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Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

bbc.com

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Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#81

Post by yummyfajitas »

gamblor956 wrote: post #44
pravda wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A large proportion of the expense of this mission goes to paying the wages of domestic scientists and engineers in India. >This money will in turn get taxed and spent by the recipients and pumped back into the local economy. Your fallacy is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

The broken window fallacy is that of breaking things and repairing/rebuilding them to generate economic activity, i.e., an endless cycle. The OP is arguing that this mission creates new economic assets and activities that expand India's economic base.

Zizee had 4 paragraphs, and pravda pointed out that paragraph 3 was fallacious. The fact that paragraphs 1 and 2 are not doesn't change this.

I have no idea why pravda is being downmodded, beyond silly mood affiliation.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#82

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #72
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of astonishing to call it perpetual motion, when there really is an enormous multiplier at play. Money is not like mass: it can be created and destroyed; one of the primary roles of central banks is to create and destroy money to stabilize the economy. Moreover, 'zizee is talking about something even more powerful. Space programs can act as huge multipliers on an economy. A country's economy is sort of a cl…

> But there's no zero sum here Government spending via redistribution is absolutely zero sum. Every dollar spent by the government into the economy is one dollar taxed out of the economy. Money that is given to some has to necessarily come from others. Just because the benefits are concentrated and the harm is spread out doesn't change the fact that you've only taken money from A and given to B. No additional wealth…

>Every dollar spent by the government into the economy is one dollar taxed out of the economy

Not at all, most governments print their country's currency.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#83

Post by Arjuna »

zizee wrote: post #24

Why do people always pass judgment on spending on things they don't agree with as if the money is destroyed. It's not like they pile all the cash onto the rocket and send it to space. Let's just forget for a moment that valuable skills and infrastructure are being created for India in this process and look at where the money is going. A large proportion of the expense of this mission goes to paying the wages of domes…

"Why do people always pass judgment [...]"

I wonder this as well.

I would like to share one story and one HN comment that I think are both eloquent and highly relevant to the discussion:

Why Explore Space?

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

Who Saves Lives?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4025495

* * *

I commented in an earlier story today, but I think this mission will serve to kindle a fire in young people, stoking their interests in technology, science, orbital mechanics, etc... particularly in India, but will hopefully resonate throughout the world. In the broader picture, this mission represents the seeds of inspiration being planted for a future generation. Imagine the scientists and engineers that this event will bring forth and blossom.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#84

Post by cgjaro »

chulk90 wrote: post #78
mrb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA's MAVEN payload was just 4.3 times heavier (65kg vs. 15kg) but cost 9.1 times more ($671M vs. 74M). So NASA is still 2.1 times more expensive per kg of useful payload. And costs scale less than linearly with the payload mass, so a bigger Indian mission would have likely been even more than 2.1 times more efficient than NASA...

Fuel cost increases at a square of the delta of force required. So the NASA project was actually more efficient.

No. Most of the costs are people costs as the article rightly explains, not fuel. Fuel is an extremely tiny fraction of the overall mission costs.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#85

Post by someperson »

(I posted a similar comment a few months ago.[1] To be clear I have nothing against the India, its space program or its achievements, but it's impossible to discuss the low price of the mission without discussing the elephant in the room)

There is clear lack of sterilization techniques being used on the ISRO spacecraft. This is clearly visible in the public photos and videos. NASA spend a great deal of time and sterilizing deep space probes to reduce the chance of Earth microbes colonizing a place like Mars, or a moon of Jupiter, but ISRO does not.

Watch this video and showing assembly of this particular spacecraft http://www.space.com/23199-indias-first-mars-mission-prepare...

Compare the NASA cleanroom assembling Curiosity - http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/images/content/482654main_pi....

Most engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation seen directly operating on the spacecraft are not using facial masks or even gloves for interplanetary missions, let alone full cleanroom coveralls. http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/01608/vbk-05-mars... (via http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indias-october-28-m...)

