Mangalyaan Successfully Put Into Mars Orbit 173
knwny writes: India's Mars satellite Mangalyaan was successfully placed into orbit around Mars early on Wednesday following a 10-month journey from Earth. India thus joins the U.S., the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union in having successfully completed a Mars mission. It is, however, the only one to have done so on the first attempt. Headed by the Indian space agency ISRO, Mangalyaan was made in 15 months at a cost of just around 74 million USD — the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Insightful)
Could it be they succeeded in part because much of the previous experience?
Either way, great job doing it on their first attempt and cheapest.
Yes, but mostly no. What you say would be valid if firstly, research details (and the real nitty gritty details) would be shared freely - like open source. And to my (admittedly limited) knowledge, it is not. Yes, scientific papers and research is shared, but this is largely an engineering problem, not a scientific problem. And everyone pretty much needs to figure out the engineering challenges by themselves.
What you say would also be true (as is true in the high tech industry, for example) if sufficient people changed jobs back and forth between organizations like NASA and ISRO. To my knowledge, ISRO works on a shoestring budget and is a fairly insular work environment. Hardly any scientists or engineers quit a NASA job to join ISRO. I could be wrong though, but I would be very very surprised if there was indeed a reverse brain drain.
If anything, the brain drain consists of India's best and brightest relocating to the US after having studied in the near-free subsidized taxpayer funded colleges and universities in India. They typically go to the US to do their masters and PhD and then some of them join NASA.
ISRO is actually a fairly old and mature organization. India's scientific programs, especially in the high-tech space (and especially rocketry) suffered enormously because of high-tech blockade enforced by the US. The blockade was to the extent that even simple multi-core computers were banned from being exported to India. (That's why India tried to design its own supercomputer back in the day - the Param).
I know it may sound like I am being hyperbolic about ISRO but they actually deserve double credit for all the sh*t they had to put up with, and still managed to set ridiculous goals like this, and then achieving it, and that too on a shoestring budget and being able to retain their talent that gets paid Indian govt salaries. Trust me, that is not much. Forget about Indian pride etc. What is worth understanding is how organizations like this continue to succeed in the face of such big challenges.
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Not to be rude (kudos ISRO regardless of all this nitpicking!), but even without hardcore information dumps from NASA, the fact remains that ISRO's attempt, coming so much later than the other three nations' first attempts, invariably benefits from the enormous pace of global scientific and technological advancement in the interim.
The first successes (after initial failures) of the US and Russian Mars programs came back in 1964 and 1971, respectively. I mean, forget the modern Internet and iPhones and all
Re:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Insightful)
Nitpicking is fun, so I'll have a go.
This is true, first missions used caveman technology compared to what is available now. 20+ years later is a completely different matter, right? That would be the 90s. Great, succesful missions like Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander or Mars Climate Orbiter? Oh, wait...
Over 20 years of technology moving forward did not make it easy for NASA to reach Mars. 20 more would not make it that much easier for the first-timer - a bit cheaper, perhaps. This is really an impressive accomplishment.
Re:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to be rude (kudos ISRO regardless of all this nitpicking!), but even without hardcore information dumps from NASA, the fact remains that ISRO's attempt, coming so much later than the other three nations' first attempts, invariably benefits from the enormous pace of global scientific and technological advancement in the interim.
The first successes (after initial failures) of the US and Russian Mars programs came back in 1964 and 1971, respectively. I mean, forget the modern Internet and iPhones and all that for a moment.... personal computers as awesome as the Altair 8800 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) were still years away from being available. Can you imagine living in a world where that Altair 8800 was too badass to even exist yet, and launching a successful Mars mission? The NASA engineers in the 50's and 60's were working with caveman technology compared to what *anyone*, even ISRO, has access to today.
So I still contend: it's not very fair to gloat about ISRO making it on the first try *now* vs other first-failures, when the other first-failures were so long ago.
For sure. NASA and the Russian equivalent have been the pioneers in space exploration. No questions about that.
