From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
Yeap: 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.
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.
(Another person in this thread ties it more closely to 'kludge' -- this would be correct too. More correct would be innovative or tricky kludge.)
I think "jugaad" gets ingrained naturally when you are on a budget and don't have access to all the cool tools but have a desire to build something.
[1] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_th...
[2] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaipur_leg
[3] : http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/142526263/india-eye-care-cente...
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":
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).
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.
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 [2] 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... (source:
ISRO assembling the Mangalyaan Mars probe in question http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/01608/vbk-05-mars... (source: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indias-october-28-m...)
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-... via 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.
Dont go loose in the la la land.
"ISRO said the spacecraft was built according to the planetary protection implementation requirements specified for ‘orbiter’ category of missions."
SOURCE : http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/mom...
Some articles speculate about the rigorousness but can't confirm. Implying it doesn't exceed them doesn't equate to skipping the sterilization. Besides, it's carrying satellites from developed countries (France, Germany, Canada & Singapore), which I doubt would be complicit in creating an international controversy.
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.
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.
I don't know for sure, but wouldn't that be a pretty effective way of sterilising rock?
Bacteria surviving on the rock would need to be buried deep inside to be shielded in such a way, and eventually break out to the surface.
I mean, I'm all for space exploration and everything, don't misinterpret what I'm saying, but let's say we manage to get on Mars, establish a colony. In the long run we manage to terraform the planet, maybe. Now what? We get a new retirement centre on Mars?
I mean, at this point it's just about planting a flag and "go team humans!"
I mean, we're currently in the process of ruining our perfectly fine planet, I'm not so sure I'm willing to believe we would be "improving" Mars in the long run.
As long as we don't have any reasonable solution for leaving the solar system we're basically stuck with a bunch of rock within reach, let's not ruin everything just so that we can build Disneyland Universe on Mars. That would seem a very selfish thing to do. Think of the Dodos.
We might get new resources. There are many wars happening that are all about resources. Also, we might get space, which could reduce tensions on earth.
> I'm not so sure I'm willing to believe we would be "improving" Mars in the long run.
What could we possibly do to Mars, that in practical terms could make it worse? It's uninhabitable already. If it matters so much to you, then I ask you if the same applies to some planet a billion light years away from us.
> As long as we don't have any reasonable solution for leaving the solar system we're basically stuck with a bunch of rock within reach, let's not ruin everything just so that we can build Disneyland Universe on Mars. That would seem a very selfish thing to do. Think of the Dodos.
Or we could also work with what we can reach. I mean it's obviously bad, that Dodos are extinct now, but was life better a thousand years ago, when we were unable to reach and work with oil and gas, even though Dodos still existed?
The problem is that we grow exponentially. How long would a 2nd earth last us at our current rate or expansion and resource consumption? Not to mention the massive amount of resources we'll have to take from earth in order to reach Mars and make in inhabitable.
> What could we possibly do to Mars, that in practical terms could make it worse? It's uninhabitable already. If it matters so much to you, then I ask you if the same applies to some planet a billion light years away from us.
It's uninhabitable for us alright, but it's not like we already knew everything about Mars. The whole point of my argument (and the reason NASA is careful about not contaminating marsian soil) is because we don't know what we could find.
And no, it wouldn't matter to me if mars was a billion light years away from us. If we could easily reach new and unexplored planets I wouldn't be objecting to messing with Mars (after all, there are billions of other specimen for us to study), but that's obviously not realistic in the short term (for a big value of "short").
> Or we could also work with what we can reach. I mean it's obviously bad, that Dodos are extinct now, but was life better a thousand years ago, when we were unable to reach and work with oil and gas, even though Dodos still existed?
I'm not sure what's the argument, do you think the colonization of Mauritius and the extinction of the dodo made humanity progress significantly?
As in all things, there's a middle ground to be found, we don't need to destroy in order to move forward.
But my view on this issue is based on what is practical and what history teaches us.
We actually always destroy things, to move forward.
