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Moon

With Chandrayaan-2 Launch, India's ISRO Shoots For the Moon on a Shoe-String Budget (techcrunch.com) 153

India took a giant leap in its space program on Monday after its space agency launched a spacecraft that is scheduled to touch down on the Moon in September. From a report: The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which is India's equivalent of NASA, confirmed the successful launch of the spacecraft as the nation inches closer to become only the fourth country -- after the United States, China, and the Soviet Union -- to land a spacecraft on the Moon. Chandrayaan-2 aims to land on a plain surface that covers the ground between two of the Moon's craters, Simpelius N and Manzinus C. The spacecraft was originally scheduled to launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on July 15, but ISRO postponed it less than 20 minutes ahead of the deadline citing a "technical glitch." ISRO said it resolved the issue last week.

Everything about India's homegrown lunar mission -- dubbed Chandrayaan-2 (Sanskrit for "moon vehicle") -- is a technological marvel. The spacecraft -- which is sitting atop the country's most powerful rocket to date, a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle called Mark III -- is carrying an orbiter, a lunar lander called Vikram and six-wheeled rover Pragyan (Sanskrit for "wisdom"). In early September, the lander, which is named after Vikram Sarabhai, the father of ISRO, is scheduled to detach from the orbiter. Until then, Chandrayaan-2 will embark on a slow journey to the Moon, staying in an elliptical orbit. The mission's budget is just $141 million, significantly lower than those of other countries, and less than half of the recently released blockbuster "Avengers: Endgame." The orbiter is designed to operate for at least one year, but lander and rover are expected to operate for just a couple of weeks.

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With Chandrayaan-2 Launch, India's ISRO Shoots For the Moon on a Shoe-String Budget

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, 2019 @05:26AM (#58964382)

    Unnecessary propaganda even at the finest details.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, for uncrewed moon landings, which includes planned crash landings, the correct order of countries seems to be (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing):

      Soviet Union (Luna 2, 1959), USA (Ranger 4, 1962), Japan (Hiten, 1993), Europe (SMART-1, 2006), India (MIP, 2008), and China (Chang'e 1, 2009).

      • by Anonymous Coward

        And the order of countries for uncrewed soft landings seems to be:
        Soviet Union (Luna 9, Feb 1966), USA (Surveior 1, May 1966), and China (Chang'e 3, Dec 2013).

  • by palemantle ( 1007299 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @05:38AM (#58964410)
    Let me get my 2p in before the inevitable daft clamour for focus on toilets makes its appearance.

    Chandrayaan-1, launched, in 2008 was just an orbiter and did its job and did its job well.

    The just launched Chandrayaan-2 includes an orbiter, a lander, and a rover.

    Well done, India. Will be following this story.
    • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @10:40AM (#58965968)

      The just launched Chandrayaan-2 includes an orbiter, a lander, and a rover.

      . . . and Chandrayaan-3 is rumored to add to that a call center and an outsourcing center . . .

      • . . . and Chandrayaan-3 is rumored to add to that a call center and an outsourcing center . . .

        I'm guessing we'll have to wait for Chandrayaan-4 for them to set up the first Lunar Kwik-E-Mart [wikipedia.org], eh?

  • by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @06:01AM (#58964490) Homepage

    i would like to know where the difference in budget comes from.

    are they using new techniques, which are much cheaper then what everybody else is using, or is their scope much smaller allowing for a smaller budget or are they cutting corners here and there, which could make this a much more dangerous affair.?

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      I don't know about the probe and rover side of things, but on the rocket side, it's fairly cheap, but not abnormally so. They're apparently paying 375M crore, which is $56M USD, for a launch vehicle that does 8 tonnes to LEO and 4 tonnes to GTO. By contrast, Falcon 9 is $62M for a 22,8t LEO / 8,3t GTO vehicle. So practically the same price, but with a far larger payload.

      That said, NASA does everything expensively - including launch contracts.

      • You have quoted the cost of a reusable SpaceX's Falcon 9 of $62M. If the SpaceX Falcon 9 is an expendable launch then the price is much higher and I think it is over $100M.

        The Indian rocket is expendable and its launch cost is cheap when compared to other expendable rockets.

        SpaceX is disrupting the space launch market by using reusable rockets to bring costs down. If India could create reusable rockets then they have a good chance of being cheaper than SpaceX.

        • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @09:46AM (#58965614) Homepage

          The Indian rocket is expendable because, of course, it cannot be reused. The payloads listed for both rockets are at the prices listed for both rockets.

          I'm sure, all else being equal, India's reusable rockets could be cheaper than SpaceX's, in the same way that Afghanistan's rockets could be cheaper than India's. But all things are not equal. Until there's actually an Indian reusable stack to compare (and let's not forget that they're facing a moving target - SpaceX considers the Falcon series to be obsolete tech and is moving to Starship, which it sees as far cheaper per launch, despite the much larger payloads), it's a pointless hypothetical.

          To put it another way: it's the pace of innovation that matters above all else here, not labour costs.

      • "That said, NASA does everything expensively - including launch contracts."

