's proof that her life and her society don't have to be the way they are.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"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...
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});