Someone going to a small colony on Mars would be no different from Polynesians crossing oceans or people packing up and moving across the continent in 1800s.
If Mars was like California, that would be true.
If you are going to use California as an example, keep in mind that the original Spanish settlement of Buena Vista (modern-day Los Angeles) completely died out because everybody died from starvation and thirst from a lack of water. The only way California is able to sustain its current population is strictly because it can import a large amount of its food from elsewhere (in spite of being a net food exporter as a state) and because of the technology which sustains the current population of the state.
California is in fact proof that through the use of advanced technology we can take an inhospitable wilderness which is determined to kill off everybody who lives there and turn it into a place where morons and idiots can survive and thrive.
Perhaps my ancestors (who were some early residents of California) did too good of a job teraforming California and making it a nice place to live. I promise that the Polynesians traveling from Tonga or Samoa and made the trip to Hawaii would not have been capable of setting up a survivable settlement in the Los Angeles basin at the same time Hawaii was first being settled.
I imagine it has something to do with the fact that It takes considerably less energy to escape Earth entirely than to go into even a low orbit.
That isn't entirely true. Just as the Apollo missions did a brief orbit around the Earth immediately after launch but before TLI (trans-lunar injection), there is no reason to avoid going to LEO and does not require any additional energy. What does cost energy is to perform an orbital plane change to go to the ISS, which is set at an orbital inclination that made it easier to launch from Kazakhstan, thus it is less than ideal for a launch from either Florida or from the ESA launch facility in French Guiana. Both of those launch locations have been used for vehicles sent to dock with the ISS (obviously the Space Shuttle, but other stuff too), so it isn't too hard but it does cause some problems.
The nice thing about even a temporary LEO maneuver is that you can do a quick check of your systems, consider possibly an abort back to the Earth if necessary, and you don't need a very tight launch window as you can wait for the insertion point while already in space to reignite the engines for the trans-Mars injection which also sends you to escape velocity.
If you could put a space station as a rendezvous point for some in-space construction (even if just docking components sent on multiple launches), there may be some merit to that as well, but it will still cost a little bit of fuel for performing the rendezvous maneuvers and does make the mission a bit more complex at the beginning. Von Braun was a strong advocate for the idea when planning to go to the Moon (the "Earth Rendezvous" concept), so it isn't without a precedent either.
I am a big fan of the Aldrin Cyclers myself. It removes the need for a huge rocket going to Mars as you only need enough of a spacecraft + supplies to get to a vehicle relatively near the Earth, and then the cycling vehicle will provide ample radiation protection and all of the room you need to be comfortable. Basically, you could live in what amounts to be luxury accommodations in a cruise ship complete with artificial gravity (via a spinning torus or at least some spin). It requires building some infrastructure, but you don't have to die with the rocket equation keeping you from sending what you need. That is the best place to have a space-only vehicle instead of in LEO as well.
Solar City has decided to get into the panel/cell manufacturing business? That is news to me, as it is a very rough and competitive market that until now they've deliberately stayed out of because of the cut-throat competition and even industrial espionage going on with that industry.
What Solar City does perform is total system integration and installation.
I'd love to put one of the Solar City systems on my house, but unfortunately they haven't been able or willing to deal with my state government yet, in spite of several neighboring states who do have installation programs and sales reps. I guess I need to be patient.
Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow have been able to get together. In fact, Bigelow Aerospace has a couple flights on the SpaceX manifest, with a flight that is scheduled for some time next year (assuming SpaceX can push through some of its current customers that are scheduled for this year). I can only imagine that with a flight coming up so soon that the hardware which is going to fly on that rocket is near completion if not already finished.
The largest hang-up right now for Robert Bigelow is that he is insisting on at least two different launch vehicles for passengers and crew made by different companies, both made in America flying on American hardware. In addition to the SpaceX Dragon (which still needs FAA-AST approval for commercial crew flights), there is the Boeing CST-100 that Robert Bigelow has dumped some money into as a joint partnership with Boeing. There are other companies developing spacecraft which could work as well, so it may turn out there may be multiple options for sending crews into space in the near future.
Both the CST-100 and the Dragon are on the fast track to supplying crew flights for NASA astronauts to the ISS, so I think FAA-AST approval is going to be mostly pro forma once NASA has given their thumbs up. In other words, crewed space stations operated by Bigelow Aerospace is going to be happening very soon, at least within this decade if not on a much shorter time frame.
