Well Well
They should have put more curry juice in it, innit?
India's mission to Mars ran into its first problem today, failing to reach the required apogee of 100,000km when it tried to lift up its orbit. The orbital trajectory of India The planned orbital trajectory of India's Mangalyaan Mars probe The Mangalyaan probe, aka the Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM, is due to keep circling …
Your comment reeks of "they should feed the poor first" as well as the obvious racism.
A society needs to lift all levels of achievement, including space if you're the size of India, to develop. Rocket scientists want to be, well, rocket scientists whatever their nationality. So you either export them all, or have some rocketry of your own.
Go India. Even it it fails you have succeeded.
I'm surprised that a simple orbit raising maneuver glitch warrants an article of its own here. Why the crab mentality ? The amount of self righteous indignation of the "how dare they accept our money and spend it on rockets ??" variety, combined with the desire to see us fail is both laughable and sad.
I, for one, am rooting for them. In terms of the science, it's redundant -- but coordinated redundancy is quite useful to science.
As to the cost difference, the US fields much more complex probes and use expensive boosters to achieve solar orbit, rather than using orbital mechanics to achieve the solar orbit necessary.
Why do it get the feeling that this article is sarcastic. Comparing an elliptical orbit to egg and author must know that there is no height, once any object leaves earth's atmosphere. Author must buy a dictionary and learn the meaning for words like, apogee and perigee. Well at least someone is trying even though redundant. Can anyone explain, why we stopped pursuing Mars mission ?
This is fascinating. But it is difficult. Everything is trimmed down to save mass and everything needs to work exactly when and as when it's needed while surviving in an extreme environment.
The total cost of the Indian space programme is a drop in the ocean compared to the costs of programmes for the poor who can ultimately only be assisted by economic policies and sustained good administration.
The US and other societies had other compelling needs when they developed their space programmes - and still do. Does anyone still believe that they did not benefit from those programmes? From forcing their industries and research institutes to up their game, development of new materials and techniques and the ability to bring satellites to orbit.
Indian scientists and engineers are active all over the world. Giving them something to do at home seems a sensible use of the resource they represent.