I'd rather have us not spending so much energy on dominance and wars and instead on science and social systems, but the truth is that there is no sign that we will ever change our ways.
That's why I applaud any country whenever it puts some energy into something, that isn't just about wars and geopolitics.
Even if it's very limited resources they are investing, it's in my opinion still better than doing nothing at all, or spending the 70 million on a few tanks that will rot away somewhere close to the Pakistani border.
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?
But what do you think I've said in the comment you replied to that trumps NASA's design decisions? That sterilization is unimportant? I think NASA sterilizing the equipment it uses to detect life is obviously the right design decision. There are results from the Voyager program that are still uncertain because of incomplete sterilization.
It's simply baffling to me, that a person could sit in front of a computer with absolutely no education or understanding in a topic and call a litany of experts in a field all wrong within the same hour as learning of the specific problem in the first place, or even claim to know what is "obviously the right design decision".
But, I'm not surprised. Welcome to Internet.
Secondly, you said this, "If colonization were a matter of just moving from one to the other, it would have happened already." I'm trying to understand why you feel you're qualified to make a statement like that. Are you an expert on this topic? If not, that's okay!
You say you're agreeing with NASA's practice, but I guess that's just the flip side of the same coin, isn't it?
What I'm trying to get at is why people (not just you, and you've hardly "sinned" at all here) do this broad stating of opinions on scientific topics like this. It seems to lend credence to the idea that all thoughts are equally important, when we all know that's not true.
To me, this feels like the same kind of thing that we get on the news, when we see "experts" deny climate change by pontificating broadly with the same level of apparent airtime as actual experts who argue in favor of it using their expertise and their experimentation results.
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.
I didn't mean to say that NASA or the Indian engineers know more or less than one another, even if they disagree. It's just not for us, the folks who don't actually know much about this topic, to make determinations.
Or maybe it is. I was hoping to discuss that point.
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.
There are certainly such a thing as an invasive species, but that's survivor-bias. If you move some alligators to the desert they are not going to decimate the local camel population.
Or think about the LHC creating a black hole (not likely but when talking about the fate of life in the universe, worth considering.)
Or even runaway global warming turning Earth into Venus? (Not sure if it's possible, just ideas)
Happened with NASA in 1999 : http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
No.
Or is there any entity on this planet, that could claim it has legitimate interests (or even ownership) in keeping the atmosphere of Mars clean, which should prevent India from sending people to Mars in a way that we don't like?
Again, im my opinion the answer is no. Why? Because there are enough planets that every human being on earth could have its own.
We could also look at it from the benefits vs risks perspective.
Here I also reach the same conclusion. The risk of having contaminated one planet with organisms is almost non-existent compared to the potential benefits of making another step towards the colonisation of other planets.
Once our technology gets better, and we can reach to more distant places, you can have any amount of pristine and untouched planets you could ever want.
But first we've got to improve our capabilities by actually trying it.
Bro, we're never reaching those planets, FTL travel is a fantasy. Are you really willing to bet whatever life is on Mars on the hope that humans will someday be able to travel faster than light? What we could learn from extraterrestrial life, even if it's only microbes, could open vast new areas of biology research - potentially curing diseases or teaching us to survive in a much warmer Earth.
Meanwhile your argument is based beliefs where you can't even possibly calculate a probability, just like the belief in god.
What we have is our tools and capabilities to try and work with what we can reach at the moment in our solar system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm more interested in your argument about what's the "value per dollar" that the two missions are achieving (rather than equating them with GM & Ferrari). This PSLV sent by ISRO was used to piggyback satellites from Canada, Germany, France & Singapore.
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.
So building and engineering is way cheaper. How about quality?
Otherwise you couldn't explain why the Soviets/Russians had such a remarkably reliable space program, even though they always had less resources than the US.
From what I understand, NASA tends to overload projects with thousands of requirements and features, which introduce additional points of failure, whereas the Russians focus more on the basics.
It seems like the Indians will also use the same strategy, and focus on the basics and reuse what they already have, which makes sense, considering their limited resources.
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.
(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
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.
"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.
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?