I think it is a stretch to even suggest that Mars One is a backup plan to SpaceX. At best I would put Inspiration Mars (Dennis Tito's project) in that realm, assuming Mr. Tito goes anywhere with his project as well.
I saw a Reddit conversation with the guys of Mars One that showed they really knew almost nothing about the technical side of things, and sort of thought they could magically buy anything they needed to get the job done. That might work for something such as an Antarctic expedition where the tools and experience of going there has already been done and is in large scale production for other purposes, but it doesn't work for going well beyond the frontier of human experience.
At least SpaceX has put stuff into space, where photos like this are something that their equipment has actually taken. The guys with Mars One have been no higher than what you can get with a commercial jetliner, and that is as a passenger as well. I like big dreams, but either company needs to unfortunately produce much of the equipment needed for going to Mars in-house as nobody else is even making the stuff necessary. SpaceX knows how to make stuff that works in space and has stuff in space right now to show it can get the job done. What does Mars One even have?
India has more than a `homeless` problem; I don't see how you can equate the two, unless you're rather willfully ignoring the massive problems India is turning its back on to fund these `we're in the space-age club too` extravagances.
At some point India needs to leave the "we is stupid 'n need your money 'cause we dn't know better" attitude. If there is something that India needs, it is to give its people the freedom to do whatever it is that they do best and stop trying to coddle them. Defend people's right to life, liberty, and property but otherwise stay out of their affairs and let them succeed rather than making everybody a charity case.
I currently live in a place that a century ago was far more destitute and a much more harsh climate with a lack of basic resources than the poorest village in India right now. A century and a half ago the people here were so destitute that many starved to death and died from exposure, partly because of being driven out of their homes at gunpoint and forced to migrate hundreds of miles to live in a place that was largely depopulated because even nomadic hunter-gatherers had to move on due to drought. I don't think there is any excuse for India not to be able to solve its problems in due time, and in the meantime they have the resources and the capability of being able to send stuff into space too.
India certainly doesn't need your pity. It is gradually solving its problems over time and they are certainly not insurmountable.
With all of the problems that exist in India, I don't see how they are going to get it done. Even if they do, at what ultimate cost? I think of all those who will suffer as a result of a government fools errand.
While I will admit India has some problems, they are an emerging country and certainly not the destitute poor that you are making it out to be. I also admire the Indian space program as something which really is a top rated endeavor that ranks right with China, Russia, and America. They have very competent rocket scientists that know how to put a vehicle into orbit, and really aren't all that far away from being able to successful launch crewed flights of their own if it wasn't for stupid and silly comments like yours who depict India as some poor unfortunate backwater country not worthy of anything but pity.
Heck, I am very impressed they are even considering this probe, and it represents a level of sophistication and ability which so far no other country on the Earth, not even America, has been able to accomplish. Getting something into the Sun takes more delta-v than a sample & return mission from Mars and in fact is harder than sending something into interstellar space like the Voyager missions. This literally is the frontier of human experience in any form and that by itself should speak volumes about what India is going to accomplish here.
Are you serious? Do you really think that this probe to the sun is going to result in better growing of crops? Seriously? Do you really think that India's money spent on a sun probe will result in more food than say the same investment in solar panels for a more steady electricity supply?
Yes, I do think that a probe into the sun to understand some of the environment which makes up the photosphere and the outer layers of the Sun better will indeed be far better spent money than dumping that into a bunch of foreign-made solar panels in some remote village to provide a steady supply of electricity. This is especially true for a country with as many people as live in India, where the individual investment into such a project is quite small per person and the pay-off can be so much more.
Try to learn about basic research and the benefits that have come from it. I certainly don't feel bad about myself feeling this way nor should SJHillman for that matter either. Basic research in space (including the stuff going on with the ISS) has been able to feed, clothe, and in general improve the overall standard of living for far more people than any other single endeavor in the past hundred years. It is literally saving lives, lives which in many cases can even be counted. I will even go so far as to suggest that we've only just started on the ways it can help humanity as a whole, and India in particular.
