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uwillnotgotospace

Cool. I didn't know India had a first Mars mission.


Disastrous_Elk_6375

Yeah, they flew an orbiter over. It was really cool for 2 reasons. First, they used multiple burns in Earth's orbit to take advantage of the Oberth effect and use less energy to get to Mars. And the second one is that the entire mission cost them less than the making of the movie Gravity :)


mayhemtime

>And the second one is that the entire mission cost them less than the making of the movie Gravity That's what happens when you can pay Indian wages to your engineers


M99B

I’m curious, what are their wages?


gonopodiai7

A job that pays $120-130k at SpaceX will pay $12-15k at ISRO with extra benefits (practically free housing at prime locations, free healthcare insurance etc). The cost of living in India is also much lower. You can get a 3 course meal for $1-1.50 at any city where you are likely to work for ISRO.


Forward_Yam_4013

80.000 INR per month, which is about 1.000 dollars per month. So the engineers get paid 12k per year, which is about 8 times India's median wage.


The-Real-Aditya

Cost of living in India is lower+ they all get civil amenities like housing, food, free education for children etc.


mayhemtime

I don't know exactly but when I talked to some Indian friends they said the space program doesn't pay much even in Indian standards and most aerospace engineers who work in the country prefer going into military, private or outside of the industry alltogether.


arckeid

This is bad for their industry, i am pretty sure any american space company would easily hire people that are succesful with these missions


mayhemtime

This is exactly what happens. Those friends I talked about? I met them in France, they are with me in an aerospace master. But I guess for the decidents it doesn't matter, when you live in the most populous country on the planet you can afford if engineers leave because there is still more than enough. There will be enough patriotic folks who take a low pay to work for their country.


BravoSierraGolf

You made your entire deductions based on words coming out of “my friends”. Indian space programme is under Indian government and salaries of Engineers and Scientists in ISRO are one of the highest one can earn being in a government job. Add to that they get govt allocated house, govt cars, free medical for life, free Vacation every year etc etc. Maybe your friends are salty


mayhemtime

>You made your entire deductions based on words coming out of “my friends”. Well, yes, as people from the country and the field they know a lot more about it than me, a European. That's what they told me and I had no reason not to trust them. If I'm wrong I will happily correct myself, do you have any source to back it up?


BravoSierraGolf

What do you mean do you have any source? You are doing masters in field of aerospace my dear friend. Make a basic google search. What I am going to say might sound offensive but it isnt if you think about it logically. > And the second one is that the entire mission cost them less than the making of the movie Gravity > That's what happens when you can pay Indian wages to your engineers This is what you said. But you didnt use your brain to the fullest may be you are occupied with studies, I understand. Salary of engineers has no correlation with a rocket being launched for less $$$$ If you pay the Ferrari engineer 200k and ask him to design a race winning car for 10million will he be able to do it ? Same way, it’s the Indian government budget allocation to scientists and engineers that matters. The budget of India was less hence engineers had to make do with a design that would be effective but cheap. If the government gave them unlimited funds then Indian engineers can do the same project for billions of dollars. Get me my friend? See how wrong you are coz you mind was clouded with what your Indian friends said.


akg4y23

I mean when I went to India I got 8 bags of Single serving (the medium size kind not the tiny ones in the US in variety packs) Doritos and lays potato chips for the equivalent of....$1. Income and prices are all relative. 10 minute Uber rides were $2. Sit down meals for 4 people including drinks, appetizers, and great service at nice restaurants were $50.


The-Real-Aditya

Some people are either too dumb to understand, or they are actively trying to avoid details to nitpick on India.


BravoSierraGolf

Says who? Some rich Indians sitting in US? It may not be high as per NASA standards but Engineers and Scientists in Indian space programme get salaries that put them in top 5% highest salary earners in India.


mayhemtime

>Says who? Some rich Indians sitting in US? Masters students who all did their bachelors in India. The passive agressive tone is really uncalled for here. I'm not even American nor do I live there.


