Indian Mars Probe Successfully Enters Sun-Centric Orbit 132
New submitter palemantle writes with this excerpt from The Hindu, updating our earlier mention of the successful launch of India's Mars-bound probe: "In a remarkably successful execution of a complex manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) fired the propulsion system on board the spacecraft for a prolonged duration of 23 minutes from 0049 hours on Sunday. In space parlance, the manoeuvre is called Trans-Mars Injection (TMI). ISRO called it 'the mother of all slingshots.' Celebrations broke out at the control centre of the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore from where the spacecraft specialists gave commands for the orbiter's 440 Newton engine to begin firing. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, is designed to demonstrate the technological capability to reach Mars orbit. But the $72m (£45m) probe will also carry out experiments, including a search for methane gas in the planet's atmosphere."
Re:Great but... money better spent elsewhere (Score:2, Interesting)
While I congratulate them on the outstanding technical achievement of this and other feats of their space program, it is a country where any and all available funds need to be going towards resolving the massive poverity, corruption and inequality issues. Over half of the nation's population is poor, 21% of their diseases are water-related,and only 33% even have access to what would be considered normal sanitation facilities. Charities exist by the dozens to deal with a variety of issues in India in trying to clean up these problems, and here is their government spending millions on space missions. To me, that just seems grossly irresponsible. :/
When a similar question was asked to a professor at ISRO after a successful launch. He said, during diwali we spend 5000 crores on fireworks/rockets which reach only 10 feet high. We are spending 500 crores for MOM (Mars Orbiter Mission) in comparison.
IMHO, money can always be better spent elsewhere.
An Indian Odyssey (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent work by our scientists and engineers at ISRO.
Mangalyaan is thus far proving:
1. How reliable PSLV series is for commercial space-launch.
2. How far India has come in mastery over orbital mechanics - witness the precise application of Oberth effect. This isn't just your granddads Hohmann slingshot. At least not yet.
3. Setting benchmark pricing for Mars transit at USD 70 Mn. for 485 Kg payload viz. 144K USD per Kg.
4. Generating huge impact among school kids. Visits to Nehru planetarium are no longer about US this and Russia that... even though we owe them for being pioneers.
I look forward to the next logical extension viz. manned-mission with the Indian flag atop Olympus Mons.
Varun
Re:Great but... money better spent elsewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research_Organisation#Goals_and_objectives [wikipedia.org]
Seems they got the funding mix right and can now enjoy the long term tech exports and get to add to space science
Re:What the heck has happened to the West ? (Score:5, Interesting)
To start, the US de-funded scientific research. It had to, in part, because Ronald Raygun privatized many government functions. What was the practical effect? It means that rather than paying managers of a government function a government salary, you now take bids from private companies who have only one interest at heart: To make the managers of the private company rich. The cost of government has risen dramatically thereby. Think I'm wrong? Look at SAIC, Ross Perot and his old company, and all the companies related to war and contracting "security" services (just to scratch the surface). Which is directly related to why America spends well north of 55 percent of it's national budget on war related costs, instead of the less than 25 percent of a national budget that European countries do. So, in a country where people do not like government, don't want to pay any tax, in a country where R&D incentives (first initiated during WWII) are removed, in a country that feels it's OK to send jobs to China (effectively making China's middle class rich and America's poor) you end up being left behind on the ideological, scientific, basic research items.
Europe has it's own financial problems right now. It did three things. First, it allowed Germany to become not only the bankers of the EU, but to become the economic powerhouse of the EU as well. Second, many EU countries bought a ton of AAA-rated US mortgage packages that turned out to be junk. Take a close look at which countries bought what and you'll see the effect I'm pointing out. Third, the EU tried to grow their economy by doing what the US and UK did; make cheap loans available as a means of boosting production. Bad move, right? Credit bubbles seldom last forever. Look at what it did to Spain.
Which leads me to this: First world nation's governments are deeply involved in "realpolitik", and are no longer paying attention to the ideologies on which they were founded or the ideologies of science as it might relate to industry. In the US and UK this means enabling corporate and banker greed. On mainland Europe, this means getting wrapped around the axle of competing political interests.
...What the heck happened to the usually technologically more advanced societies of the Western countries ?
Asia is playing catch up very very fast, and before long, they might even get ahead of you guys !