For this particular research in particular, it can help explain some of the non-anthroprogenic causes of global warming (IMHO something useful to know about too) and can certainly pave the way to help with much more accurate weather forecasts and other tools that can most certainly help out that village you are so concerned about. The pay-off for spending this money may take decades or even centuries to completely realize, but it will happen. A bit of a risk I suppose and knowing it is helping all of mankind at the same time rather than just the one village, but I certainly congratulate India on trying this project.
Most people have a cell phone if they are volunteers in a search group. Yes, an experienced group of semi-professional or professional search & rescue guys will have milspec radios (or at least something pretty rugged) likely with some ham radio frequencies available too, but as temporary communications it does a pretty lousy job compared to cell phone coverage.
I'll admit that the applications are pretty narrow, but the real issue is availability of radios, training (it does take training to competently use some radios), licensing (even FRS radios technically require a license for each one used), and the number of people involved. By its nature cell phone connections can handle dozens or even hundreds of conversations simultaneously and contact precisely the person you need with a minimal amount of fuss if they are in the coverage of the network (even if the network is just a single tower although it could be more than that). A bunch of VHF radios get very crowded with chatter if you have more than a couple dozen people regularly communicating with each other and needs some strict protocols for communication... like what the FAA requires for plane to ground communication.
My suggestion here is for a situation where you have a large group (100+ people) with minimal or no formal radio communications training in the middle of nowhere. Besides, once you have the phone to transmitter link, you can have other methods of communicating with the outside world linked into that central service. It would be overkill if you have a smallish group and resources to buy the radios you are talking about.
I know of some places where farms and ranches represent the populated areas... and the rest of the area is genuine wilderness complete with bears, mountain lions, and wolves (not to mention deer, chipmunks, and other not so aggressive wildlife). On the other hand, there are some occasional hikers who get lost where setting up a cell tower in a box would be useful if only as a search & rescue operation (so different search parties can communicate with each other & the base with simply ordinary cell phones). There is also a local Boy Scout camp that I'd love to set one of these devices up at for emergency communications and troop to troop communications.
I can imagine some applications that major carriers simply wouldn't care for because there isn't any profit to be made in such an activity, but none the less would be very useful. Reading up on what and where these OpenBTS guys have already established transmitters (including one on the island of Niue that is permanent) shows at least some of the range that these systems could be established.
These OpenBTS guys have been running a cell phone network at the Burning Man festival for several years now as a way to prototype and test the technology. Yes, they got the necessary FCC permits as well and understand not just the technical but also the legal issues involved. The only thing they lack is the money to buy the necessary cell phone tower, and that is mainly buying the permanent license rather than trying to set up a cell tower temporarily in a place in the middle of nowhere.
These guys have also set up low-power cell network demonstrations at several conferences in 1st world countries where they demonstrate the technology on stage during the conference.
Seriously, try to RTFA and learn about the group first. I'll admit you don't want to set up a cell tower of your own unlicensed and within a block of a major carrier, which seems to be what you are suggesting they accomplish.
The problem is that battery technology is hardly something brand new, and there has been a nearly 50 year need (arguably perhaps even well over a century) of having reduced weight and size of batteries. Some of the very first automobiles (see the Baker Electrics vehicle as an example) were electric even before Henry Ford started to build the Tin Lizzie. If Moore's Law applies after a fashion to battery technologies, instead of the typical assumed 2-3 year doubling/halving time that you are used to with computers, instead it is more like 25-50 years for battery technology.
There have indeed been improvements with batteries with new chemistry coming up with better ways to store a charge. None the less, progress is very slow in coming and I only expect to see perhaps another double of the capacity within the rest of my lifetime. The Lithium-ion cells that used to be in laptop computers and cell phones made it possible to build something like the Tesla Roadster (and subsequently the Model S), which is why those vehicles now have much better performance envelopes than the Baker Motor vehicles I mentioned above. A century of progress does make a difference, but it is still slow in coming.
Economies of scale will also help with the production of the Tesla vehicles, but until somebody makes the leap and builds the automobiles in the first place such economies of scale simply won't happen. Starting a brand new automobile company anywhere, much less in America, is so difficult that it really should be seen as a miracle and nearly proof there is a God all by itself. The current regulatory climate in America and Europe is bad enough that it is a miracle automobile companies even exist at all. For this reason, there is a definite lack of new entrants into the market (not that some people try, but almost all fail miserably). Tesla Motors is an exception and not a typical experience of a brand new automobile manufacturing company.
