Robot for India's Moon Mission by IIT Kanpur

ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation, is planning to send a robot for its mission to moon. It is probably going to be made by students and profs of IIT-Kanpur (the Indian equivalent of MIT). The two-legged robot, fitted with sophisticated sensors and high-resolution cameras, is capable of recording information and images using laser beams. It can also detect the distance of a hindrance, enter a small crater, bring surface samples and return high resolution images to the lunar vehicle. It balances cost and sophistication; basic functionality for only $50,000.

you assume obscene amounts of money aren't req'd.

[rickmccl (637396)]

The best thing about it only costing 50 grand is that it will be easier to send up a replacement when the cheap parts on the first one fsck up. Thanks for assuming the large amount of cash spent on space exploration is wasted, subby. Way to be a team player. When I leave this planet, I'm leaving you behind, kthxbi.

Re:you assume obscene amounts of money aren't req'

[buswolley (591500)]

Agreed. If these 50 grand robotic explorers can accomplish their mission then fine, NASA is should be ashamed.

I suspect, however, that these cheap robots will not stand up to the rigors of space and dust.

Flamebait

[westlake (615356)]

The two-legged robot, fitted with sophisticated sensors and high-resolution cameras, is capable of recording information and images using laser beams...Although it needs some more sophisitication the cost of it is less than $50,000. Now that a penny infront of the obscene amounts of money NASA spends every day.

It seems fair to ask how much this off-the-shelf robotic technology owes to the "obscene" amounts of money invested by NASA and others in R&D over the last half-century.

Re:

[caffeinemessiah (918089)]

Absolutely, but I think the point is that although NASA laid a lot of the groundwork, it may have become administratively challenged over the years. No one can deny the immense contribution of NASA to science in general, but I think this research group proves that NASA isn't as nible, and certainly not as cost-effective, as it can be. Imagine the crazy sh** we'd see if it were.

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[ScorpFromHell (837952)]

ISRO [Indian Space Research Organization - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research _Organisation%5D [wikipedia.org], and India's Space & Atomic Energy research in general, has been targeting self sufficiency by indulging in indigenous research & manufacturing capabilities, including the whole supply chain. India owes wrt the science [For eg., Sir Newton did come up with some workable equations/formulae for these kinda stuff]. But wrt technology India has tried to or has had to be self sufficient, especia

space "waste"? No, it's not.

[PatrickThomson (712694)]

Well, how much does it weigh? If a robot costing ten times as much weighs 10% less and does the same job, you've saved money. Getting there is the costly thing, compared to that design and construction is a trivial amount of money.

Re:space "waste"? No, it's not.

[GoulDuck (626950)]

Agree. And another thing is the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity that have lasted more than 10 times than NASA expected. Let us see how long the ISRO robot will last. I do hope it will last very long. And if possible, take some pictures of one of the Apollo mission sites.

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[gardyloo (512791)]

I do hope it will last very long. And if possible, take some pictures of one of the Apollo mission sites.

Heck, they can do that here on a sound-stage somewhere!

It will definitley cost more

[iammaxus (683241)]

It's simple economics. If you spend billions of dollars getting it there (they will), it's going to be worth it to spend more than $50,000 on it.

This is a journal entry folks, not a regular story

[Old Man Kensey (5209)]

When critiquing the grammar and spelling, remember it's a Slashdot journal entry -- it's unlikely the author had any idea it was going to be seen by the entire Slashdot horde.

No, they would have to change the default option

[Nymz (905908)]

it's unlikely the author had any idea it was going to be seen by the entire Slashdot horde.

Publicize: Submit this story to be posted to the Slashdot front page
Publish: Share this with other Slashdot users
Post: Pay no attention to my musings

Journal entries have 3 options, and Publish is the default selection, not Publicize.

Wait Until Mission Is Successful

[xelph (542741)]

It is a very nice project and hopefully, it will be successful. But there is no point in making comparisons until *after* the project has proven to be successful. How can one say that a project that has not succeeded yet was cheaper than another one that already passed with flying colors? This does not make sense.