        That's just for porc, these are Vegetarians.

    • by jma05 ( 897351 )

      Among other things, the personnel costs are considerably lower.
      Rocket scientists only make $12K when I last checked.

    • i would like to know where the difference in budget comes from.

      To a large extent, it's going to be labor costs. They're many times lower in India. Otherwise, it could be some smart engineering, the way SpaceX is doing it today.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @09:39AM (#58965570) Homepage Journal

        Labour costs are a very small part of it. The big savings are by using tried and tested technologies, aiming a bit lower, and by being smart.

        Their rocket isn't huge and the route they are taking to the moon is fairly long and slow. The rover is only 27kg. The satellite they sent to Mars was only 15kg, on a mission costing only $75M. Obviously it didn't have as many instruments as bigger ones, but the ones it did have were well chosen. Plus they could have sent 10 for what NASA paid for one.

        They re-use a lot of tech too. Satellites re-use the engines from boosters. They didn't want to wait for a bigger engine for their Mars mission, so used a gravitational slingshot instead to gain the necessary delta-v.

        ISRO make great use of computer simulation too, where as others prefer practical tests. So instead of building 3 of everything for testing and ground-based experiments to help solve in-flight problems, they build computer models and only one physical vehicle.

        • Labour costs are a very small part of it.

          That sounds rather implausible. Considering that in this field, practically everything is labor costs (there's not a lot of material being used and the added value per kilogram of resulting hardware is tremendous, and propellant costs are minuscule per mission flown as well), a massive decrease in labor costs *has* to correspond to a massive decrease in total costs because transforming that small amount of raw materials into resulting hardware, both in unique design and in small-scale manufacturing, costs y

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Difference from what? The comparable US program was the Surveyor Program, which was the first *soft* landing by a US craft. The entire program cost was $469 million, spread over seven launches. The cost per mission was $67 million 1966 dollars, or $530/mission in 2019 dollars.

      So India has achieved a cost reduction over the US Surveyor missions of 3.75x.

      This is an apples to oranges comparison though. The Indian mission is far more elaborate and capable than Surveyor, but when Surveyor was designed, nobody

    • They hired Indians to do the software development. So you know, half the price, quarter the quality.

    • "are they using new techniques, which are much cheaper then what everybody else is using, or is their scope much smaller allowing for a smaller budget or are they cutting corners here and there, which could make this a much more dangerous affair.?"

      A few years ago we learned, that an iPad is enough to travel from the backside of the moon to earth.

    • You should look up purchasing power parity, and then reconvert the cost of the launch from rupees using that. Start by multiplying the cost by about 4. Gives you a much more realistic view of things. Essentially the rupee (along with the yuan, rouble, and most other currencies not used as or directly tied to the principal trading currencies) are undervalued in international transactions. Sometimes hugely.

      Then also remember when someone says people in poor countries live on $1 a day, $10 a day or whatever,

  • consider the headline...

    With Chandrayaan-2 Launch, India's ISRO Shoots For the Moon on a Shoe-String Budget

    Which Google defines as..."a small amount of money which may be an inadequate amount to fund the intended purpose of its use in full...

    Instead of congratulating the Indians for this achievement, given the fact that India does not foment chaos in distant lands like one great power we all know, they choose to "rub it in" by emphasizing the so called "shoe-string budget."

    Really? Every nation has got problems. I congratulate the Indians for joining the exclusive club of the few.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      they choose to "rub it in" by emphasizing the so called "shoe-string budget."

      You read too much into it. Shoestring means "small OR inadequate" I'm not sure why you bolded one of the possible choices, presumably applying your own bias to fit your narrative.

      In any case this is rubbing it into America and their wasteful capital processes of government projects. Landing on the moon on a shoestring budget is high praise for anyone.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The problem with native english speakers is: a noticeable amount of them are americans who don't speak/write english. Oops!

    • by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      In America and in western media, saying that someone did something on a shoe string budget is one of the higher forms of praise. It's not even slightly derogatory, more the opposite.

      I congratulate the Indians for joining the exclusive club of the few.

      So did the editor.

      • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        Many times this.

        You're not going to get anything done on a shoestring budget, unless you're smart, dedicated, and have a VERY clear idea of what it is you are trying to accomplish. You simply don't have the resources for waste. More than being a compliment, most people I know stand in awe of those capable of doing such things.

        I welcome India to the new season of the Great Space Race. I wish them all the luck in the world in establishing a moonbase, if for no other reason than to shame the "great powers"

  • Water on moon (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jma05 ( 897351 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @06:11AM (#58964538)

    Chandrayaan-1 provided the first actual evidence of water on moon.

    As for the hate speech that inevitably follows these threads: India is a complex country, more like a continent than a country and hence called a subcontinent. Much of the bad news you hear about India is localized to a few states. States in India are halfway to being countries, but hardly anyone outside India understands their identities.

    The southern states in India perform (at least in comparison to Indian laggard states) like E/W coasts in US perform compared to say Mississippi in US. For instance, the few southern states do much of India's IT and Science and have European fertility rates. Waiting for laggards to catch up before attempting any higher order challenges will mean India will never break out of its colonial mold.