Nonetheless, after the Cold War fueled space race fizzled out.. and it has been a couple of decades now, hardly anyone is doing anything worthwhile as far as space exploration is concerned. You will probably admit that we have regressed more than we have made progress. With this in light, it is creditable that an underfunded organization like ISRO got this funded and successfully executed.
And let's also face the face that India is still a terribly poor country. The pursuit of science is indeed part of its value system that probably that fact alone caused ISRO to survive all these years. And ISRO has also been releasing satellites since 1975 (Aryabhata), although they only got launch capability fairly recently (1993). And admittedly, the state of the art wasn't that evolved in 1975 either.
For sure, this is only a "proof of concept" kind of a launch, but the thing is - it now sets some new benchmarks in terms of cost, capability, scale of ambition, and execution. You can push something to Mars in 75 mil. That is pretty frickin sweet. And if you are going to talk about hype and hyperbole, look at the media coverage and hype that SpaceX and Virgin Galactic has been getting. Why begrudge ISRO their moment in the spotlight?
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Only if you nitpick on the same level as looking at Detroit and calling the USA a terribly poor country - India has the tenth largest economy on the planet FFS!
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OK, so India has the 10th largest GDP in the world. Except, that is only on account of its huge population. Like Brazil, which has only like 20 percent of India's population, but is if I recall correctly the 6th largest GDP in the world, but Brazil is not a member of the so-called "First World" either. The percentage of poor neighborhoods related to wealthy neighborhoods by total population, in India, is enormous compared to the USA.
But then again, the fact that India is not a developed country counts as an
Term out of context (Score:2)
That name comes from the Cold War. USA plus military allies (including NATO), then U.S.S.R. + satellites, then the rest as the "third world". It never had an economic meaning.
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Ahh, so the entire country of India with its population of 1.2 billion has a smaller economy than the US state of California with its population of 38 million. Gotcha.
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India has the tenth largest economy on the planet FFS!
Yet the number of Indians without electricity or plumbing is still greater than the entire population of the US.
Opens up a new courier option to Mars (Score:2)
Agreed- good science by India - congratulations to ISRO for their work. Certainly it may open up interplanetary exploration in the same way SpaceX have been redefining conversations about getting into earth orbit. the NASA Mars Orbiter cost 671 million. I am sure it is more complex, but I am also sure some spaces agencies may be contacting ISRO to ask about using their platform to transport their experiments to Mars as an interesting alternative to NASA's much more expensive option. More options to getting
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Only if you only consider "manned and boldly going" to constitute the whole of space exploration. Otherwise, especially on the unmanned side, we're in something of a golden era. Especially with regards to planetary science.
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...what corners they cut without compromising reliability...
The trouble with that claim is it takes a bunch of launches to measure reliability. Orbital Sciences' Taurus XL had five successful missions right out of the gate before it dropped a billion dollars worth of satellites in the ocean when it failed three of the next four. Every successful launch is something to be celebrated, to be sure, but it'll take many more successes before they can claim their launch system is reliable.
Secondly, cheap wages are only a small part of lauch costs. This is not some software they are building. I am not an expert, but I would imagine that most of the cost (most of the 75 million dollars) went into engineering, materials, and high tech parts. And material cost, especially for high end exotic stuff that goes into rockets - costs the same worldwide, including India.
Engineering, materials, and high tech parts = paying people to do or create these
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Nobody is begrudging them their moment in the spotlight - only attempting to counterbalance and correct the hype and hyperbole that so many people (like you) are spinning.
So says the person who just presented a whole post begrudging their moment in the spotlight.
Hint: anytime someone starts with "Nobody is" what follows is them saying what they say no one is saying.