There is reserve fuel that will be available if there is something like a RUD event with the engines or some other problem on the assent, so it is perfectly valid to be burning that reserve fuel supply upon descent. The main problem is that the recovery system eats into the payload part of the rocket equation (legs have mass), thus the efficiency and Isp suffer from the perspective of the rocket as a whole.
Previous recovery systems have eaten so much of the payload that you essentially got a thimble into orbit. The trick and the challenge is to put in a recovery system and still have enough useful payload mass available to put meaningful payloads into space.
Then you end up with 9 engines and a first stage in fairly good nick with 5 minutes of flight time on it.
Given that they've recovered precisely zero engines after flight... that's something of an assumption.
I think the goal of this particular flight is to recover the engines of the 1st stage after the flight. I think that count is going to go up by a few by the end of next month. The goal is to do land recovery of the rocket eventually though, and to keep the service crew which refurbishes the rocket down to a minimum. As to if SpaceX will be able to accomplish that goal is certainly something to be skeptical about though.
If you want to see what the actual guy who designed the Falcon 9 thinks of the reduction of launch costs, I'd suggest at least reading some of his thoughts before pulling up random numbers of your own.
The long term goal of SpaceX is to start selling Falcon 9 flights for about $20-$30 million with a reusable 1st stage and if they can get the 2nd stage to become reusable they want to get it down to about $5 million per flight... with a hoped-for goal to drop that down to perhaps as low as $1 million. In other conversations, Elon Musk has suggested he might even get the cost of a round-trip flight to Mars down to about $500k per person.
In other words, the two orders of magnitude is what SpaceX is trying for and they have rocket scientists who have crunched the numbers to see if it is possible. That is certainly not something calculated on the back of a bar napkin but somebody who is building these rockets and has put something into space.
I like to use this analogy in terms of the fuel costs for rockets: The catering budget to feed the press corps at a Shuttle launch cost more than the fuel being used to launch the rocket.
Even with your figure of about $300k, I would argue that SpaceX spends a comparable amount for public relations + press kits on each flight of the Falcon 9. It really is in the statistical noise level in terms of costs of the launch.
At the moment what SpaceX would really love to do is simply recover the Merlin engines, tear them apart and find out what worked and what didn't work in terms of sending stuff into orbit. All of the previous launches had those engines completely fall apart or sink into the deep ocean in a state that is unrecoverable, so this kind of engineering analysis has been impossible. Even if the engines land in the water, a soft landing recovery in the ocean is going to produce some very valuable information that can significantly help with the engine development.
For those who have been following the development of SpaceX, this shouldn't even be news other than the specific announcement that they really will be doing this on the very next flight.
Then again, if you knew about this.... why didn't you submit a link to Slashdot yourself?
If you really want the people in the U.S. military to be held accountable for this kind of thing, you need to convince the American people that it is a problem that needs to be dealt with. It needs to become a campaign issue and something that becomes commonly hated. Unfortunately, if this stuff is happening on another continent upon people that don't speak the same language or share the same culture and those same people have threatened "Death to America" including no regard for killing civilians in America.... the best you are going to get from ordinary Americans is "Meh?"
State dealership laws can get very complex and are usually biased toward the local dealership groups... and those laws vary considerably from one state to the next. You may be correct that some shareholders could set up those dealerships in most (but not all) states, but again there are some limits particularly for dealerships owned by "foreign" persons (in this case the definition of foreign includes anybody not from that state defined by residency requirements).
I'm not saying that it is simple, and in many cases you are correct that such businesses could be established, but there are limits and sometimes is up to the discretionary review of a bureaucracy that can rule arbitrarily... in other words you don't know what those regulators or commissioners are going to rule until the situation is actually presented to them.
The only difference is that Elon Musk has far more credibility than you do. He sometimes takes a bit longer to deliver, but his record on making wild assertions and making them actually happen is pretty good.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone going to a small colony on Mars would be no different from Polynesians crossing oceans or people packing up and moving across the continent in 1800s.
If Mars was like California, that would be true.
