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

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

#91

Post by sliverstorm »

seanflyon wrote: post #35
sliverstorm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Remember that cost per kg for a launch- just in fuel costs- is still something like five figures USD. Weight is a tremendous source of cost savings. Compare to the Mars Science Laboratory, at 3,893 kg. They might have spent $150k in fuel costs, while we might have spent $38M.

> just in fuel costs I think you mean 'just in rocket costs' as the fuel cost is negligible and the cost of the launch is 5 figures (dollars/kg). For example the falcon 9 costs $12,618/kg to GTO and $4,653/kg to LEO. I don't recall the exact figure but fuel cost is a low single digit percentage of that cost.

Sorry, my mistake. I appreciate you pointing it out.

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

#92

Post by sliverstorm »

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…

To simplify what a lot of people are arguing, dollars spent by the government are dollars going into science that would have otherwise gone to .

To a country with little established science, this can be a gigantic booster shot to their domestic science abilities both through funding and in the case of space programs, inspiring youth.

As we awknowledge that a healthy scientific community is an economic boon, one could say that money is taken from A, redistributed to B by the government, and in the process creating industry C which will hugely benefit the country in the future.

A modest, very simple example is the US National Park Service. It runs a profit! Government dollars create the Parks, and obviously they are a good that is worth more to the public than the taxes it cost to make them. But that generally would not happen without Government intervention.

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

#93

Post by shas3 »

someperson wrote: post #85

(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 steri…

Curiosity is a rover. Rovers require cleanrooms for assembly for the reasons that you just mentioned, since they land. I don't think this is an issue with orbiters. For example, one of the reasons failing orbiters are of concern is that contamination can be an issue if they crash into the surface. See Japanese orbiter Nozomi, for example: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2003/11/29/national/experts...

Using the expert rule, I can't imagine Indian engineers not being concerned about contamination. It is such an obvious risk that it is probably one of the first things they'd look for. I mean, there is 50 years of precedent available to anyone working in this field.

Edit: Also, they may have done their work in non-cleanroom environments and post that, they may have sterilized the orbiter.

Edit 2: Sorry for the multiple edits, but in spite of Hanlon's razor, I sense an underlying bias. Here's another NASA photo of a satellite assembly, and they are using ungloved hands: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_Reconnaissance_O...

ESA Mercury orbiter: http://sci.esa.int/bepicolombo/50304-removing-the-clamp-band... (I think there's a guy leaning over in the bottom left corner of the pic and probably dripping snot on to the orbiter too.)

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

#94

Post by stillsut »

pravda wrote: post #41
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…

>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

Breakthrough space-tech is in no way is comparable to the broken window fallacy. In the latter, a window is replaced with a window, while in this case something un-precedented has been created.

Most of the wealth of developed nations comes from the belief that holding an asset will be worth more later - for example a house in your neighborhood will be increasingly valuable because people will continue to want buy it for the local schools, jobs, etc. How the rate at which assets are projected to increase in value is THE central lever on economic performance. What space tech does is says: the assets in this economy have the potential to increase in value at a greater rate. This makes everyone in the economy better off due to investment speculation "wealth from belief".

However, I do think its valid to critique India if it were to over-invest in space-tech: they are not a modern economy with a large middle class yet, and thus could see more lucrative gains from New-Deal / GI-Bill -esque promotion of middle class. That being said, any (safe) investment portfolio should have a mix of all possible good policies, which includes tech programs along with social-welfare.

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

#95

Post by kamaal »

someperson wrote: post #85

(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 steri…

I wrote that comment, however I'm not sure if the tour guide who showed us around was telling the truth- He might be lying, I don't know. You are right in the part that clean room practices are very important for missions like these.

In the meanwhile I came across one more article : http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-31/news...

This article highlights some points as to why the cost would be so less.

>>Some of them were puzzled by ISRO's style of working. They were just 18 months away from the launch date, and ISRO was only beginning to cut metal. One of the foreign partners had then asked ISRO managers: "Are you serious?"

