Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

India Goes to Mars for Less Than 'Gravity's' Budget

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the Applied-SiddhÄnta dept.

Popeidol writes:

"In November, India took the next step in their space program by launching their Mangalyaan Mars orbiter. The orbiter won't arrive for a while yet, but they've managed to get some public attention for a different reason: the fact that the entire mission costs only 75 million dollars, substantially less than the budget for the hit movie 'Gravity.'

While the question of wages is bound to come up (it was only 15% of the budget of the project), I think we can all agree that bringing down the cost of interplanetary space travel to a level attainable by the ultra-rich is a good step forward."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
India Goes to Mars for Less Than 'Gravity's' Budget | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 61 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 1) by bigjimslade on Saturday February 22 2014, @04:01AM

    by bigjimslade (212) on Saturday February 22 2014, @04:01AM (#4675)

    well i should not have said 'simple stuff'. how about 'space stuff'. maybe i consider the classified stuff 'simple', which was incorrect.

    i was not referring to published information. yes, of course, nasa publishes a lot of space data. do you have any idea how well that is scrutinized before it gets published? there are layers of people that have to sign off everything that gets published. so yes, the stuff that is published is 'space stuff' but well scrubbed.

    the real 'meat' of space exploration is held tightly to the chest by everyone at nasa and other space companies. i've been in it and i've been through the export/publishing process. it's not fun and the real cool stuff is not released in any form. too bad, actually.

    now the interface information can flow freely between countries and companies. i can say to russia, "we have 10 12mm bolts for you to connect to and here is their layout pattern and you tighten them to 20 ft/lbs". but, i can't tell them why we have 10 bolts. or why they're 12mm bolts. or why you need to tighten them to 20 ft/lbs. or why that particular layout pattern. it's quite maddening.

    --
    Remember, Tuesday is Soylent Green Day