I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'
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Congrats to ISRO and India as you say, and I don't know how to put this without it sounding like I am try to downplay their achievement, which I'm not, but it's worth reminding everyone who never knew or forgot: the USA only got its first satellite launch capability in 1958, and by 1964, only SIX YEARS LATER with 1960's tech, NASA flew Mariner 4 on a successful flyby mission to Mars on their second attempt. In 1962, only four years after the first USA satellite launch, NASA flew Mariner 2 on a successful
Re:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to recall that China's mission failed in 2011, and read your arguments/nitpicking again. China's failure in 2011 simply implies that with all the advantages you mentioned, MARS mission is still a challange. And ISRO needs to be praised for what they achieved.
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So I still contend: it's not very fair to gloat about ISRO making it on the first try *now* vs other first-failures, when the other first-failures were so long ago.
What about Yinghuo-1 [wikipedia.org] and Nozomi [wikipedia.org]? They were pretty recent missions which failed, 2011 and 2003 respectively.
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My favorite is the story of the Apollo 11 guidance computers' ROMs being woven by little old ladies.
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May I add that the CIA was actively involved in sabotaging ISRO projects like the cryogenic engine and the careers of its best scientist.
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/01/07/isros-lost-chance-from-19-years-ago-part-1-176383.html
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Arun, I would *like* to believe what you wrote. *You* would like to believe what you wrote. But do you really know the reality at ISRO? Are you actually an ISRO employee? Or is your writing just wishful thinking?
Do you actually have technical knowledge of the mission? What part of the mission, which components, which materials, which payloads, which scientific experiments using the payloads, were actually invented/designed/developed independently in India? Which part was borrowed from elsewhere? From publis
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There are hundreds of things India did first (First University? First country to develop decimal system? google a bit and you will know). Will you shut up if somebody claims that every NASA mission used decimal system developed by India?
I am equally proud of every NASA mission. And I welcome every effort to advance scientific development. It does not matter how many years India has taken to r
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A university, very loosely defined, is a meeting place for scholars and students, and one consisting of a formalized or semi-formalized rite of passage.
We generally call such place "a school". You don't get any more specific than that. And I've never said that Indians didn't have schools. But calling every school "a university" renders the term utterly useless, since we already have the genetic term "a school".
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[quote]
We generally call such place "a school". You don't get any more specific than that. And I've never said that Indians didn't have schools. But calling every school "a university" renders the term utterly useless, since we already have the genetic term "a school".
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"Schools" like Nalanda, Takshasheela, etc were called "Vishwa Vidyalayas" (translated from Sanskrit means World Educational Institutions). That is the term used even today in Indian languages to refer to Universities. Schools are calle
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Just like the word "madrasa" can be used very broadly in Arabic to refer to many kinds of schools, even those have been reformed along the organizational and legal lines of a European-style university. And? Again, universitas was a kind of medieval European institution, and much later, one specific type of it later spread across the world. I'm sorry for your poor grasp of language logic and history, but if word X currently happens to be used in India to describe an institution of type Y that exists in India today, and a thousand years ago it was used in the same place to describe a different type of institution Z that existed in India a thousand years ago, that doesn't suddenly mean that institutions of type Y coexisted with institutions of type Z a thousand years ago. That only means the name was later co-opted for a purpose. But later language changes don't retroactively reshape historical facts. There's a lot of books you can read on the history of higher education, and they happen to be quite unanimous on the subject.
Are you generally this obtuse or is it a "special" effort for this topic? I suppose it is the latter.
Don't be anachronistic when it comes to comparing historical data with present time. Just because the term "Y" was used to refer to institutions that taught "AB&C" in the 16th century in Europe, doesn't mean the same term "Y" is used to refer to institutions that teach the same subjects now. More likely "AB&C" have been replaced with "DE&F".
It is not a question of co-existence of "Y" and "Z" (tho
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Again, there's a body of books on the historical development of higher education and nowhere in published literature on the subject have I found an opinion that the ancient schools of India, China, or Middle East should be called universities on their own merit (as opposed to how laymen call them). If you can point me to a scholarly source, either monographs or journal papers, that would corroborate your claim, I will be very thankful for that. I've posted one reference below. I'll be glad to look for some more.