If you are going to use California as an example, keep in mind that the original Spanish settlement of Buena Vista (modern-day Los Angeles) completely died out because everybody died from starvation and thirst from a lack of water. The only way California is able to sustain its current population is strictly because it can import a large amount of its food from elsewhere (in spite of being a net food exporter as a state) and because of the technology which sustains the current population of the state.
California is in fact proof that through the use of advanced technology we can take an inhospitable wilderness which is determined to kill off everybody who lives there and turn it into a place where morons and idiots can survive and thrive.
Perhaps my ancestors (who were some early residents of California) did too good of a job teraforming California and making it a nice place to live. I promise that the Polynesians traveling from Tonga or Samoa and made the trip to Hawaii would not have been capable of setting up a survivable settlement in the Los Angeles basin at the same time Hawaii was first being settled.
The same argument can be used for sending cows into space, or muffins, or lighthouses. Why would you send a lighthouse into space? Because it's there.
Who says that cows, muffins, or lighthouses won't be in space? I can see practical reasons for sending all three.
A lighthouse in space might not look like a lighthouse on the Earth, but can and will exist in some form in the future.
Try for a better example, because this one has utterly failed.
So technically he is an African-American?
At least he has as good of a claim to that title as anybody else who uses the term. He just lacks the dark skin, as if that mattered for anything.
I imagine it has something to do with the fact that It takes considerably less energy to escape Earth entirely than to go into even a low orbit.
That isn't entirely true. Just as the Apollo missions did a brief orbit around the Earth immediately after launch but before TLI (trans-lunar injection), there is no reason to avoid going to LEO and does not require any additional energy. What does cost energy is to perform an orbital plane change to go to the ISS, which is set at an orbital inclination that made it easier to launch from Kazakhstan, thus it is less than ideal for a launch from either Florida or from the ESA launch facility in French Guiana. Both of those launch locations have been used for vehicles sent to dock with the ISS (obviously the Space Shuttle, but other stuff too), so it isn't too hard but it does cause some problems.
The nice thing about even a temporary LEO maneuver is that you can do a quick check of your systems, consider possibly an abort back to the Earth if necessary, and you don't need a very tight launch window as you can wait for the insertion point while already in space to reignite the engines for the trans-Mars injection which also sends you to escape velocity.
If you could put a space station as a rendezvous point for some in-space construction (even if just docking components sent on multiple launches), there may be some merit to that as well, but it will still cost a little bit of fuel for performing the rendezvous maneuvers and does make the mission a bit more complex at the beginning. Von Braun was a strong advocate for the idea when planning to go to the Moon (the "Earth Rendezvous" concept), so it isn't without a precedent either.
I am a big fan of the Aldrin Cyclers myself. It removes the need for a huge rocket going to Mars as you only need enough of a spacecraft + supplies to get to a vehicle relatively near the Earth, and then the cycling vehicle will provide ample radiation protection and all of the room you need to be comfortable. Basically, you could live in what amounts to be luxury accommodations in a cruise ship complete with artificial gravity (via a spinning torus or at least some spin). It requires building some infrastructure, but you don't have to die with the rocket equation keeping you from sending what you need. That is the best place to have a space-only vehicle instead of in LEO as well.
Solar City has decided to get into the panel/cell manufacturing business? That is news to me, as it is a very rough and competitive market that until now they've deliberately stayed out of because of the cut-throat competition and even industrial espionage going on with that industry.
What Solar City does perform is total system integration and installation.
I'd love to put one of the Solar City systems on my house, but unfortunately they haven't been able or willing to deal with my state government yet, in spite of several neighboring states who do have installation programs and sales reps. I guess I need to be patient.
Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow have been able to get together. In fact, Bigelow Aerospace has a couple flights on the SpaceX manifest, with a flight that is scheduled for some time next year (assuming SpaceX can push through some of its current customers that are scheduled for this year). I can only imagine that with a flight coming up so soon that the hardware which is going to fly on that rocket is near completion if not already finished.
The largest hang-up right now for Robert Bigelow is that he is insisting on at least two different launch vehicles for passengers and crew made by different companies, both made in America flying on American hardware. In addition to the SpaceX Dragon (which still needs FAA-AST approval for commercial crew flights), there is the Boeing CST-100 that Robert Bigelow has dumped some money into as a joint partnership with Boeing. There are other companies developing spacecraft which could work as well, so it may turn out there may be multiple options for sending crews into space in the near future.