It would be a huge shame for us to have doubt whether the first extra terrestial microbes we find in the solar system were really alien or simply Space Age Earth based life

It also jibes with this anecdote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6552078

  This comment has nothing to do with India, ISRO, politics or Mars, but I am curious if anyone with expertise can comment on the clean room practices seen applied in this video. Is it odd that the workers don't have on full 'bunny' suits and have (what seems to be) a relatively large amount of skin/hair unprotected? I don't know if it matters that much, it just seems a little lax given the cost of failure.

  Firstly, I've visited ISRO Bangalore(A few years back). And I did see the exact things you mentioned. I did ask the guy(Not sure, if he was the PR guy) who took our class for the tour. His answer was, they were likely assembling some test equipment and not the real equipment that was going to space.
  (Which unlikely given parent's NYT article:)

  The modest budget did not allow for multiple iterations. So, instead of building many models (a qualification model, a flight model and a flight spare), as is the norm for American and European agencies, scientists built the final flight model right from the start.
It's unclear whether the room is a climate and particulate controlled cleanroom up to the standards required for inplanetary probes, but they may (hopefully) do sterilization through chemical and heat treatments - but that alone isn't enough for planetary protection.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7964261#up_7964499

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#88

Post by tn13 »

chc wrote: post #65
tn13 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me again how much surplus money did US have to fight wars in Iraq ? Please tell me that US is overflowing with so much money that they have an army stationed in Germany for absolutely no rational reason. Why exactly is US spending so much of higher education when most of the public elementary education is good enough to mass produce kids whose only skill is flipping burgers ? Large nations need to allocate mon…

The fact that the US wastes huge wads of money doesn't exactly convince me that wasting money is a good idea. The US does lots of things that are questionable at best.

That was not really my point. What people need to understand is that each nation gives certain priority of all the problems and accordingly invests money into those problems. Saying that spending money on X is a waste when you have problem Y unsolved is stupid.

India has 1/6th of world population and has very good reason to invest in space research. India is going to needs its own satellite guided missiles, ASAT, GPS and other systems down the line if those 1.2B people have to see a good future. Or these people will be held hostage to USA's Military Industrial Complex.

India was already one of the largest Shipbuilding nation and had more Aircraft maintenance centers than most other countries in 1950s. India did not invest well into these industries, today our defense imports are obscene. We cant even manufacture a reliable pistol leave alone mortar. Had we invested in those tech also we could have saved a lot more money today which could have helped the poor.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#89

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

stcredzero wrote: post #38

I hope India and China pull off a Mars Direct style mission and beat the US to Mars. The US needs another "Sputnik Moment" to get itself going in space again. I mean for real, not as an esoteric form of federal "pork."

If India really did make it to mars before the US did, we would probably congradulate them, not try to compete with them. When the USSR put Sputnik into space, the US's response wasn't because oh no we need to beat them to the moon! it was because the fact that they could put a satellite into space meant they could also land a nuclear warhead on US soil.

Re: Why India's Mars mission is so cheap – and thrilling

#90

Post by thisGuysAccount »

tn13 wrote: post #27
kazinator wrote: post #2

How about reliable electricity and water for your people, then Mars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Resources_in_India "Water supply and sanitation in India continue to be inadequate ..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India "Over 300 million (300 million) people in India have no access to electricity. Of those who do, almost all find electricity supply intermittent and unreliable."

Remind me again how much surplus money did US have to fight wars in Iraq ? Please tell me that US is overflowing with so much money that they have an army stationed in Germany for absolutely no rational reason. Why exactly is US spending so much of higher education when most of the public elementary education is good enough to mass produce kids whose only skill is flipping burgers ? Large nations need to allocate mon…

"Why exactly is US spending so much of higher education when most of the public elementary education is good enough to mass produce kids whose only skill is flipping burgers ?"

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about 13 year olds, but I assure you I don't care what you have to say.

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