People 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 budget of the Mars Orbiter mission was around 75 million USD[2] i.e. less than 1.5% of [1].
Here is a straightforward reason that no one who claims to be some sort of economist (social or otherwise) can argue against:
India has 1.2 billion people and is not particularly endowed with wealth that it can dig out of the ground. So the only way to create wealth is to turn 'sand-into-silicon' aka make productivity gains using the only abundant resource it has - the human resource.
Now if this particular mission can inspire .0001% of additional population to aspire for non-manual labor employment (i.e. study STEM etc), the productivity gain from those people will pay for this mission many times over (I haven't cared to do the math here because I just want to illustrate what I thought is an obvious point which people somehow gloss over).
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. So it might be a good idea to compare it to the IT industry of India that produces revenues of 100 billion USD using 2.8 million people. That's 35 USD per person.
Combining this figure and the one above yields a rough GDP increase of 45 million dollars. We're certainly getting there in terms of order of magnitude.
To put things into perspective, 0.0001% is 1 in a million!
As to ISRO: you've made me feel proud to be an Indian!
I'm "sort of" Indian... by way of marriage ;)
I get really excited when rockets go up, by generally spending too much time on telemetry [1]. I have been excited about this mission as well; admittedly, I can't help but feel a little emotional about it.
I think your sentiment will be echoed across India, in the sense that it brings science, technology and astro-dynamics even further to the forefront. It will kindle a fire in young people to look even more toward understanding and exploring these fields.
Regarding the mission, I thought it was interesting how Amul (a dairy company in India) used their "Amul Baby" in this little congratulatory ad [2]. The words are transliterated from Hindi. It basically translates to, "ISRO eat! This Mars thing is pretty cool!" इसरो खाओ! यह चीज़ बड़ी है मस्त मार्स! (Native speakers: please forgive me if I'm not quite right, and correct me if so.)
Along those lines, the kid in me wishes we could see rockets showing up on cereal boxes, with blazing exhaust plumes, launch telemetry and explanations of how events must be planned in order to reach their precise window of opportunity in space.
Kudos on finding that - it's very well done! To clarify what it means,
"ISE ROZ KHAO"
That's a pun on ISRO as well as the phrase "Ise Roz", which means "This daily". Khao means "To eat". Ultimately - it translates to "Eat this daily".
"Yeh cheez badi hai mast mars" is actually another reference to not just the term "cheese", which is of course its bread and butter business (no pun intended), but also the fact that those are the lyrics to a very suggestive, infamous and controversial song from the early 90s which compared to the attention 'Twerking'received a couple of years ago.
To add to what you said, the hindi word "cheeze" in the line you wrote means "thing" in hindi, and it rhymes exactly with "cheese" in English. Amul, being a dairy products company also make cheese, and this line doubles up to promoting their milk product :).
A project like this could eventually help feed the poor. With such an efficient project, other countries would invest in India's space technology, hence bringing in wealth in the long run (to feed poor, among other uses).
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..
I remember when in 2012, the then PM of India had declared this project. The entire internet community came together to deride this, saying it's not possible in a couple of years and that India had better feed its hungry etc.
I am a very proud Indian today. This achievement, like other by humanity (LHC in particular), will encourage me to push myself towards greatness.
I wouldn't call some bored internet-addicted teens and college cynics "the entire internet community." Just because some opinion is upvoted on sites like reddit, doesn't mean its some sample of the general population or the general internet population. College identity politics and extreme political correctness rules the internet, because that's the politics of those who spend the most time on the internet posting opinions. Its not a mainstream view, in my experience. I think you'll find a lot of ISRO fandom and well-wishers out here. The idea that the developing world shouldn't be performing "great works" is asinine and anti-progress.
Unfortunately, acting cynical and world-weary is going to be popular with young people because it imitates wisdom, but imo, its probably the worst attitude a young person can have. If you're not enthused and motivated you're just not going to be accomplishing anything. I often need to aggressively park my inner critic and gen-x "who cares" or "that's stupid" attitudes. These attitudes been a huge disservice to me my whole life. When I see others engaging in this type of cynicism, I really do pity them because life has so much to offer if you look at it the right way.
