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.'"
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.
It's not the fact that they did it "with a vagina"... It's that they did it in an environment where simply having a vagina sets up barriers to your success.
Example: Women gaining the right to vote wasn't considered an accomplishment *because* they have a vagina, but in spite of that fact.
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.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, these women are showing girls that they can succeed even in a male-centered society, that they can do interesting things instead of preparing to be married off. They are showing parents that there is no shame in giving their daughters an education even if the village idiots are telling them otherwise. They are showing that there are worthwhile and interesting scientific pursuits in their country and that there is no need to go abroad to find them. They are inspiring Indian girls and boys to go to college and study hard. In other words, they are doing more than most to improve their country and culture. Improving the country's health care, agriculture, sanitation and education is more about hearts & minds than spending the relatively tiny space budget on these things. Given ISRO's results and the impact on local industry, international contracts, and prestige, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better place to spend that money.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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...
I have relatives who had a very clever daughter. Excellent exam results. They had no interest in that though, all they ever did was try to prepare her for marriage and plan what to do with the dowery.
It's a real thing, even today and even in the West.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC