
From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank - codelion
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/business/international/from-india-proof-that-a-trip-to-mars-doesnt-have-to-break-the-bank.html
======
quarterwave
In 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-open-discussion style of Vikram
Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan who successively headed ISRO in its formative
years. If that sounds commonplace, bear in mind this was in a civilian
government organization of the 1960's. People like Sarabhai (a Cambridge
Tripos and inheritor of a family business empire) and Dhawan (a double PhD in
math and aerospace from Caltech) could have played the part and been
overbearing - but they deliberately chose to build a "startup culture" where
people were encouraged to speak up.

~~~
swatkat
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).

------
xmonkee
The 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.

~~~
icebraining
_I once read a list of interesting words in foreign languages and Portuguese
had something similar._

Yeap:
[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desenrascanço](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desenrascanço)

I'd say it's both a source of national pride and shame for us, in the sense
that we can find ingenious solutions, but often those are only required
because we didn't do it right in the first place.

~~~
eklavya
More often than not it's "couldn't due to resource constraints".

~~~
Fuxy
That's mostly why I kind of feel like I want to wait and see if the spacecraft
actually manages to do what it's designed to.

If you have to send multiple 70+ million dollar missions because the hacks
keep failing the cost benefit is not all that good compare to the more
expensive 300 million dollar mission.

------
suprgeek
I detest the spin on "Jugaad" that this article provides. Having lived day-to-
day in India I have seen way too many unsafe and potentially deadly "jugaads"
every single day.

From the CNG Car driver hacking up his Car to use a cheaper subsidized gas
tank, to the hospital hacking up their BP monitors to run longer despite
failed parts to continual flouting of Petrol storage rules keeping it in tin
cans.

This stupid mentality of taking dangerous short-cuts and flouting safety rules
in the name of innovation just needs to die. You can escape disaster some of
the time but finally you must pay the piper some time.

So while ISRO is indeed a bright spot, the craft they designed in this case
was un-manned, not designed to land, and carried on top of the older workhorse
PSLV rocket and was more of a technology demonstrator.

------
someperson
What 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] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAVEN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAVEN)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_\(spacecraft\))

EDIT: Why the downvotes? Is what I'm saying incorrect?

EDIT2: Sources:

NASA cleanroom assembling Curiosity -
[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/images/content/482654main_pi...](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/images/content/482654main_pia13388-640.jpg)
(source:

ISRO assembling the Mangalyaan Mars probe in question
[http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/01608/vbk-05-mars...](http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/01608/vbk-05-mars_1608506g.jpg)
(source: [http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indias-
october-28-m...](http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indias-
october-28-mars-mission-on-schedule-isro/article5204371.ece))

Engineers don't use gloves or facial masks for interplanetary missions.

This jives with this video and the following anecdotes -
[http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/14/india-to-launch-its-
first-...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/14/india-to-launch-its-first-
mission-to-mars-video/) via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6551331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6551331)

>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 particulate controlled up to standard, but
they may (hopefully) do sterilization through chemical and heat treatments,
but that alone isn't enough for planetary protection.

~~~
danielweber
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.

~~~
diminoten
I just don't get why people think they, upon examining a problem for mere
moments, think they can dismiss something as unnecessary or frivolous.

I trust the NASA engineers to know more about this problem than you (random
commenter on the Internet) or I. Should I not?

Can you explain to me what your thinking is regarding your belief that you can
glance at an issue like this and trump the thinking of dozens of field experts
in moments?

~~~
austinz
I think it should be clear by now that a lot of people think that their
expertise in software automatically qualifies them to make authoritative
statements on behalf of every other field of science and engineering.

~~~
mcguire
That's actually one of the pieces of evidence that leads me to believe that
software development _is_ a form of engineering.

~~~
kamaal
I think there is a 'meta' aspect to software development. We almost work one
layer above other branches of engineering.

Which is what gives that feeling that you can ideally work on any problem and
solve it. Because that is exactly what we do, look at the diverse domains that
benefit from the use of computers and software.

------
manishsharan
There may be some confusion about jugaad. Some may think it is equivalent of
"jerry rigged " or doo-hickey or a kludge.

I would argue that jugaad is not a solution that is not driven by the problem
at hand or the pressing need; rather it is driven by an attitude or a way of
thinking, that is reinforced by the harsh reality of day-to-day living in
India. I once worked for an electronic typewriter company In India which
hacked and improved upon cannon's electronic typewriter s/w to support all of
India's scripts (27 of them ). My team did not have capability to design
stepper motor controls from bottom up like what canon had achieved. We never
aspired to build a new electronic typewriter. We looked at the Cannon
typewriter and asked why can't this support Telugu and Tamil etc. etc. Once we
figured out the why , we worked to overcome it. Canon ended up licensing this
hack to support other scripts worldwide.

Please note that I am saying rocket design is same as hacking stepper motor
control s/w . However the driving attitude is quite similar.

------
autokad
i see little overlap with sending humans to mars. i dont think its a great way
to send people such a distance (and expect to get them back) by cutting
corners in planning, redundancy, etc. And its my understanding that the bulk
of the costs of going there is getting all the fuel and supplies from earth to
there, which is not solved by paying rocket scientists 1000$ a month.

NASA already operates on a shoestring budget. the article makes it sound like
NASA has lavish funds. And they do so with a really good track record.

~~~
seanflyon
It is so expensive to get all the fuel and supplies from earth to mars
precisely because you have to pay a rocket scientist to make a very large
rocket

------
wil421
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.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)

------
IanDrake
Seems like a pretty ill conceived article. Might as well have written about
how American car companies like GM are able to produce much less expensive
cars than the Italians like Ferrari. Both cars have engines, tires, etc... but
WOW, can the Americans do it for so much less...

~~~
mikeash
If there was nothing on the roads but fancy Ferraris, and then somebody came
along and made a cheap GM that got the job done for much less, that would be
newsworthy.

~~~
IanDrake
To me it's not that it's newsworthy or not, but how it's presented.

It's not that Americans/Europeans can't do what the Indians did, but that
we're not interested in doing what they did. The article seems to confuse the
two.

~~~
mikeash
How do you know they can do it, if they never have? "I could do that, I just
don't want to" is the lamest excuse in the book.

~~~
IanDrake
That is a lame excuse in some contexts.

However, if Superman leaps over an entire building, then is asked to jump off
a curb and declines, I think you can safely assume he could do it, but doesn't
feel like it.

If I jump off a curb and say I could jump over that yonder building (if I felt
like it, but I don't). Then, yes, that would be lame.

~~~
mikeash
When have any of these agencies ever done the cheap space mission equivalent
of leaping over a building?

------
jsudhams
I am all for the mutually exclusive programs of poverty and technological
advancement (in this case sending vehicle to Mars orbit) but the other part
getting rid of the poverty and other things (corruption, bad
governance,Individual's discipline, and safety, are pretty much going down the
drain). I don't why these scientist can't find solution Bangalore's garbage
drop issue, traffic issue and real estate woes and so on. I think India is
driving on wrong direction with not governance on education system which i
feel is the singe source of all the issues.

~~~
whacker
I think we are very good as individuals, but we fail collectively. That is why
even the poorest Indian home will be clean, but the wealthiest public street
could be dirty.

~~~
jsudhams
Never thought about it and you are right on "That is why even the poorest
Indian home will be clean, but the wealthiest public street could be dirty". I
think the root cause is the discipline in public, i am trying to assert when
we (Indians) became so selfish or given up about public issues. One reason i
could think is that urbanisaztion is still settling in and we do not know how
to behave and live in cities yet because i remember that in our village we use
undertake common interest and maintain those like ensuring that the pond are
cleaned in time and volunteer one day man hour or equivalent money (coolie) to
be given to local panchayat.

------
mcguire
" _Just days after the launch of India’s Mangalyaan satellite, NASA sent off
its own Mars mission...named Maven. Its cost: $671 million. The budget of
India’s Mars mission...was just three-quarters of [...] $100 million..._ "

I would like to point out that Maven is 1.8 times the mass of Mangalyaan (in
terms of "launch mass" according to Wikipedia; Maven's "payload mass" is 4.3
times that of Mangalyaan). Mass costs.

------
known
At the expense of 50% malnourished children in India
[http://m.timesofindia.com/india/Every-second-Indian-child-
is...](http://m.timesofindia.com/india/Every-second-Indian-child-is-
malnourished-Report/articleshow/25724848.cms)

------
albeva
I think the real reason in difference in costs is that in India salaries are
much lower and profits expected by 3rd party providers are much smaller.

So building and engineering is way cheaper. How about quality?

~~~
ganwar
Indian space program is one of the most reliable (less number of accidents)
space programs in the world.

Just yesterday Indian successfully launched PSLV to put 5 foreign satellites
in orbit. It's 26th consecutive successful flight.

It is the most reliable and cost effective rocket in the world right now.

Salaries do play a part in bringing the cost down but that is not the only
reason. ISRO functions like a very agile organisation with small teams
focusing on specific targets with autonomy. Also, a lot of cost is saved in
the testing phase as well.

~~~
seanflyon
I had though SpaceX was unrivaled in cost effectiveness but the PSLV is giving
them some stiff competition.

(cost and payload numbers from Wikipedia) Cost per kg to GTO: PSLV $10,368
Falcon9v1.1 $11,649 Cost per kg to LEO: PSLV $4,615 Falcon9v1.1 $4,296

------
sampk
Protip: Disable JavaScript to see the article if it gives you a paywall.

------
nova22033
They're comparing apples and iPhones.

------
return0
It was only a matter of time when space travel would be outsourced as well.

~~~
spain
I don't get the downvotes, I thought this was pretty witty.

------
smoyer
I'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
can't really say you bought a large component from one vendor so that's the
hardware cost of that component. This criteria makes it pretty hard to every
know the actual hardware cost versus engineering/manufacturing hours.

~~~
jerf
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.

~~~
smoyer
That's besides the point ... if India is doing something different (more
entrepreneurial, less bureaucracy, etc), it would be worth understanding what
it was. One clue in the article was that they had a limited time to reach
their launch window ... Might that constraint be responsible for cutting back
to just what was necessary?

I never claimed what they accomplished wasn't impressive. I tend to think
their entry level rocket scientists (at $1000) generated some of the savings
but what was the "mindset" that allowed the rest of the savings?

