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Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

MOM and MAVEN were just about simultaneous (arriving at Mars two days apart), but they weren't comparable. MOM's primary mission objectives were things like "navigation." MAVEN would be NASA's 3rd orbiter at the time, to say nothing of the 4 or so previous orbiters, and so they weren't trying to just repeat earlier things.

Now, if you compare launch costs, you get a better feel for the differences. Those were about $43 million (MOM) to $187 million (MAVEN). But MAVEN was almost twice the mass.

SpaceX will give you a Falcon 9 Full Thrust launch, fixed price, for $62 million, which can launch something twice as big as MAVEN to Mars.

So SpaceX and India are price competitive on a kilogram-to-GTO basis.

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The price you quote for a SpaceX launch covers the reusable portion of the payload only, not the full unlocked capability of the launch vehicle. That's an Apple's to Oranges comparison.

The difference being, of course, that the Falcon 9 Full Thrust hasn't actually left Earth orbit yet.

Mark to market applies as much to space technology as it does to credit default swaps.

Falcon already delivered DSCOVR to Sun-Earth L1, while PSLV only flew MOM to a highly elliptical Earth orbit and MOM had to use its own propulsion for TMI.

Sun-Earth L1, while not in Earth's orbit, is still within the Earth's Sphere Of Influence as it has a negative Characteristic Energy value.

>> Falcon already delivered DSCOVR to Sun-Earth L1, while PSLV only flew MOM to a highly elliptical Earth orbit and MOM had to use its own propulsion for TMI.

Wait till PSLV delivers Aditya-1[1][2] to L1.

[1] http://www.isro.gov.in/aditya-l1-first-indian-mission-to-stu...

[2] http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/aditya-1.htm

Cite?

I don't object to the respondent: it's true, SpaceX has broken out of earth orbit -- but that's still a far cry from deploying to Mars.

My point stands: SpaceX needs to get to Mars once before we can start calling them serious interplanetary contenders.

I'm not sure why it's important to debate whether or not a company is a "serious interplanetary contender", but I do think it's important to get the facts correct.

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