Amazing well done! Sounds like they chose very wisely the scope of the mission and came up with a useful goal that they could archive with the limited resources. Lets hope they get some useful data from the methane detector
ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission: Spacecraft successfully enters Martian Orbit
161–166 of 166 posts
Re: ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission: Spacecraft successfully enters Martian Orbit
#162Congrats ISRO :)
Re: ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission: Spacecraft successfully enters Martian Orbit
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it's an accomplishment, even if others did it long ago. If I successfully run my first marathon (unlikely), it'll still be an accomplishment even though someone else first did it 2500 years ago. Getting a spacecraft into Mars orbit takes skill and careful work. I think it clearly warrants congratulations. Also, by the way, the first Mars orbiter wasn't in 1965—that was the first successful flyby. The first…
Maybe I should rephrase. Is this mission a scientific achievement? It could be a economics/accounting/marketing/HR/logistics achievement, but what is new scientifically?
Let's put aside the science, because they haven't taken the data they wanted yet, so it's impossible to debate, and indeed somewhat beside the point for this 15kg instrument.
The thing about spacecraft is that there is a huge engineering component. The s/c is in a novel environment (vacuum, radiation, cold) and many systems have to work together. You have to figure it all out in advance, using first-principles physics and modeling, and design and build a system that works without further manual intervention. Just getting it there intact is a significant achievement in systems engineering.
Technology demonstration is what this mission was about.
Re: ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission: Spacecraft successfully enters Martian Orbit
#164People who keep making the (nonsense) point of space vs. better roads keep harping on how the money will be better spent on infrastructure. I looked up the Indian planning commission's budget for 2013-14 road development. Planning Commission provided an annual outlay of Rs.37,300.00 Crore for 2013-2014 for development in road sector[1]. That is more than 6 billion USD - just for improving roads, for a year. The budge…
Slightly off topic, but it depresses me greatly that maintaining/building roads is STILL such an expensive endeavor. How are poor countries ever supposed to have passable public transit systems?
Money is an issue affecting the quality of roads here.. But there is also a huge overhead associated with corruption and general incompetence/negligence of government..
Re: ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission: Spacecraft successfully enters Martian Orbit
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reddit AMA by 3 young ISRO engineers just after the MOM launch was pretty good. http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1ujcmo/we_are_three_i... The salary they mention is IMO very competitive with software jobs, at least at the entry level ( http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1ujcmo/we_are_three_i... )
Well, kind of. Remember that these are some really smart kids. The salary mentioned in the salary is equivalent to $10,000 p.a (@exchange rate of 1$ = 60 rupess). Not a lot of money at all.
That's the equivalent of $50000 in Purchasing Power; so it's not as bad. Although to be fair, a lot of commodities appear to cost a lot more in India, because they are tied (legally or otherwise) to the outside world (blame Indira and her kin!).
Re: ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission: Spacecraft successfully enters Martian Orbit
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Population of India: 1.252 billion people. 0.0001% o that: 1252 people. GDP of India: 1.877 trillion USD. Per capita: 1499. So if we just applied these figures to the above number of people, we get an increase in GDP of 1.876 million USD. Which is not much. I know you were making a point. I think this is an unfair calculation because it's not taking into account the fact that those people will go into STEM-type jobs.…
100 billion using 2.8 million people is 35K per person.
Oops. That's what I meant! It doesn't change the calculation because the calculation used the correct figure.