>I am a very proud Indian today.
You guys should be proud. This is an incredible achievement, especially when you consider the cost and difficulty of the mission.
I chuckled reading some of the comments from armchair scientists. This gives me immense hope. For a big part of my life my decisions have been based on other peoples' judgement. Oddly, I feel personally vindicated.
I'd say almost a third of HN comments are intentionally misleading or flat-out wrong. I've seen people include fake link citations to try and prove their point.
Sadly, there are a huge number of phonies on HN. I'll bet many of them have enough karma to downvote too.
Yes, but the people who do a lot of the criticizing seem to just shrug their shoulders then start criticizing the next thing. As humans, we often don't learn from our mistakes. And in democratic societies, we expend a lot of energy dealing with the noise.
On the other hand, people should have listened to critics before the Titanic, the Hindenburg, the last Columbia launch, the last Challenger launch, the Big Dig, the Iraq War, the launch of the Obamacare websites, and a bunch of other large undertakings.
The critics were wrong in this case, but writing them off as noise can lead to other mistakes.
With exception of the Iraq War and Universal Healthcare websites, pretty much everything was an accident.
Sending an orbiter to Mars is advancing science and knowledge. Aside from the fact that this was an unmanned mission, ambitious projects mostly have an extra element of risk by definition. Inactivity due to that would be stopping advancement.
Besides, India spent USD 75 million on it. It's GDP is 1.877 trillion USD approx. Its peanuts[1].
> With exception of the Iraq War and Universal Healthcare websites, pretty much everything was an accident.
Off the top of my head: Titanic's water bulkheads didn't go all the way to the tops of compartments, Hindenburg didn't use non-flammable helium, and Challenger had known issues with O-rings at low temperatures.
Not a persecution complex. I did not argue then, I don't wish to deride anyone now. It's just that I feel good about this. Developing countries taking to space. Humanity is progressing.
Proud: "feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of one's [b]own[/b] achievements"
By definition neither you or sidcool are proud (unless you actually/literally helped the project), you must be looking for a different word, perhaps pleased
I believe he /literally/ helped the project by paying his taxes on time.
The government plays ads on local TV channels urging citizens to pay their taxes on time and that the money helps government execute projects like this.
proud:feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of one's own achievements, qualities, or possessions or those of someone with whom one is closely associated.
you conveniently left the second part
"or those of someone with whom one is closely associated."
well then the question is what "closely associated" means, if by being Indian, Chinese, black, white, orange, etc "closely associates" you with them (that group?) then anything does, the fact that we all wear clothes for example, we belong in a group that shares this idea, which then closely associates us, making the word meaningless
Your comment has significantly less content than his.
Not that I particularly wanted to mention it until reading your comment, but I also don't particularly understand associating yourself with the activities of strangers who happen to live close to you. It's really not that unusual a viewpoint.
Socialising success. "I'll take some of that, thanks." I've been meaning to give it some proper thought for ages. People celebrating when a sports team wins, as if their own accomplishment. That aside, congrats to ISRO, great stuff.
It doesn't make the word meaningless at all. There are many orders of granularity in "close association" and the diversity of the usage of the word reflects this. For example a google search for "proud to be human" turns up nearly a million hits. The phrase "proud to be alive" returns yields almost two million. Even "proud to be from the milky way" returns six results.
> “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, [Freedom From the Known, Chapter 6][freedom]
Please, stop with the philosophical garbage. I'm not Indian, but I'm proud of them and very happy for them.
We at Hacker News tend to call ourselves hackers, programmers, techies, entrepreneurs, geeks, etc. Are we also being violent?
You can choose to become a programmer, but you can't choose to be born Indian. I imagine you would take offence if I said I am proud to be white? If people keep saying they are proud because of things they didn't choose, then that breeds social differences.
I agree with segmondy. Instead of classifying this news as Indian achievement, we should look forward to it as world's achievement.Surely those guys had it commendable work in such constrained resource! For me, it's new frontier in science...and boy it's cheap! More the affordability, more the chances of discoveries. Remember when a useful pricey thing becomes affordable without loosing usefulness then it's an innovation!
Not very deep.Separation is not always violent,sometimes separation is an act of care and sometimes it's an act of prevention.Separation is neccessary.The 'rest of mankind' is sometimes not the space where you want to spend your life in.
I agree with segmondy. Instead of classifying this news as Indian achievement, we should look forward to it as world's achievement.Surely those guys had it commendable work in such constrained resource! For me, it's new frontier in science...and boy it's cheap! More the affordability, more the chances of discoveries. Remember when a useful pricey thing becomes affordable without loosing usefulness then it's innovation!
Is this really an achievement when someone else could do it in 1965? Is it an achievement when other countries can land rovers on mars? India should be a leader, not follow others' footsteps.
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 successful orbiter was Mariner 9 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_9) in 1971.
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?
In the age of NSA sponsored spying, having an independent and largely self-taught space program is indeed a scientific achievement. Especially for a country that's 67 years old.
do you understand enough "science" to fathom "scientific achievement"? If the people behind the mission explained to you "science" in it and what are the "scientific achievement", would you understand them?
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.
What is even more commendable is that it was done pretty cheaply [1]. Granted the capabilities of some of the other craft are different - but not THAT different.
Add to this the fact that this was a success in the first shot - getting a craft from the Earth to to Mars Orbit correctly in one shot on a meager budget is indeed a stunning success for ISRO.
It cost them $74 million. I'm going to predict it now - in about 10-20 years, wealthy hobbyists will be sending probes to other planets, eventually creating a worldwide community of amateur planet probers.
With my limited understanding of orbital mechanics, it seems pretty hard to get something into a stable orbit around earth, especially if you're aiming for Mars. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I think interplanetary missions usually start by reaching low earth orbit, and only then burning at the right time to start the interplanetary transfer. So getting stuck in LEO is not that unlikely.
For example, the Russian Fobos-Grunt[1] mars mission got stranded in LEO. Though indeed not in a stable orbit; it did re-enter and burn up two months later.
It's not big satellites in controlled orbits that are a major problem from a space junk standpoint. Mostly it's the smaller fragments that are the problem, which outnumber satellites by a huge margin. Besides which, the easier it would be to launch satellites into orbit the easier, and cheaper, it would be to launch programs for cleaning up debris and abandoned satellites.
In fact, if launch were significantly cheaper then Earth orbiting satellites could be equipped with special sub-systems designed to deorbit them if the main satellite became inoperable.
I read an article forever ago that a de-orbiting system could be as simple as a bunch of wires being shot from the satellite to the earth; gravity would tug on the wires and slowly pull the satellite out of orbit.
Hey, don't knock Kessler syndrome - it may be the one thing that can save the planet. Sure, it's a Scylla and Charybdis type choice between boosting albedo or having viable space travel, but it may come to that.
Either way, there are practical applications for Kessler syndrome, although in the context discussed here, of course you're right - last thing anyone wants is junk all over the shop while trying to carry out space travel.
It's not big satellites in controlled orbits that are a major problem from a space junk standpoint. Mostly it's the smaller fragments that are the problem, which outnumber satellites by a huge margin. Besides which, the easier it would be to launch satellites into orbit the easier, and cheaper, it would be to launch programs for cleaning up debris and abandoned satellites.
It reminds me a bit of Rutherford's famous quip about experiment design, "We don't have any money... we shall have to be clever!"
Indian's ability to come together, organize and execute this mission is a huge credit to them. I hope other space agencies will take a careful look at what they've done and how they've done it, so they can learn from them.
It does have less than 1/4 of the payload (by mass) of NASA's MAVEN. So it's not like NASA's much higher budget didn't buy them anything. Still, it is a wonderful thing to show that you don't need NASA sized budgets to do interesting things in space.
What's even more fascinating is that ISRO survived at all, through the cold war. The fact that India has a fledgling space program, despite its problems, strikes me as rather inspiring.
The fact that it was done cheaply stems partly from the fact that there is a factor of ~5-10 between the purchasing-power and corresponding USD value (which is why engineers in India seem to be paid lower in dollar terms).
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 a pretty stupid way to look at it. Compare it with salaries in India, not with USD. It's a lot of money (vs a young Software Engineer in India) if you live in a government sponsored apartment, and get other government benefits too.
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!).
I've done a lot of work with the Indian government, and yes it can be very corrupted. But from what my friends at ISRO have told me -- and I believe them -- it is a meritocracy of the highest order. Its consistently excellent performance over the years is further testimony to this. ISRO should be an inspiration to the rest of India.
MOM spacecraft was launched last year (5th Nov 2013) and today it entered into Martian orbit. Here's the twitter handle of spacecraft: https://twitter.com/MarsOrbiter
Given that HN is a more intellectual and educated group and there are no one here who is criticizing about the money spent . But the were skeptics who did criticize initially . It basically represents the sample of the population who probably never understood the meaning of space exploration. Most of them are partially educated or educated with a faulty system. It does not just apply to India, there are people sitting in US congress who thinks NASA is waste of money. Same people would have blamed ISRO for INSAT , GSLV & PSLV back in the days where there were bunch of satellite already doing the similar work. Its only because of those ISRO efforts today we have own geo-censing and satellite communication without having to buy from external agencies or compromise our security .
I think many of the criticisms were around the issue of aid. Pretty much as a result of this mission the UK announced in 2012 it was going to phase out foreign aid to India by 2015 (and replace it with technical assistance).
Great news for India's space program especially considering INR4.54 billion (US$74 million) cost for an interplanetary mission like this, it should be a crash course in frugal space engineering. I really believe ISRO can form a close partnership with NASA in future to launch supply to ISS and much more.
Yes. Chandrayaan-2 (second Moon mission) consisting of a lander and rover is already in the works. Also, with the qualification of GSLV Mk3 medium-heavy lift vehicle and re-entry capsules[1], ISRO would be able to contribute more to "space transportation" missions.
True. I do believe that by doing close collaboration with NASA, ESA etc. India can help accelerate space missions all over the world. It will certainly be a win-win partnership because these Space agencies will save lots of money and India will gain expertise in executing complex missions.
Note for non-Indian readers: "Auto" here is "autorickshaw", the ubiquitous (and cheap!) rickety three-wheelers that zoom about in all of India's cities. And the current official starting fare in Delhi is indeed Rs 25 for 2 km!
It is so incredibly inspiring to listen to a PM speak about space, science, research and exploration for more than an hour. Does anyone know if this is broadcast on Indian national TV?
I felt mixed about his speech (I listened to it fully). I think it lacked bit of finesse considering it was addressed to country's eminent scientists. But then, perhaps therein lies his genuineness.
NASA actually had a rather successful program called "better, faster, cheaper" where we cut back on testing rigour in exchange for 1/2 - 1/3 mission cost
Whether intended as a derogatory remark or otherwise, the economical mission cost is a direct consequence of very creative and clever engineering solutions. I remember following the launch, the series of orbit raising manoeuvres to slingshot the craft into a heliocentric orbit to begin the journey towards Mars, there by limiting the costs and enabling to work around mission constraints, was extremely impressive. I wonder if the success of this mission would spark a priority to optimize costs in missions across space agencies around the world.
I didn't see anyone compare this success at first attempt with the (partial) failure of Jade Rabbit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7226307 however that seems a more interesting comparison between newcomers to space exploration rather than, say, NASA missions.
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
cue haters talking about lack of toilets/education/too much rape/other random social issue that exists in India they heard about that one time in the news - and how India should fix that instead of developing technology...in 5..4..3..2..1
I just wish ISRO was a privately held like spacex and giving it a run for its money. You would get the students in India really inspired to learn real engineering.
Well Done! But the $700 billion US defense budget could have been spent giving basic health care to Americans, so that don't have to go bankrupt whenever they fall ill.
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 budget of the Mars Orbiter mission was around 75 million USD[2] i.e. less than 1.5% of [1].
[1]: http://www.performance.gov.in/sites/default/files/department...
[2]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2013/11/07/how-indias...