That's because you've studied a very euro-centric view of history. :)
Not your fault...that's how things were in the 20th century (and have carried forward into the 21st century as well). When the current crop of "academics" croak, then we might see some realism as far as history is concerned. If one read history per Western academics, nothing happened in asia save the fueling of Western adventurism, materialism (business, science, technology, etc) and a need to educate the heathen in the ways of the Christi
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The University system in Ancient India was forcibly decimated as a result of Islamic invasions. There are accounts of students and teachers at Nalanda being killed in the thousands and the great library razed to the ground. The library burnt for 3 months, according to historical records.
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Imperial Nanking university, China, 258AD (Score:2)
Funny that, I work at a European university and this afternoon I attended a presentation on scholarship, part of which included a history of scholarship and the university. The highly regarded senior lecturer flagged up Imperial Nanking University, 258AD, as the first real university, and made a good case for it, as does wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
I think you're arguing that a university is only a university if it follows a definition of what one is according to Western European medieval law: I'd say most people would go wi
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I'm arguing that even if the medieval university was a slightly different place than the modern university, the latter, as found all around the world, is an evolutionary product of the former. That's not to say that sharks can't superficially resemble dolphins. But researchers in the field have had some very strong opinions on this. [google.com] One could spend a few hours in a library and find a dozen claims like that. (I've had a plan to do just that recently, what with me having interest in the overall history of edu
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So your argument is an article from an author who might not know better for people who almost certainly don't know better? The modern Nalanda university is most certainly incorporated as a university. The old Nalanda was a Buddhist monastery.
Recently it has become fashionable worldwide to found new institutions of higher learning solely as universities. In addition, some ancient institutions of higher learning have been re-chartered and re-organized as universities. An example is the Al-Azhar University. It
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Re:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Funny)
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Could it be they succeeded in part because much of the previous experience?
Either way, great job doing it on their first attempt and cheapest.
You should reverse the question: Will NASA be able to build on this "previous" experience? Would they be able to send a rocket to Mars for $75m, in end of 2015?
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Sometimes one gets the feeling that when the 'standing on the shoulders of giants' is rolled out like this, it actually means 'Standing on our toes'. We shouldn't begrudge them their success - I know you aren't, but others do.
It is great, in my opinion; space exploration has been stalled for too long, and if we can get to the point where everybody does it, I'm all for it. It would be great if going in to space was no more unusual than what flying out to China is now.
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Did NASA opensource their rocket designs? Guidance systems? Power systems? Control and systems software and hardware? Right.
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inches and meters (Score:1, Insightful)
Nay
The Indians, unlike their counterparts from an "advanced country", know to not confuse inches from meters
but I'm pleased their media is just as bonkers! (Score:2, Funny)
Very true. I am pleased one of the stories gives its readers the handy hint that the rocket "weighed nearly 320 tonnes - almost as much as 50 full-grown elephants". Nice to see the media world-wide goes for those handy public friendly measurement analogies to really mess with people's heads. Not sure how many elephants there are to the Library of Congress or a US football pitch however.
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Nay
The Indians, unlike their counterparts from an "advanced country", know to not confuse inches from meters
That was 34 years after our first attempted flyby mission in 1964, in which the payload fairing failed to separate. We had a successful flyby 23 days later. Our first orbiter mission was in 1971, in which the launch vehicle failed to reach orbit. We had a successful orbiter mission 21 days later.
ISRO definitely has something to be proud of, don't get me wrong, but NASA pulled off the same thing 43 years ago, a few months before the first microprocessor was created.
With a budget of 74M ,,, (Score:3, Funny)
... I wonder what NASA can do with a budget of $74 million ...
.....
... hmm
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NASA has higher standards than other space agencies. After all, NASA are the ones who trailblazed pretty much everything to do with space exploration. Everyone else just tried to copy based on NASA's data.
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In practice very few of those MIT/Caltech graduates go back and work for institutions like ISRO in India (yes a few of them go back to teach in schools like IITs [wikipedia.org] in India). From my experience, most of the people who work for Indian space and related programes had their education in India.