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[SnowZero (92219)]

How much does it cost in comparison to Beagle 2 [wikipedia.org]? Now there's a comparison we can already make, although it's one the rover designers might not be too fond of.

Concise article summary

[lancejjj (924211)]

Although it needs some more sophisitication the cost of it is less than $50,000. Now that a penny infront of the obscene amounts of money NASA spends every day.

Read the article again.

That's $50,000 for a prototype robot that they wish could be used on the moon. It is not a production model, it is not slated to go to the moon, and there are no plans to send it to the moon. Ever.

According to the article, which you clearly failed to interpret:

They have now have shown interest in our prototype. The organisation is seriously considering collaboration with us

So, a couple folks have looked at it, and they conveyed that they found it interesting. If fact, someone at the instituion thinks the space agency is considering a (mere) collaboration. That's a far and distant cry from them delivering a space-capable robot.

Suddenly, this $50,000 student-built prototype robot seems like it could be a squandering of institutional funds, and that someone is trying to cover it up by pretending that it will go to the moon.

Cost of getting there far outpaces robot cost

[Grond (15515)]

The Apollo missions got 47,900 kg to the moon for $2.75 billion [spaceagepub.com] in today's money. That's $57,411/kg. Let's say the Indians can do it vastly cheaper: $25,000/kg.

Let's say the robot weighs the same as Spirit and Opportunity (the current Mars rovers): 175kg [cornell.edu]. So the cost to get the robot to the moon would be $4,375,000, completely discounting the cost of the rocket itself, the payload container, the landing mechanism, support personnel, etc, etc.

Practical upshot: they could easily spend 10 times as much on the robot and only increase the cost of the mission 11%. And once the real costs are taken into account, the increase would probably be negligible ( 1%).

That's why NASA spends so much on the robot: a) it's incredibly expensive just to get the robot anywhere and b) if the robot screws up once it's there, the bulk of the money was completely wasted, so making the robot robust & reliable is very important.

Hey, that works just like Ebay

[Nymz (905908)]

Have you ever seen a CD for only 1 penny, but Shipping & Handling was like 20 bucks?
That little robot may only cost 50K, but Shipping & Handling to the moon is going to require upping your credit limit into the millions.

Re:Cost of getting there far outpaces robot cost

[ScorpFromHell (837952)]

The Apollo missions got 47,900 kg to the moon for $2.75 billion [spaceagepub.com] in today's money. That's $57,411/kg. Let's say the Indians can do it vastly cheaper: $25,000/kg.

Wrong, ISRO wants to do it for a mere $0.075 Billion. The launch vehicle is 316 tonne, with the spacecraft weighing 1304 kg at launch and 590 kg at lunar orbit. TThe scientific payload has a total mass of 90 kg and contains six Indian instruments and six foreign instruments. A total of 296394 KGs. That comes around to $236/kg!
From the official FAQ [isro.org] on Chandrayaan -I:

The budgetary estimate for realising the proposed Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 stands at Rs. 386.00 crores (about $76 million). This includes Rs. 53.00 crores (about $11 million) for Payload development, Rs. 83.00 crores (about $17 million) for Spacecraft Bus, Rs. 100.00 crores ($20 million) towards establishment of Deep Space Network, Rs. 100.00 crores ($20 million) for PSLV launch vehicle and Rs. 50.00 crores ($10 million) for scientific data centre, external network support and programme management expenses.

Assuming it would cost the same for Chandrayaan - II too (even though the expenditure on the Deep Space Network establishment & scientific data center will not recur), $76 Million is a pittance against Apollo's $2.75 Billion in today's money.

Let's say the robot weighs the same as Spirit and Opportunity (the current Mars rovers): 175kg [cornell.edu]. So the cost to get the robot to the moon would be $4,375,000, completely discounting the cost of the rocket itself, the payload container, the landing mechanism, support personnel, etc, etc.