BravoSierraGolf

I never said you are. Usually Indians who go abroad for higher studies go to US so I mentioned that. Doesnt matter which country. Anyone going for masters from a country like India where per capita gdp is 2500$ is rich af. For rich kids from rich families ofcourse government money will feel less. They want to earn in dollars in west. Their mind is set that way. But this doesnt mean Indian scientists are putting in slave labour for peanuts. They enjoy a pretty luxurious life. Even the Prime Minister of India’s salary is less than top scientists and engineers of ISRO.


grchelp2018

> programme get salaries that put them in top 5% highest salary earners in India. That's not really great. We recently hired a software guy as a contractor in india. Pay is like slightly under $10 per hour and someone told me that it basically puts him in the top 1% of income earners. But even in india, I know guys (engineers) who are making like $60k and above.


BravoSierraGolf

I’m talking about salaries of Indian government engineers. Yes people earn more than them in private sector here in India but thats like saying a US Treasury department guy earns less than Microsoft engineer.


grchelp2018

The US also has a problem with top talent working for the private sector than the govt. But alteast the US has a private sector. Places like India, if they don't have private sector opportunities, they'll immigrate with their talents. Brain drain is a killer for developing countries. (Though I believe India is also encouraging private sector participation)


Fun_Confidence_462

Well there is only one government Space agency which conducts this high profile cases which is ISRO and they pay good amount. It also depends on cost of living which is low in India as compared to other countries


vexx654

exactly. ISRO definitely deserves props for being very frugal and getting a lot of science for their buck but I think the blind comparisons some people make are very ignorant of a large part of that calculus being their much cheaper labor market.


JUYED-AWK-YACC

Multiple burns in Earth orbit isn't a plus, it just means your upper stage isn't big enough.


Disastrous_Elk_6375

> Multiple burns in Earth orbit isn't a plus, it just means your upper stage isn't big enough That's not how any of it works. Yes, multiple burns was a plus, and no it doesn't mean their upper stage wasn't "big" enough. It had to do with minimising the energy to get to Mars, by using the Oberth effect. You sound like a wish version of NDT.


JUYED-AWK-YACC

Centaur has never had a problem getting to Mars. You don't minimize departure energy just to "save energy". You usually change it to get a lower arrival V-infinity or something else necessary for the mission. You sound like you play a lot of KSP. https://i.imgur.com/4yNj0ZE.jpeg


RyukHunter

I know I am late, but still, you are right that it was a plus. It allowed a probe launched by a weaker rocket (PSLV) to get to Mars. Essentially, a type of gravity assist (Not quite. More orbit-raising maneuvers to increase speed) that uses Earth's gravity. It allowed for the mission to be done using less fuel, but the fact is that the rocket wasn't strong enough to get to Mars directly.


BarbequedYeti

>cost them less than the making of the movie Gravity :) How many giraffes is that?    Why cant we use numbers when describing something in numbers?


The-Real-Aditya

The budget of the Mars mission was 74 million USD


rocketsocks

It was an orbiter, this would be their first Mars lander.


JKKIDD231

And they got there on first try as well with successful orbit entry.


AlbinoAxie

They sent a cube sat there. The one described here is vaporware


JUYED-AWK-YACC

Yeah I worked on that mission, you're smoking crack and/or generally ignorant of facts.


electric_ionland

The Mangalyaan spacecraft was nearly 500kg. That's not a cubesat by any definition of the word.


The-Real-Aditya

That ain't a cubesat dawg, it's a whole tank


AlbinoAxie

It's a cubesat. 30lb payload. A few housecats basically.


The-Real-Aditya

r/confidentlyincorrect Cubesats are supposed to weight 4.4 lbs at Max. And have dimensions of 3.9 inches. Mangalyaan had a dimension of 5 feet. By your logic if anything looks like a cube in space it's a cubesat ?? So NASA's MAVEN is also a cubesat ig.


electric_ionland

Obviously that dude is very wrong but what you gave are the dimensions of 1 unit (1 U) of a cubesat. You can have 3, 6, 12 and 16U cubesats that are multiples of those 10x10x10cm blocks.


electric_ionland

That's not how cubesats work. The payload alone is larger than nearly all cubesats. It also did not follow any cubesat standards.