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ARE YOU KIDDING?? (Score:1)
"NASA are the ones who trailblazed pretty much everything to do with space exploration" ARE YOU KIDDING?
first artificial satellite, USSR: http://www.space.com/17852-sputnik-space-race-first-satellite-photos.html
first human in space, USSR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin
first woman in space, USSR: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-woman-in-space
first unmanned landing on the moon, USSR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing
first mission to Venus, USSR: http://www.windows2universe.
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Re: With a budget of 74M ,,, (Score:1)
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... I wonder what NASA can do with a budget of $74 million ... ... hmm .....
Hire India?
Congratulations India (Score:1)
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I don't really agree with your outlook on it's people (I don't know them), but yes congratulations India, well done.
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India produces better looking scientists than most countries.
You mean scientists like this Indian God [wordpress.com]?
good (Score:1)
someone else in the world spending tens of billions of dollars to scan a rock, we should not be the only ones
now NASA freaks please get over your patriot peens, there are plenty of other capable people in the world, in the end its better for all of us
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But the US and Soviet Union were doing all this and more in the seventies with vastly inferior technology and far more unknowns. Lets face facts: If North Korea managed to produce an Apple II clone in 2014, you probably wouldn't be saying the west needs to get over their 'patriot peens' and accept Kim Jong-Un as a capable computer builder.
That said, this is a huge step for India's fledgeling space program and I hope that by 2030 or so they will indeed have caught up with the US and Russia.
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It may be more about the price tag than anything else.
Ezekiel 23:20
What version of the Bible is that!?
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It may be more about the price tag than anything else.
Ezekiel 23:20
What version of the Bible is that!?
A lusty [biblegateway.com] one!
Outsourced (Score:2)
Maybe the Indian's outsourced the work...
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This is such a good idea.
Parts have been outsourced for decades (Score:3)
The first attempt (Score:3)
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European Space Agency was the first to do it right in first attempt.
Too bad about their lander, though.
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Everyone is getting all excited about India/ISRO and ESA making it to Mars on their first attempt -- great, good job, those are achievements, no question. Here is the Wikipedia description of the USA's first attempt at Mars in 1964:, "Mariner 3 was launched on November 5, 1964 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 13, but the shroud encasing the spacecraft atop its rocket failed to open properly, and Mariner 3 did not get to Mars. Unable to collect the Sun's energy for power from its solar p
Congratulations to India and everyone involved (Score:5, Insightful)
The more information we as a species can gather about other planets and travelling through space can only help us all in the future.
To have achieved this at the cost they have means far more experiments performed and more sensors launched.
Congratulations.
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Exploration of space and the solar system is mostly for fun. It's interesting to see what other places look like, but it's unlikely that it is going to affect us a species. Earth observing satellites will have a greater impact on that.
In your lifetime probably yes. When the first trains started to move in the early 1800s, you could probably say the same.
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Who knows what the impacts might be. I am 30 now, let say I live until my 90s. Since I have been born the transistor has completely changed life for most of us on this planet. 60 years before I was born cars were only really starting to have a big impact. By the time I die we have no idea what the major changes will be and where they will come from. Low gravity environments may be the key to materials or processes which enable us to do things we can't do now, and the value of those materials may make l
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Why is this considered "boasting"? Why can't it be considered emphatic celebration of a scientific/engineering achievement. Being the nerds that we Indians are in general, it is not that uncharacteristic of us to do so. :) (and ducks for the brickbats that are sure to follow)
Better that than "boast" about being the world champions in Baseball or American football
Impressive, but probably not that cheap. (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect that the "true cost" is somewhat higher than the quoted 74M. For instance, how many spares from Chandrayaan did they use? One should always be suspicious of major spaceflight operations that claim unusually low cost or unusually fast times, because most of the time they are leveraging pre-existing assets. For instance, most flight hardware components (computers, radios, antennas) have 2-3 year manufacturing lead times: it takes that amount of time to go through the design review process, acquire the appropriate components, assemble the widget, run it through the shake and bake environmental tests, etc.