As per this news [hindu.com] ISRO wants the rover to be between 30 - 100 KGs, which is way lesser than 175 KG of Spirit & Opportunity. And the rover's fare to the moon will come out to be between $7100 to $23630. That's certainly cheaper than the cost of the rover ($50000) who's prototype has been built by IIT-K as per TFA!

Practical upshot: they could easily spend 10 times as much on the robot and only increase the cost of the mission 11%. And once the real costs are taken into account, the increase would probably be negligible ( 1%).

That's why NASA spends so much on the robot: a) it's incredibly expensive just to get the robot anywhere and b) if the robot screws up once it's there, the bulk of the money was completely wasted, so making the robot robust & reliable is very important.

Fiddlesticks. That's why NASA is hitch hiking for free on Chandrayan - I. India does seem to have better brains, sharper accounting and a bigger heart, considering the embargoes that USA had put on India. And yeah, they gave zero for free without any royalties ;)

This is pretty cool.

[The Living Fractal (162153)]

When they're going somewhere other than the moon, let me know. That barren chunk of rock is a pointless waste of money IMHO. Unless you're going to build a lunar colony. So if they're starting that, then I'm all for it. Otherwise, you might as well spend the money it costs to get there on Big Macs. With cheese.

TLF

Your comment is shortsighted...

[ushering05401 (1086795)]

but maybe you were just trying to be funny.

The moon is a preliminary step toward going anywhere else.

If we establish a moonbase vehicles will not need to re-enter earth atmosphere after their initial launch, thus eliminating the most dangerous and structually damaging aspects of any space mission.

You can retask, refurbish, completely reconfigure or whatever else you want to do without bearing the cost/risk of re-entry and subsequent relaunch. All of this work could be performed in a pressurized environment

Re:

[The Living Fractal (162153)]

Like I said: If we are going there to work on starting a base/colony, I'm all for it. If we're going there to collect moon dust and play robot golf, I'm not.

TLF

Re:

[ushering05401 (1086795)]

I just re-read my post and realized that I left out my actual disagreement with your post. Right now we can't even get proper international cooperation for mid-large size projects. The ISS is a disaster, the ESA screwed up their super-rocket project, and NASA is apparently run by accountants.

If it takes small projects to get us further toward getting up there then I support that.

Now if someone actually suggested that the money to fund the 'robot golf' would instead be used to address issues like starvatio

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[The Living Fractal (162153)]

I agree with you. FOUR!

TLF

Bipedal?

[JustNiz (692889)]

A Two legged robot would be very difficult to get right and possibly very unreliable too. I hope they've taken into account the differing gravity of the moon in their gait algorithm.

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[wellingj (1030460)]

RTFA...

Weather conditions in space are very different than on earth. So we have agreed that our robot to space will be a four-legged device for better navigation and convenience.

Comparitively Speaking...

[stardude82 (1030976)]

The Mars Sojourner rover and landing system cost something like $65 million in hardware. Total development was $150 million. While the total project cost $280 million. Compared to the Viking missions of $3.5 billion each, adjusted for inflation, there is cause to show NASA is being conscience of costs nowadays. [Source:Wikipedia.org] Also, because the bulk of cost is R&D, launch and support, it makes no sense to cheap out on the hardware area in the final prototype.

Also, the trick is to land this

But does it run on...

[christian.einfeldt (874074)]

Well, you know, I had to ask.

Seriously, googling I was not able to see if this thing is running on GNU Linux or even just the kernel.