Both the CST-100 and the Dragon are on the fast track to supplying crew flights for NASA astronauts to the ISS, so I think FAA-AST approval is going to be mostly pro forma once NASA has given their thumbs up. In other words, crewed space stations operated by Bigelow Aerospace is going to be happening very soon, at least within this decade if not on a much shorter time frame.
I think it is a stretch to even suggest that Mars One is a backup plan to SpaceX. At best I would put Inspiration Mars (Dennis Tito's project) in that realm, assuming Mr. Tito goes anywhere with his project as well.
I saw a Reddit conversation with the guys of Mars One that showed they really knew almost nothing about the technical side of things, and sort of thought they could magically buy anything they needed to get the job done. That might work for something such as an Antarctic expedition where the tools and experience of going there has already been done and is in large scale production for other purposes, but it doesn't work for going well beyond the frontier of human experience.
At least SpaceX has put stuff into space, where photos like this are something that their equipment has actually taken. The guys with Mars One have been no higher than what you can get with a commercial jetliner, and that is as a passenger as well. I like big dreams, but either company needs to unfortunately produce much of the equipment needed for going to Mars in-house as nobody else is even making the stuff necessary. SpaceX knows how to make stuff that works in space and has stuff in space right now to show it can get the job done. What does Mars One even have?
India has more than a `homeless` problem; I don't see how you can equate the two, unless you're rather willfully ignoring the massive problems India is turning its back on to fund these `we're in the space-age club too` extravagances.
At some point India needs to leave the "we is stupid 'n need your money 'cause we dn't know better" attitude. If there is something that India needs, it is to give its people the freedom to do whatever it is that they do best and stop trying to coddle them. Defend people's right to life, liberty, and property but otherwise stay out of their affairs and let them succeed rather than making everybody a charity case.
I currently live in a place that a century ago was far more destitute and a much more harsh climate with a lack of basic resources than the poorest village in India right now. A century and a half ago the people here were so destitute that many starved to death and died from exposure, partly because of being driven out of their homes at gunpoint and forced to migrate hundreds of miles to live in a place that was largely depopulated because even nomadic hunter-gatherers had to move on due to drought. I don't think there is any excuse for India not to be able to solve its problems in due time, and in the meantime they have the resources and the capability of being able to send stuff into space too.
India certainly doesn't need your pity. It is gradually solving its problems over time and they are certainly not insurmountable.
With all of the problems that exist in India, I don't see how they are going to get it done. Even if they do, at what ultimate cost? I think of all those who will suffer as a result of a government fools errand.
While I will admit India has some problems, they are an emerging country and certainly not the destitute poor that you are making it out to be. I also admire the Indian space program as something which really is a top rated endeavor that ranks right with China, Russia, and America. They have very competent rocket scientists that know how to put a vehicle into orbit, and really aren't all that far away from being able to successful launch crewed flights of their own if it wasn't for stupid and silly comments like yours who depict India as some poor unfortunate backwater country not worthy of anything but pity.
Heck, I am very impressed they are even considering this probe, and it represents a level of sophistication and ability which so far no other country on the Earth, not even America, has been able to accomplish. Getting something into the Sun takes more delta-v than a sample & return mission from Mars and in fact is harder than sending something into interstellar space like the Voyager missions. This literally is the frontier of human experience in any form and that by itself should speak volumes about what India is going to accomplish here.
Are you serious? Do you really think that this probe to the sun is going to result in better growing of crops? Seriously? Do you really think that India's money spent on a sun probe will result in more food than say the same investment in solar panels for a more steady electricity supply?
Yes, I do think that a probe into the sun to understand some of the environment which makes up the photosphere and the outer layers of the Sun better will indeed be far better spent money than dumping that into a bunch of foreign-made solar panels in some remote village to provide a steady supply of electricity. This is especially true for a country with as many people as live in India, where the individual investment into such a project is quite small per person and the pay-off can be so much more.
Try to learn about basic research and the benefits that have come from it. I certainly don't feel bad about myself feeling this way nor should SJHillman for that matter either. Basic research in space (including the stuff going on with the ISS) has been able to feed, clothe, and in general improve the overall standard of living for far more people than any other single endeavor in the past hundred years. It is literally saving lives, lives which in many cases can even be counted. I will even go so far as to suggest that we've only just started on the ways it can help humanity as a whole, and India in particular.
