Lets still hold our breath, the Mangalyaan hasnt made it to Mars. NASA and a contractor made some fatal conversion mistakes and overshot Mars. I doubt they will have the same problems but it still needs to reach orbit.
From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
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Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#32They're comparing apples and iPhones.
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#33The article mentions "jugaad" as the Indian way of doing things inexpensively. It roughly means a "hack", and it really is very fundamental to the Indian engineering brain. I once read a list of interesting words in foreign languages and Portuguese had something similar. I think all engineering teams should have at least one jugaadu person on it.
We have a saying called "Jerry rigged" in the South that we use. I think it is very similar to jugaad and can be thought of has using what you have available to hack something into a working state again (or something new made from different parts).
It appears that "Jerry rigged" comes from the nautical term "jury rigged" which itself comes from the the French jour for "a day":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rig
I found this out when wondering if "jerry rigged" shared anything with "jerry can" which came from British troops admiring the quality of the liquid containers the Wehrmacht had in WW2 "jerry == German":
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#34What the NYT article didn't mention was the lack of sterilization of the ISRO spacecraft. A huge portion of the budget for a probe like MAVEN [1] or JUNO [2] is spent reducing the chance of Earth microbes colonizing Mars or a moon of Jupiter. 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 [1]…
>A huge portion of the budget for a probe like MAVEN [1] or JUNO [2] is spent reducing the chance of Earth microbes colonizing Mars or a moon of Jupiter
I don't know where you got that from? There's documentation that NASA sterilised things but nothing I've seen that says it cost a significant proportion of the budget.
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#35I'd like to know the hardware cost and number of man-hours put into each mission. Labor is a large part of a creating and operating a spacecraft, so comparing man-hours eliminates the differences you might find due to the expected rate of the engineers in each country. I should also note that when I say "hardware cost", I'm also including a break-down for each sub-contractor (and sub-sub, sub-sub-sub, etc) since you…
If India can field rocket scientists greatly more cheaply than the US, I'd submit that still says something important about the two countries.
"I should also note that when I say "hardware cost", I'm also including a break-down for each sub-contractor (and sub-sub, sub-sub-sub, etc)"
One nice thing about money in a mostly free economy is that you can use it as a bound on such things. If you can buy a widget at $5, the company you are purchasing it from can not have put more than $5 of resources into it (barring some exceptions, probably none of which matter for this). It doesn't matter if they sub-sub-sub-sub-contract it out, it's still bounded by the final cost. Again, if India can source a component for much more cheaply than the US, it still says something important and real about their program. The differences are fully real, and I don't think trying to "undo" them and produce the artificial numbers you are proposing will produce any useful real information.
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have a saying called "Jerry rigged" in the South that we use. I think it is very similar to jugaad and can be thought of has using what you have available to hack something into a working state again (or something new made from different parts).
It appears that "Jerry rigged" comes from the nautical term "jury rigged" which itself comes from the the French jour for "a day": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rig I found this out when wondering if "jerry rigged" shared anything with "jerry can" which came from British troops admiring the quality of the liquid containers the Wehrmacht had in WW2 "jerry == German": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan
Funny to see this about jerrycans, as that reminds me of how on Kerguelen island, which is in places littered with various empty oil drums mostly put there between WWI and the 1950's by US, French and German ships, one could easily recognize the German ones from the others.
The German barrels are for the most part still in good shape, some with almost no trace of rust, while the others are all crumbling into rust (on the other hand, they're also much heavier and unwieldy).
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#37In his autobiography 'Wings of Fire', A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, himself an ISRO rocket scientist & program director who later became a highly popular President of India (he draws crowds to this day, several years after office), quotes Gen. Patton: "A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week." That could well summarize the ISRO style. Kalam also highlights the leadership-by-…
Yes. "Wings of Fire" is an excellent book; a must read. Also, if anyone's interested in knowing about ISRO's origins, their "hacker culture" etc. then I recommend these two excellent books: "A Brief History of Rocketry in ISRO" by PV Manoranjan Rao, P Radhakrishnan; and "India's Rise as a Space Power" by Prof UR Rao. These two books give an excellent overview on how ISRO was started (starting from INCOSPAR, TERLS, Sounding rockets, Rohini, Aryabhata, SLV, ASLV, PSLV, INSAT, to GSLV Mk3).
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have a saying called "Jerry rigged" in the South that we use. I think it is very similar to jugaad and can be thought of has using what you have available to hack something into a working state again (or something new made from different parts).
It appears that "Jerry rigged" comes from the nautical term "jury rigged" which itself comes from the the French jour for "a day": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rig I found this out when wondering if "jerry rigged" shared anything with "jerry can" which came from British troops admiring the quality of the liquid containers the Wehrmacht had in WW2 "jerry == German": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan
Yes I have also heard of Jury rigged (and a couple other unsavory terms). I was always confused how the term could relate to a court's "jury." It makes a lot of sense now that I now it actually comes from a French word. Very interesting thanks for the reply.
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#39What the NYT article didn't mention was the lack of sterilization of the ISRO spacecraft. A huge portion of the budget for a probe like MAVEN [1] or JUNO [2] is spent reducing the chance of Earth microbes colonizing Mars or a moon of Jupiter. 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 [1]…
I didn't downvote, but I felt a mood-affiliation reason to downvote in that trying our darnedest to never contaminate Mars will stop us from colonizing Mars.
Separately:
Over the course of billions of years, rocks have moved from Earth to Mars and back. If colonization were a matter of just moving from one to the other, it would have happened already. In fact, answering that question seems very scientifically useful, so that's a good reason to use sterilization techniques. But since we haven't found any current life on Mars so far, it seems unlikely that it's trivial for life to gain a foothold, especially life adapted for survival in Earth environments.
EDIT It's a Mars orbiter, not a lander. If it somehow incorrectly tries to land on Mars, the Martian atmosphere will incinerate any bacteria that somehow survived the UV environment in space (plus any solar flares). NB: I haven't done the math to determine exactly how much heat would be put out by an unplanned EDL. If someone else could, that would be splefty.
Re: From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
#40What the NYT article didn't mention was the lack of sterilization of the ISRO spacecraft. A huge portion of the budget for a probe like MAVEN [1] or JUNO [2] is spent reducing the chance of Earth microbes colonizing Mars or a moon of Jupiter. 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 [1]…
IMHO I view it differently.
It would be a huge tragedy if we are the only life that has ever evolved in the universe and it all quietly ends on the same planet it started it.
If there's a chance we can get even single celled life established on a another planet we should go for it. The loss of a bit of science is small potatoes compared to the fate of life in the universe.