If I'm not wrong NASA tests and validates the equipment they send into space for years. They also take a lot of time and observe very strict quality practices to ensure the equipment doesn't fail or malfunction in space. This leads to them frequently missing deadlines and over shooting budgets by large amounts.

Something that ISRO doesn't. Of course then they have a larger chance of running into failures. But then one wouldn't consider it a big loss to spend just $75 million and fail compared to similar projects in other countries that cost almost 7 times more.

>>tacitly acknowledged the value of the organisation's minimalist approach. "The told us after the launch," says M Annadurai, project manager of Chandrayaan, "that this was the Indian style of working".

India has a lot of talent and lot of young people wanting to succeed and prove their worth to the world. Given the mere population scale and level of desperateness to succeed. You will always run into ingenious people very often. Most of them come from small towns and lower middle class families who need a job at any cost, even if they have to work 16 hours a day, at whatever salary they are offered.

I was one such guy myself at one point of time. I've worked at a assembly line, call center, installed BSNL modems and now as a programmer. I know many of many friends from the villages who aspire to do anything thing can, with whatever means they have.

So I won't be surprised if they are succeeding in hiring some very brilliant people at the salaries they pay.

>>"Frugal engineering comes naturally to Indians," says National Research Professor RA Mashelkar, "which is why India delivers more than any other country per dollar of R&D investment." Mashelkar, along with management theorist CK Prahlad

I don't believe this is unique to Indians, but in general when you have fewer resources you tend to optimize you work to squeeze the most of whatever you have.

And then finally some budget and schedule discipline.

>>"Testing is expensive," says Radhakrishnan, "and we try to get the maximum information from each test." ISRO engineers worked round the clock, often in shifts, when the satellite was being made.

and

>>"ISRO is one of the few organisations in India that is driven by schedules," says Rajan.

So in short, work with passionate, hardworking people, save money by sticking to strict schedules, do not build anything unless you need, once you build test minimally but sufficient enough and quickly.

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

#96

Post by alokm »

someperson wrote: post #85

(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 steri…

I don't think it is right to jump to conclusions based on those images. I have been to one of the clean rooms, where the satellite ASTROSAT was being created. We were in the outer most room. And for that too we had to wear these bunny suits covering all of our body, hair and skin. The actual satellite was in inner levels, where standards were higher and we were not allowed to go. We were not allowed to take any instrument inside of that room. So there were no photos. May be that is the reason for this perception, it is just bad PR. Based on my experience I do find that ISRO takes these standards very seriously.

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

#97

Post by kamaal »

sid1992 wrote: post #87

Go to ISRO's website and look at the starting salary for an engineer. Even for the most paid fields there it is not more than 40000 rupees per month or roughly 650 dollars

I was downvoted very badly yesterday for just saying ISRO engineers were paid less. Actually comparatively even compared to many Indian IT professionals salaries of these folks is actually low.

Most people don't realize how low it is until you start comparing yourself with people of your same age some 10-15 years in to your career who are working with other software companies.

Any decent IIT grad joining something like Amazon or Google gets ~15L-18L per annum these days, If you are from other colleges you can still get ~10L per annum. And this is for writing some HTML or some application around a data base. Heck even people working at IT services industry get paid around ~4-5 L per annum, and plus they can always move on to some nice after a few years, most do and within 8-10 years of their careers can reach atleast ~15L per annum. Plus some people also get foreign travel opportunities. If you have a good saving and investments discipline you can buy youself a home, a car and may be a nice wedding and a good deal of gold within 12 years of your career.

To know how far those people who started their careers in the IT industry in 90's are, many are settled in the US. Many own 2-3 homes in a city like Bangalore drawing insane rent income, Many own stock options worth money you have never heard of. You can talk of Mars mission, pride and all that. But when you see your college mate driving a Honda Accord and eating a 3000 rupee dinner with his family after spending another 2000 on a movie on a Sunday evening. You begin to realize money has its own importance in life.

Working in Government firms went out of fashion as early as mid 90's.