For this particular research in particular, it can help explain some of the non-anthroprogenic causes of global warming (IMHO something useful to know about too) and can certainly pave the way to help with much more accurate weather forecasts and other tools that can most certainly help out that village you are so concerned about. The pay-off for spending this money may take decades or even centuries to completely realize, but it will happen. A bit of a risk I suppose and knowing it is helping all of mankind at the same time rather than just the one village, but I certainly congratulate India on trying this project.
Most people have a cell phone if they are volunteers in a search group. Yes, an experienced group of semi-professional or professional search & rescue guys will have milspec radios (or at least something pretty rugged) likely with some ham radio frequencies available too, but as temporary communications it does a pretty lousy job compared to cell phone coverage.
I'll admit that the applications are pretty narrow, but the real issue is availability of radios, training (it does take training to competently use some radios), licensing (even FRS radios technically require a license for each one used), and the number of people involved. By its nature cell phone connections can handle dozens or even hundreds of conversations simultaneously and contact precisely the person you need with a minimal amount of fuss if they are in the coverage of the network (even if the network is just a single tower although it could be more than that). A bunch of VHF radios get very crowded with chatter if you have more than a couple dozen people regularly communicating with each other and needs some strict protocols for communication... like what the FAA requires for plane to ground communication.
My suggestion here is for a situation where you have a large group (100+ people) with minimal or no formal radio communications training in the middle of nowhere. Besides, once you have the phone to transmitter link, you can have other methods of communicating with the outside world linked into that central service. It would be overkill if you have a smallish group and resources to buy the radios you are talking about.
I know of some places where farms and ranches represent the populated areas... and the rest of the area is genuine wilderness complete with bears, mountain lions, and wolves (not to mention deer, chipmunks, and other not so aggressive wildlife). On the other hand, there are some occasional hikers who get lost where setting up a cell tower in a box would be useful if only as a search & rescue operation (so different search parties can communicate with each other & the base with simply ordinary cell phones). There is also a local Boy Scout camp that I'd love to set one of these devices up at for emergency communications and troop to troop communications.
I can imagine some applications that major carriers simply wouldn't care for because there isn't any profit to be made in such an activity, but none the less would be very useful. Reading up on what and where these OpenBTS guys have already established transmitters (including one on the island of Niue that is permanent) shows at least some of the range that these systems could be established.
How about that they have?
These OpenBTS guys have been running a cell phone network at the Burning Man festival for several years now as a way to prototype and test the technology. Yes, they got the necessary FCC permits as well and understand not just the technical but also the legal issues involved. The only thing they lack is the money to buy the necessary cell phone tower, and that is mainly buying the permanent license rather than trying to set up a cell tower temporarily in a place in the middle of nowhere.
These guys have also set up low-power cell network demonstrations at several conferences in 1st world countries where they demonstrate the technology on stage during the conference.
Seriously, try to RTFA and learn about the group first. I'll admit you don't want to set up a cell tower of your own unlicensed and within a block of a major carrier, which seems to be what you are suggesting they accomplish.
The problem is that battery technology is hardly something brand new, and there has been a nearly 50 year need (arguably perhaps even well over a century) of having reduced weight and size of batteries. Some of the very first automobiles (see the Baker Electrics vehicle as an example) were electric even before Henry Ford started to build the Tin Lizzie. If Moore's Law applies after a fashion to battery technologies, instead of the typical assumed 2-3 year doubling/halving time that you are used to with computers, instead it is more like 25-50 years for battery technology.
There have indeed been improvements with batteries with new chemistry coming up with better ways to store a charge. None the less, progress is very slow in coming and I only expect to see perhaps another double of the capacity within the rest of my lifetime. The Lithium-ion cells that used to be in laptop computers and cell phones made it possible to build something like the Tesla Roadster (and subsequently the Model S), which is why those vehicles now have much better performance envelopes than the Baker Motor vehicles I mentioned above. A century of progress does make a difference, but it is still slow in coming.
