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Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

isro.gov.in

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Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#51

Post by masklinn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #21
kens wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a summary of Mars missions and their success/failure: http://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/log/ Lots can go wrong on the Mars side. E.g. Mars Polar Lander - smashed into Mars. Beagle 2 - last heard from just before landing. Mars Climate Orbiter - failed to land because of confusion between pounds and Newtons. Deep Space 2 - no communication after landing. Mars Observer - communication lost 3 days from…

Venus seems to be much more cursed than Mars - at least when it comes to Soviet probes trying to take photos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera#Venera_9_to_12

Mars is a walk in the park as far as the environmental situation goes. Venus is absolute hell so failure is unsurprising.

Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#52

Post by visakanv »

chattoraj wrote: post #14

Before someone makes the inevitable "Why are they spending money on this instead of fixing poverty?" argument: The whole Mars mission costs about as much as making four Bollywood movies. http://www.firstpost.com/india/ten-price-tags-to-put-isro-ma...

highly relevant: http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-Pove...

"Outsiders have no idea of what this all means to Indians. Even a poor, hungry kid could dream for a Math Olympiad, can't she? In the same way, even a poor hungry nation can participate in a scientific mission, can't we?"

Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#53

Post by vfclists »

chattoraj wrote: post #14

Before someone makes the inevitable "Why are they spending money on this instead of fixing poverty?" argument: The whole Mars mission costs about as much as making four Bollywood movies. http://www.firstpost.com/india/ten-price-tags-to-put-isro-ma...

There is always this tendency to confuse inequity with poverty. India's problem is inequity not poverty, just as it is in America. There is also the reason why Western Europeans and Americans whose combined population does not equal that of India should be judgmental about their choices.

Why should it be okay to for white people to tell brown people what they should or shouldn't do with their resources, not to mention that their advancement is supported by the large numbers of brown and yellow skinned people who constitute a large proportion of their PhDs?

Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#55

Post by kaushalkpr »

swatkat wrote: post #28

Congratulations to ISRO. I was up all night following ISRO's updates :) Mission homepage: http://www.isro.org/mars/home.aspx Here are some pics from ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network) that was looking over the Trans Mars Injection, and the spacecraft itself: http://www.isro.org/mars/momimg.aspx Here's a color picture of Earth captured by MOM last week: http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/m…

excellent reply swatkat. Thanks for the info

Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#56

Post by gaius »

vfclists wrote: post #53
chattoraj wrote: post #14

Before someone makes the inevitable "Why are they spending money on this instead of fixing poverty?" argument: The whole Mars mission costs about as much as making four Bollywood movies. http://www.firstpost.com/india/ten-price-tags-to-put-isro-ma...

There is always this tendency to confuse inequity with poverty. India's problem is inequity not poverty, just as it is in America. There is also the reason why Western Europeans and Americans whose combined population does not equal that of India should be judgmental about their choices. Why should it be okay to for white people to tell brown people what they should or shouldn't do with their resources, not to mentio…

No, India's problem is real, actual, no-clean-water, no-antibiotics, no-electricity poverty, in most of the rural areas.

Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#57

Post by bayesianhorse »

linux_devil wrote: post #48
caycep wrote: post #6

Nice that they are spending Indian taxpayer money on science! (I am biased towards robotic missions vs. getting ppl into orbit at all costs)

I pay tax in India but I am happy for this mission but it causes more pain when my money goes into the pockets of corrupt politicians. It's not the country which is poor, it's the corrupt politicians and bureaucracy. Refer to list of Indian scams : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India , now annual scam every year is worth $20 billion , I wonder why people are not criticizing the administration and c…

The problem is not so much that countries like India do not have honest, competent politicians, but rather how to tell them apart.

Fighting corruption needs transparency and a system that prevents corruption rather than punishing it.

Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#58

Post by dirtyaura »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #27
mani04 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From that NASA website on mission logs - anybody else noticed that the success rates have dramatically increased after 2000? I am wondering if this has got anything to do with significantly enhanced computing power we have nowadays.

I prefer to think that this has to do with the fact that NASA got rid of Dan Goldin and his "faster, better, cheaper" approach to project management. In space you can't afford to cut corners. You need three people to tighten a screw: one to set the torque wrench, one to tighten the screw, and one to write the protocol, saying that the screw has been tightened. NASA found out in the 1950s, they forgot and learned it a…

Interesting perspective. Is there any analysis written about Goldin's era? I studied AI and robotics in late 90s / early 00s and Rodney Brooks' Behavior-based robotics and NASA's approach were in vogue and were given as examples how to do things (and I believed them too). There is some parallels to MVP thinking in tech community.

What I find interesting is that compared to Brooks it was actually Sebastian Thrun that managed to lead teams to build something remarkable (self-driving cars). IMO, his approach was never based on any single philosophical idea or AI technique, but instead his teams build robotic systems that combined many approaches, and the target was always to build something that worked in a real-world situations, like his museum robot.

Re: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

#60

Post by rttlesnke »

fuhrer1996 wrote: post #25
TIJ wrote: post #20

I was reading an article somewhere when i came across this stat: that americans have spent 10 times as much as indians have put in this mars probe, i mean how is this possible 10x ratio doesn't seem to be justifying either india is real cheap when it comes to scientific instruments or americans are overspending... and former case doesn't look like a possibility considering that mostly the government companies are man…

Worth looking at: http://www.quora.com/Robert-Frost-Quora-user/What-are-Robert...

Read the answer and the comments on it. What do experts have to say about this?
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