If you're doing a first mission that needs, say, 2 radios, and you buy 2 plus a couple spares, and you make it through the qualification program and none fell out, you now have two perfectly good radios sitting on the shelf ready to go. But it's not really fair to claim those as being cost free, nor not contributing the schedule.
However, in general, well done to the Indian team.
Yes yes, the rates, I've seen that before. (Score:1)
Because they outsource to themselves at 1/3 the cost of Americans.
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Because they outsource to themselves at 1/3 the cost of Americans.
So even thát they do better!
Innovations out of the MoM or Mangalyaan (Score:5, Informative)
There have been significant innovations brought to the global space efforts by Mangalyaan. These innovations are the ones that cut the costs of the Mars initiative to $75M.
There have been innovations in planning, management and execution. The key ones have been a strategic focus on component reuse and leveraging other ongoing space missions within ISRO to concurrently complete tasks for Mangalyaan (:-) Isro folks hate the nickname). The whole project was planned in detail and completely schedule driven. Mangalyaan took 18 months from Mission announcement to lift-off. http://www.forbes.com/sites/sa... [forbes.com]
The other major innovation was in terms of software modelling & simulation of the entire mission. Physical tests were made redundant on a scale never done before - just one prototype was needed. This cut waste, time & costs significantly.
ISRO chose a longer route but the slingshotting technique paid off in terms of far lesser fuel consumption (thus reducing the weight of the space craft) and yet took approximately the same time as the Maven.
Low manpower costs also helped.
I would think the payoffs to the global space community are in terms of cutting edge techniques developed. Collaboration with the Indian industry have helped build next-gen capability which will pay off in the years to come.
The Mom, a Technology demonstrator is a product of Jugaad or Frugal Engineering. The next mission is scheduled for sometime in 2017-2020. More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
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ISRO chose a longer route but the slingshotting technique paid off in terms of far lesser fuel consumption (thus reducing the weight of the space craft)
I'm quite sure they didn't "choose" it as much as they were forced to go that route by the less capable launcher hardware they had, but people usually get more inventive when faced with design constraints, and of course it doesn't diminish the value of the effort.
Collaboration (Score:1)
fw: fw: fe: mission to mars (Score:1, Funny)
Amit,
Please do the needful.
regards
Sunil
Mangalyaan? (Score:2)
Weren't those the bad guys in The Fifth Element?
Congratulations (Score:1)
Congratulations, India and ISRO. I'm happy about your success, and I wish you well in the future.
Great Outsourcing Opportunity (Score:1)
Instead of spending billions for NASA to maintain the ISS and other dubious enterprises, why not just pay ISRO some of our small change to do it for us. I bet you they could have put a rover on Mars for less than the cost of the wheels on Curiosity. For the cost of Curiosity we could have a rover on Pluto.
Kudos to PM Modi as well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Kudos to PM Modi as well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice of the PM to visit and sit in on the last stage of the journey, putting science and scientists in the spotlight. Over here (NL) we hardly ever celebrate scientific successes, and accomplished scientists receive less attention and recognition from politicians than sports heroes.
Indeed, the Indian PM also tried to put this into perspective vis-a-vis sports wins with the following quote:
"This achievement is far greater than a cricket win"
(Source: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-te... [thehindu.com])
Mangalyaan in English (Score:4, Informative)
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fastening in Earth's Rotation time? (Score:1)
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Several thousands of tons of materials from space falls unto Earth every year (most in the form of dust, some meteorites), so lobbing a satellite of a few tons into space from time to time is utterly irrelevant.
It's good for everyone future (Score:1)
IndiaTimes story (Score:1)
The final operation began at 4.17 a.m. when the spacecraft's medium antenna was first activated for signals and it was rotated towards Mars at 6.57 a.m.
"The 440 Newton liquid apogee motor (LAM) was fired at 7.17 a.m. and its burn started on dot at 7.30 a.m. as programmed for the crucial operation," a senior space scientist told IANS at the Mars missio