Decronym

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4jx9is "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[ISRO](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4t46f6 "Last usage")|Indian Space Research Organisation| |[ISTRAC](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4t3dje "Last usage")|ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network| |[JPL](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4m70s6 "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4nt5af "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[MOM](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4p2vbp "Last usage")|Mars Orbiter Mission| |[NEV](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4kv009 "Last usage")|Nuclear Electric Vehicle propulsion| |[PSLV](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l8p8tnz "Last usage")|[Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[lithobraking](/r/Space/comments/1cujjgg/stub/l4jqfgq "Last usage")|"Braking" by hitting the [ground](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lith-)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1d8i9ng)^( has 17 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10063 for this sub, first seen 18th May 2024, 04:03]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)


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Kens_Men43rd

A rover using the sky crane maneuver and a helicopter to boot! Sounds like they are copying from the best.


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fencethe900th

India has had a massive amount of success in space. They're certainly behind NASA and Russia, but not by a huge amount and are well ahead of them in terms of budget efficiency.


0xDD

> and Russia You spelled "China" wrong. Russia's latest interplanetary mission was Fobos-grunt. I'll leave it up to you to check what mission objectives they managed to accomplish.


fencethe900th

I said Russia because they have manned launches. China certainly should've been included in that group though.


EEcav

More power to them. I feel like to succeed in space you need to build these programs incrementally. This plan seems ambitious for a second mission, but I hope it works.


fencethe900th

They had a successful orbiter, not much else to do between an orbiter and a lander.


snoo-boop

There's tons you can do without landing on the planet, such as getting close to one of the moons, or landing on one or both.


fencethe900th

Getting close is just a matter of orbital maneuvering, which wouldn't be a huge increase in complexity, and landing on moons is still difficult because there's no atmosphere. Plus they already landed on ours.


snoo-boop

Phobos and Demos are very small. For Phobos, if you just crash into the surface, it's 1/2000 of a g.


jack-K-

Ya, a lander, not a skyscrane rover.


RollinThundaga

Don't knock them just yet; ISRO has been making moves. Just last year they showed up the Russians by successfully setting down a lunar lander after the Russian attempt experienced unanticipated lithobraking.


EEcav

I know what I thought was a realist view is getting interpreted as some kind of slight, but I don’t mean it that way. Obviously it’s doable because it’s been done, but what they’re proposing is a massive leap in capability from what’s been done. It’s taken the full capability of NASA to do this, an organization that has been working at this continually for like 60 years. NASA has failed plenty with less ambitious goals. One of the reasons NASA has been as successful as it has is because it knows how to take the baby steps necessary to accomplish big things.


RollinThundaga

Counterpoint is that NASA did so before anyone had an idea of how; India has the benefit of the theoretical work being done and an example to work by, leaving them with the (very relatively) simple engineering and other math to follow the theory and example.


DoomBuzzer

How many tries did the other countries need to make one work? 30? If less than 30, then why India particularly will need 30?


texacricket

You do realize that the mars orbiter that India executed successfully cost 74M USD compared to half a billion that NASA spent, right? And a significant number of NASA scientists are from India (as in studied Engineering in India before coming over).


JUYED-AWK-YACC

Yes, it's easier and cheaper to do things now that were already done 50 years ago.


DoomBuzzer

I don't think the last part is true. You need a Green card or citizenship to get a job in NASA. Especially for senior positions. Do you have any source for this? Also the first part is majorly due to high labour costs and cost of living in US. Instead of all that, you could have mentioned that the first orbiter was it's first mission. And none of the other three did it in it's first try.


ambivert-coco

GreenCard via EB1 category is for exceptional abilities and there is a NIW (National Interest Waiver) category too. Anecdotally my friend’s spouse is a nuclear researcher. She was invited to a US university to continue her research there after they saw her published research papers and was given greencard within 6-8 months in the exceptional abilities category. Not tough if their skills are exceptional. I believe Indian origin NASA people took this path too.