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

#98

Post by HCIdivision17 »

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…

I think I fundamentally disagree with this outlook, but mostly on tone, not principle. Yes, I used the word "hopefully" in that sentence in a non-accidental way: boondoggles happen. A lot. They also don't happen a lot. Modern governments are huge, on a scale that has never existed before [0]. Expect frequent outliers in every direction.

Government spending must be essentially zero sum, since it almost exclusively must spend within a closed system (it'd be a bit silly for it to primarily spend on some other country's, after all). But to say that government spending can't be as productive as individual taxpayer spending is sort of misunderstanding scope. The typical person can't be bothered to deal with the coordination of funding all the things they'd like; the number of services that gently affect our lives is staggering. To suggest the individual administrate such spending is like suggesting we generate a line item for everything the government provides and be able to select what we personally want from it; there's a utopia to be had there, but holy mackerel the logistical coordination and administrative overhead for such a system would be mind-bogglingly complex and large, or the life simple, dull, and risky. I bet there's a Murphy's Law corollary somewhere that suggests such a fair replacement is at least as dysfunctional as the current system (heck, I'll just invoke the central theorem of Systemantics [1]).

Anyhow, the win here is that governments can concentrate money to generate a kind of critical mass, It can create opportunities that otherwise couldn't germinate (and, well, often don't). Some accomplishments require ridiculous amounts of money - more than a person could ever hope to have. Until very recently (say last ten years?), it hasn't been possible for extremely large groups of people to coordinate resources for extremely large technologically and logistically complex projects without also having a very direct, obvious, and positive feedback mechanism (read: short-term profit); crowd sourcing may actually be a fantastic replacement economically for government's deep pockets, but we're absolutely not there yet. And without that insane access to enormous capital, we simply can't bootstrap many of these industries. There are notable exceptions, but they're notable because of how uncommon and unlikely they are; legends arise from powerful individuals building massive industry sectors, but rarely without extensive help from the government (obligatory references to Standard Oil and SpaceX).

So we rely on the government to do such things as bootstrap super-capital intensive stuff. The sort of things that require billions to begin and decades to mature. And 50 years later, it's clearly paying off! What once required tens of billions to do once now can be done for tens of millions! And it's gotten so mature, the private sector is finally starting to compete with the government... here.

I'm not going to argue the value of a space program. It's so deeply integral to the magic of modern life it's dizzyingly complex to even contemplate listing. Like trying to figure out if it was worth Bell Labs allowing the transistor to be invented.

India's got a helluva scrappy space program. It manages to do a lot of things right, and as noted elsewhere by 'tn13 [2], it may even be profitable! (I have no idea how to figure out if that's actually true - it's tricky to figure out if individual sections of a plant are stand-alone profitable, let alone a complex government entity!)

[0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/104873-there-are-10-11-stars... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics#Premise [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8364632

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

#99

Post by efuquen »

TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #89
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.

> not try to compete with them

I seriously doubt this. Sure, it wouldn't be seen as a threat, but it certainly would be seen as a clear sign of America's decay in technological leadership and capabilities.

> oh no we need to beat them to the moon!

Everything I've seen documented from that era actually points to this being exactly the attitude. Sending satellites into orbit and launching ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads involves a different set of skills then sending humans into space. Sure you need to launch rockets in all cases, but life support, pushing the extra payload (into orbit, and then the moon), developing a whole set of extra skills (docking, space walking, etc.) It's just way more complicated and expensive to send people into space and there was no military advantage for either country to do it. Both countries wanted to beat each other in a game of technological machismo, just plain old competition at work.

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

#100

Post by baddox »

rz2k wrote: post #50
gamblor956 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In fact it is a similar situation if you believe that the mission itself does not produce sufficient value. The salaries are not merely money being cycled around in the economy if the labor being paid for results in the scientists not having time or inclination to produce other labor. Furthermore, it is likely that the resources launched off of the planet could have been used for something else. Whether or not it is…

The creation of valuable knowledge, experience, and technology is a valid argument. Mentioning that engineers' salaries get taxed is a bad argument, since that's just a smaller portion of what was already tax revenue.
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