As Carl Sagan Said

[one1plus1one (1108087)]

As Carl Sagan used to say, it's not as if NASA is taking hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and launching the money into space. The money is spent and circulated right here on Earth. For example a large amount of expenses is spent on salaries for scientists, engineers, technicians (and yes it is also spent on salaries for annoying beaurocrats as well). All of those people in turn then spend the money to purchase homes, cars, groceries, college educations for their kids, vacations, etc... Some of the money spent by NASA also goes to universities in the form of research and project grants. A lot of the research that comes out of these NASA projects benefits humanity in more ways than one can really count. Also, spending money is not necessarily a "sin" or bad thing. Money is meant to be spent. Spending money benefits a nation in many ways. Spending money to explore the vastness of the cosmos and universe is one of the best things we can spend money on. If we don't spend money on exploration we are doomed to become trapped on an ever increasingly crowded and depleted planet, soon to become extinct as a species one way or another. Once we do gain cheap access to space, it's hard to imagine humans waging war and battling for a tiny strip of land when the entire universe suddenly becomes open to us. (But the only way the universe will become open is if we spend money now to build the technology and experiment and explore.) And finally... if you still think the money could be "spent to help the poor", consider that our civilization has more than enough money to spend on both the poor and space exploration. And if you think that money diverted from NASA will really go to the "poor" or "education" or something great like that, then you are naive in the ways of the world and the powers that be. Money diverted from NASA will go somewhere else and it won't be to the poor I can guarantee that.

Re:

[homer_s (799572)]

I agree with you on the usefulness of NASA and space exploration - frankly if you guys can spend a gazillion in Iraq, no one can call money spent on NASA a waste. But...

For example a large amount of expenses is spent on salaries for scientists, engineers, technicians (and yes it is also spent on salaries for annoying beaurocrats as well). All of those people in turn then spend the money to purchase homes, cars, groceries, college educations for their kids, vacations, etc.

I've heard the same justifica

IIT = MIT? ha

[mephistophyles (974697)]

IIT-Kanpur(For those who dont know, its Indian equivalent for MIT)

Aside from the grammatical error, you don't think that's a bit of a stretch? MIT: staff: 998, students: approx. 10000 Nobel Laureates: 63 working there (27 alumni have one). Not to mention all the alumni (Buzz Aldrin, Kofi Annan and many more) and their various inventions and discoveries. IIT staff: approx. 500, students: approx. 4000 Nobel Laureates: 0 A few notable alumni, granted and it has often been named the best engineering college in India. Not to slam IIT too much, I'm sure it's a fine college, but claiming it as India's MIT is not the same as saying it's India's MIT, which I assume the submitter meant.

Re:

[belg4mit (152620)]

The biggest problem with the comparison is that MIT isn't "America's MIT." It's MIT, a world-
renouned institute. Oxford isn't Britain's Harvard, or vice-versa, they're both famous and
similarly ranked.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Just to repeat what has been said many times since the IIT PR extravaganza began a few years ago: the basic reason this comparison sounds stupid and embarrassing even to most people inside the IIT system is that these institutions are not modeled as research unversities at all!

They are primarily colleges for undergraduate engineering education. Having done a reasonable job at that mandated task for the last half century or so, they are just beginning to build graduate programs and research capabilities need

Re:IIT = MIT? ha

[ghoul (157158)]

I dont believe those numbers. Are you saying IITK has a better faculty student ratio than MIT. Thats very hard to believe given that IITK is not even the top engineering college in India (that title oscillates between IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi) and definitely not the the top research instititute - that honor belongs to Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. Not many in the west hear about IISc as it does not have any undergraduate programs only postgradute research so there is no large population like the IIT B.Engg population working in US industry but if you want to do hard core research in India either you go work for the Army (DRDO), space (ISRO), Atomic establishment(DAE) or you go to IISc. There may be a few others like Indian Statistical Institute(ISI) which built the first Indian computer back in the 50s but the IITs are definitely not premier research institutes. The job of the IITs is to churn out large numbers of well trained Engineers not to carry out Fundamental research.

Beagle 3?

[tomhath (637240)]

This article reminds me of the same hype we heard before the Europeans' Beagle 2 landed on Mars. What a bargin it was, how they would show NASA how it's done, etc. Except no signal was ever detected from Beagle 2, while Spirit and Opportunity are still going strong. Yea, they really showed NASA.

Mostly, the referenced article sounds like wishful thinking.