    India's space program also fuels its commercial space ventures. Last I checked, it was a net profit maker, not a burden on tax payers.

    Interestingly, the program is not run by India's brightest (graduates of its IITs), who mostly seem to continue education in US and Europe and mostly work there, but by the next brightest. This has been a source of contention in the country - why pay for brain drain?

    • Re:Water on moon (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @06:28AM (#58964598) Homepage

      Chandrayaan-1 provided the first actual evidence of water on moon.

      To be more specific, it found evidence of hydroxyl groups - although probably from water. Currently it does not appear that there's any solid bulk water ice, at least near the surface, anywhere on the moon (although there is still some dispute). On the other side of the coin, it's been argued that that there might not be any water ice at all - that what might be present is hydroxylated minerals. The leading view at present seems to be that regardless of hydroxylated minerals, that there's probably grains of water ice mixed into the lunar regolith in these locations. LCROSS in particular provided strong evidence to this regard.

      Honestly, for any lunar ISRU, this is probably the best option. You don't want to have to mine through hard slabs of ice; simply heating regolith would be far easier.

    • by fubarrr ( 884157 )

      ISRO pay is said to be not good

    • Chandrayaan-1 provided the first actual evidence of water on moon.

      Not Clementine? That was a pretty big deal back then.

      India is a complex country, more like a continent than a country and hence called a subcontinent.

      I'm pretty sure that this has more to do with geology of the area rather than with the complexity of India. It would still be a subcontinent even if there were no India. Hell, for the same reason it would be a subcontinent even if there were no people around.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Waiting for laggards to catch up before attempting any higher order challenges will mean India will never break out of its colonial mold.

      They're actually doing pretty good on both [thehindubusinessline.com]. There are lots of things that could be better, but they're rapidly improving. Sure there are social issues to deal with aka "I never learned to read/write, didn't have electricity, didn't have toilets, we were fine without your fancy civilization and our kids will be fine too" but tradition has lost that battle pretty much everywhere except for the Amish. India is far past critical mass where they'll fix their own country, even if they'll have their hillbilly/redn

  • by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @06:35AM (#58964618)

    TLDR: I'm spoiled by SpaceX launch videos.

    I tried searching Youtube for a video of the launch. Wow did I find a bunch of videos... which are mostly 3rd-party reposts of a couple news stations' 720p coverage of the launch. And THOSE consist of cameras pointed awkwardly at video monitors showing telemetry, and shots of the control room with groups of presumably ISRO people doing not much of interest. The cameras onboard the rocket update at about 1fps. Eventually the video monitors showed what was obviously a computer simulation of what was going on (or was supposed to be going on, perhaps) yet the camera lingered on it as if it were the actual rocket viewed from the side. The news videos had newsstation watermarks and tickers and title bars and whatnot cluttering up the frame.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      https://www.isro.gov.in/gslv-mk-iii-m1-chandrayaan-2-mission/lift-and-onboard-camera-view-of-gslv-mkiii-m1-chandrayaan2

  • by Anonymous Coward

    It might be cheap for a lunar mission, but at $141 it's double the amount of money the UK are giving India in foreign aid this year.

    Can someone tell me why a country that has a lunar space program is still allowed to ask for and receive "aid" from other countries? Whilst the mission might be an amazing technical achievement, surely it should be frowned upon when the begging bowls are still out in full force.

    • So much for the UK aid to India argument [youtu.be] Watch the whole video if you have the time..
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      double the amount of money the UK are giving India in foreign aid this year. Can someone tell me why a country that has a lunar space program is still allowed to ask for and receive "aid" from other countries?

      Same reason organizations "donate" to politicians: influence peddling.

  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday July 22, 2019 @10:53AM (#58966054) Journal

    When the US and Europe tried cheaper approaches with Mars probes, the probes usually failed.

    Perhaps one can argue that if you can do 70% of the science at 33% of the cost, you come out ahead by using quantity instead of quality.

    However, it does make for national embarrassments, and also makes staffing more expensive because probes are more unpredictable, resulting in layoffs and rush-hires.

    Maybe if India tries it enough they'll eventually get good at it, but they may have some ugly embarrassments along the way.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I do not understand why people bring poverty and other things into it? Every country has problems, If India could spend better into public health or US could cut down military to help homelessness let the politicians decide or open some social issues thread. let us focus on the technical aspect here.

    India can do a lot of things low costs because of a following reasons

    1. Labor cost - It is not only how much the scientists/engineers getting paid. It is on every level where human touch is involved.
    2. Tested te

  • To all the people who are suggesting about sanitation first, consider that India has roughly 270 million people under poverty and the budget of Chandrayan 2 was 960 Crore Indian rupees (figure out how much that is in your currency since everyone here is smart enough). It would be around 36 Indian rupees per person of mission's money which is obviously not enough for lifetime sanitation. So consider that every poor Indian without sanitation has donated half a dollar for this scientific mission which in turn

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