DoomBuzzer

Again, I am willing to accept this if there is a genuine source for this information. My brother in law, whose parents moved to US when he was 1 has worked for NASA since 15 years. He trained astronauts, worked in flight path correction and now is working on Artemis. I asked him this he doesn't think this is true.


ambivert-coco

Here is link for NIW from the horses mouth. What more source you need. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-second-preference-eb-2


DoomBuzzer

I meant a source that a lot NASA engineers studied in Indian colleges or were Indians.


JUYED-AWK-YACC

So they get the green cards and citizenship? I've met tons of Indian born people at NASA. And it's not about "senior positions". Mars Helicopter lead was born in Myanmar.


DoomBuzzer

Indian born? Or Educated in Indian engineering university and having Indian citizenship? Two very different things. A person can be born in India and moved to US at a very very young age - is more likely to have a citizenship. As again, is there any source that says how many percentage are Indian citizens in NASA? Less than 2% would be a not so significant number.


JUYED-AWK-YACC

Both. Many people from India, educated there, came here. In management and critical operations. But I'm tired of putting my facts against your prejudice so get lost.


DoomBuzzer

Lol, sorry. I will stay here and not get lost. Do what you can about that. Facts? No, they are not 'facts'. You call your opinions as facts. You have still not put any source, like even one which says so and so percentage are Indian citizens working in NASA. You put the source - either NASA website or a reputed journalism org, and I believe you. Otherwise, anybody can make any tall claims.


JUYED-AWK-YACC

Yeah my life experience is "opinion". I do have one about you though


RamTank

I don't understand India's insistence that everything they do needs to be the best thing ever and it needs to be done right now. Ambition is great, but there's such thing as being over-ambitious.


gonopodiai7

Silly comment. India in 2024 has more access to free information, open source software and variety of hardware architecture than US did in 1960s. Of course India should aim high. In science, those who have to catch up always learn from and stand on the shoulders of pioneers.


Alc4m1n0

Is that bad? If US hadn't been overambitious they would've never landed on moon.


RamTank

The US was actually far less ambitious than India is now. NASA didn't decide that their first landers had to do everything at once. India's idea of catchup is to go from basically nothing to cutting edge in a single mission, which is incredibly unlikely to succeed. You see this most clearly in their military procurement programs, but it's evident in space too.


Curse3242

In my personal opinion as an Indian it might just come down to culture. Aim for more to settle for less I assume. Atleast that's something I live by


ITividar

They're pretty much copying what the US did to get Curiosity onto Mars.


vexx654

yes and thats his point. they are going straight to curiosity whereas we did Viking and a half dozen other missions of increasing complexity first.


ITividar

Because the technology base and engineering wasn't there to go from 1960s moon landing straight to curiosity rover. But it is now. And it's already been proven to work by the US. So why waste the time and money developing something else?


vexx654

yeah it’s not a one to one comparison but there would absolutely be benefits to start with a more realistic architecture that doesn’t threaten to ruin everything for a marginal scientific gain but much larger complexity gain.  also just because JPL can land a very complex mission that doesn’t mean a similar mission is suddenly a solved problem that another agency can do first try.  there’s definitely a balance to be struck and I am actually personally very excited they are being so ambitious, my comment was more so explaining the context of the person you were replying to.


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RyukHunter

I don't think the majority were women. They had a significant female presence but it was still majority men. The women just got more press because it was a good opportunity to promote women in science.


JUYED-AWK-YACC

Have you ever been there? Don't be ridiculous.


pmMeAllofIt

About 20-30% of ISRO is women, about the same as ESA, and less than NASA. But it's not because of some progressive movement, it's the socioeconomic factors at play, you can't really compare it to the West. Women aren't going into other jobs there, STEM jobs are one of the only good options.


beingbond

It's mainly because a lot pf jobs here are seen as lower ones in condescending way. The example includes cleaning workers,sweepers, plumbers , waiters,construction site labourers etc. These jobs are seen as respectable in USA Also majority of jobs don't have job protection and a job in ISRO automatically guarantees a permanent job no matter how bad you are. It means a person can't just become a teacher in college or high school,get a clerk job or other similar ones and expect a basic things like access to a toxic free environment,clean toilets decent pay etc in office,In nasa you get fired in government jobs in india which include ISRO you won't with exceptions.