Accomplish First

[N8F8 (4562)]

Brag later.

Yeah, just wait till it breaks

[SpacePunk (17960)]

They'll have to give the phone tech the name of the person it's registered to, and then they'll be told to reboot the robot.

Re:

[zaren (204877)]

Also some grammar checking by the editors would be nice. Still, I would assume that this article was submitted by a student at IIT-Kanpur, and English isn't their first language.

All that being said, it sounds like a really interesting project, not to mention really cheap. The article also says that they plan on making it into a four legged beast for stability, which sounds more reasonable than a two-legger. Bots are still getting the hang of walking on two pegs here in 1G, so designing one that will walk

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[westlake (615356)]

I would assume that this article was submitted by a student at IIT-Kanpur, and English isn't their first language.

seems to me that makes an even stronger case for checking your spelling and grammar before posting.

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[ghoul (157158)]

Most education in India is carried out in English so regardless of first language anyone at IIT will probably be a better English speaker than the general Slashdot Reader. However that doesnt prevent people from making silly mistakes while typing fast on Slashdot. I mean the Slashdot entry is probably the least important portion of that persons day so lay off on the Grammar Nazism.

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[1u3hr (530656)]

I mean the Slashdot entry is probably the least important portion of that persons day so lay off on the Grammar Nazism.

I was criticising the EDITORS, not the submitter. Editors are SUPPOSED to be grammar Nazis.

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[OECD (639690)]

Also some grammar checking by the editors would be nice.

Apparently they're outsourcing that: "Help us with feedback on Firehose items by selecting 'dupe', or 'typo' in the feedback menu below an item."

Robot Grammar

[Nymz (905908)]

How many fucking years does it take to implement a spellcheck and train the editors to use it?

We can put a two-legged laser firing robot on the moon, but what are the chances it won't be able to spell ether?

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[bheekling (976077)]

We can put a two-legged laser firing robot on the moon, but what are the chances it won't be able to spell ether?

The big question is whether it needs to spell "ether" :}

Either that, or Irony Alert!

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[Nymz (905908)]

The big question is whether it needs to spell "ether" :}
Either that, or Irony Alert!

The ancient meaning of ether is outer space, so I was shooting for both irony and a pun. :-)

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[Goaway (82658)]

Slashdot "editors" do not "edit" posts. This makes Slashdot "more real" according to CmdrTaco.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174297&thresho ld=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=14502339#145024 84 [slashdot.org]

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[gardyloo (512791)]

Yeah, I know, Taco thinks it gives a feeling of immediacy, gritty reality.

I get a feeling of gritty immediacy when I eat tacos, too.

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[be-fan (61476)]

Entertainingly enough, even native English speakers can never get prepositions correct. A more correct translation follows.

ISRO, [the] Indian Space Research Organization, is planning to send a robot [on a] mission to the moon. It is probably going to be made by students and profs. of IIT-Kanpur (for those who don't know, it's the Indian equivalent [of] MIT). The two-legged robot, fitted with sophisticated sensors and high-resolution cameras, is capable of recording information and images using laser beams.

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[1u3hr (530656)]

Entertainingly enough, even native English speakers can never get prepositions correct. A more correct translation follows.

I was going for pointing out the gross errors rather than a rewrite. I did it in about 1 minute, most of that fiddling with tags, if Taco had any respect for his readers that's all he needs to do.

Less entertainingly (to me), both my posts have been modded to -1 Troll, so it seems that lèse majesté is still an offence here.

Re:

[arivanov (12034)]

Close but no cigar.

The question is: Why compare total R&D, Manufacturing and Operations budget to a lone manufacturing cost without any of the R&D and operation costs taken into account? And the answer is - because it sounds cool on Slashdot.

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[megaditto (982598)]

Why are there Americans not studying at MIT? Last I checked, over 90% of American-born engineers have not graduated from MIT.

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[Lost Engineer (459920)]

And the OP was what?
Start out by dissing NASA and America and the response is predictable.