Economies of scale will also help with the production of the Tesla vehicles, but until somebody makes the leap and builds the automobiles in the first place such economies of scale simply won't happen. Starting a brand new automobile company anywhere, much less in America, is so difficult that it really should be seen as a miracle and nearly proof there is a God all by itself. The current regulatory climate in America and Europe is bad enough that it is a miracle automobile companies even exist at all. For this reason, there is a definite lack of new entrants into the market (not that some people try, but almost all fail miserably). Tesla Motors is an exception and not a typical experience of a brand new automobile manufacturing company.
With money that you stole from high credit card interest rates and at gun point by government thugs. Now go nuke yourselves and be gone.
There is reserve fuel that will be available if there is something like a RUD event with the engines or some other problem on the assent, so it is perfectly valid to be burning that reserve fuel supply upon descent. The main problem is that the recovery system eats into the payload part of the rocket equation (legs have mass), thus the efficiency and Isp suffer from the perspective of the rocket as a whole.
Previous recovery systems have eaten so much of the payload that you essentially got a thimble into orbit. The trick and the challenge is to put in a recovery system and still have enough useful payload mass available to put meaningful payloads into space.
Given that they've recovered precisely zero engines after flight... that's something of an assumption.
I think the goal of this particular flight is to recover the engines of the 1st stage after the flight. I think that count is going to go up by a few by the end of next month. The goal is to do land recovery of the rocket eventually though, and to keep the service crew which refurbishes the rocket down to a minimum. As to if SpaceX will be able to accomplish that goal is certainly something to be skeptical about though.
I don't think two orders of magnitude is possible
If you want to see what the actual guy who designed the Falcon 9 thinks of the reduction of launch costs, I'd suggest at least reading some of his thoughts before pulling up random numbers of your own.
The long term goal of SpaceX is to start selling Falcon 9 flights for about $20-$30 million with a reusable 1st stage and if they can get the 2nd stage to become reusable they want to get it down to about $5 million per flight... with a hoped-for goal to drop that down to perhaps as low as $1 million. In other conversations, Elon Musk has suggested he might even get the cost of a round-trip flight to Mars down to about $500k per person.
In other words, the two orders of magnitude is what SpaceX is trying for and they have rocket scientists who have crunched the numbers to see if it is possible. That is certainly not something calculated on the back of a bar napkin but somebody who is building these rockets and has put something into space.
I like to use this analogy in terms of the fuel costs for rockets: The catering budget to feed the press corps at a Shuttle launch cost more than the fuel being used to launch the rocket.
Even with your figure of about $300k, I would argue that SpaceX spends a comparable amount for public relations + press kits on each flight of the Falcon 9. It really is in the statistical noise level in terms of costs of the launch.
At the moment what SpaceX would really love to do is simply recover the Merlin engines, tear them apart and find out what worked and what didn't work in terms of sending stuff into orbit. All of the previous launches had those engines completely fall apart or sink into the deep ocean in a state that is unrecoverable, so this kind of engineering analysis has been impossible. Even if the engines land in the water, a soft landing recovery in the ocean is going to produce some very valuable information that can significantly help with the engine development.
For those who have been following the development of SpaceX, this shouldn't even be news other than the specific announcement that they really will be doing this on the very next flight.
Then again, if you knew about this.... why didn't you submit a link to Slashdot yourself?
If you really want the people in the U.S. military to be held accountable for this kind of thing, you need to convince the American people that it is a problem that needs to be dealt with. It needs to become a campaign issue and something that becomes commonly hated. Unfortunately, if this stuff is happening on another continent upon people that don't speak the same language or share the same culture and those same people have threatened "Death to America" including no regard for killing civilians in America.... the best you are going to get from ordinary Americans is "Meh?"
State dealership laws can get very complex and are usually biased toward the local dealership groups... and those laws vary considerably from one state to the next. You may be correct that some shareholders could set up those dealerships in most (but not all) states, but again there are some limits particularly for dealerships owned by "foreign" persons (in this case the definition of foreign includes anybody not from that state defined by residency requirements).
I'm not saying that it is simple, and in many cases you are correct that such businesses could be established, but there are limits and sometimes is up to the discretionary review of a bureaucracy that can rule arbitrarily... in other words you don't know what those regulators or commissioners are going to rule until the situation is actually presented to them.
Why the hell does that matter?
The only difference is that Elon Musk has far more credibility than you do. He sometimes takes a bit longer to deliver, but his record on making wild assertions and making them actually happen is pretty good.