Recent College Grads Aim To Land A Robot On The Moon (thehindu.com) 59
Sunday the Indian Space Research Organization successfully test-launched a scramjet rocket, propelled by "an air-breathing propulsion system which uses hydrogen as fuel and oxygen from the atmosphere air as the oxidizer" rather than carrying a tank of liquid oxygen. "if the need for liquid oxygen is taken away, the space craft can be much lighter, hence cheaper to launch," notes one newspaper, adding that India is only the fourth country to flight-test a scramjet engine after the U.S., Russia and the European Space Agency.
But in addition, 15 former ISRO scientists are now helping Team Indus, one of the 16 teams remaining in Google's $30 million Lunar XPRIZE competition, who will use ISRO's polar satellite launch vehicle to send their spacecraft to the moon. GillBates0 writes: An official designated as "Skywalker", said that such space missions used to be limited to extremely elite people and PhDs in the past. That stereotype is now breaking. "I was just a college student a couple of years ago and now I am working on an actual space mission, how cool is that," said Karan Vaish, 23, who is helping the team to design the lunar rover. Eighty per cent of the team is reported to be less than five years out of college.
But in addition, 15 former ISRO scientists are now helping Team Indus, one of the 16 teams remaining in Google's $30 million Lunar XPRIZE competition, who will use ISRO's polar satellite launch vehicle to send their spacecraft to the moon. GillBates0 writes: An official designated as "Skywalker", said that such space missions used to be limited to extremely elite people and PhDs in the past. That stereotype is now breaking. "I was just a college student a couple of years ago and now I am working on an actual space mission, how cool is that," said Karan Vaish, 23, who is helping the team to design the lunar rover. Eighty per cent of the team is reported to be less than five years out of college.
What's next? (Score:2)
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Re:What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
They already put a satellite in Mars orbit... and only spent $74 million putting it there. Who knows, they might go for a rover next.
As long as it does not involve humans, they are fine. Once you put humans in the picture, they will have to develop toilet technology - something that they yet have to crack.
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"they will have to develop toilet technology - something that they yet have to crack."
going by the condition and smell of any large city in usa, that country is yet to crack that either.
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Re: What's next? (Score:2)
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you know that your claims makes no sense.
if they manipulate their currency by undervaluing it to push their products including software, dollar value of anything originally designated in their currency will be higher. iow, if they undervalue their currency, cost of this project in dollar terms(74m) is higher than the real cost.
if "all of the expensive instruments came from other nations" why can't those other nations use same instruments to do that same thing at less.
maybe basic understanding of logic and b
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since none of these are true in this case, your point is invalid.
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What's next? Are they gonna try to put a robot on Mars?
Day 1: Robot lands on moon
Day 2: 23-year-old recompiles the kernel. Brags to his mother.
Day 3: 23-year-old's mother apt-get installs fortune and begins "astrology that's truly out of this world" business
Day 36028: Moon-Singularity with superior position in gravity well accidentally runs fortune, gets distracted from external universe in a fit of angst, and allows humanity to survive.
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Mind blown. The AC is right!
Re:well, (Score:4, Insightful)
And after they land rovers that last for years, orbit all of the planets, launch interstellar probes, and flyby Pluto, they'll be ready to finish catching up. In the meantime, NASA stands alone.
The real issue with NASA. (Score:3)
This year NASAs budget is over 18 billion.
It has never dropped below 15 billion a year since 2004, or below 12 billion since 1990.
NASA dont currently have any launch capability of their own.
And yet, the amount NASA spend on actualy space exploration has continuously dropped over that time.
The amount they spend on pork barrel politics and massive internal management/oversight structures has
however continued to grow.
THIS is the problem with NASA - the ratio of funding to achievement has been in a continuous d
Re: The real issue with NASA. (Score:3)
College Class Project (Score:1)
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Australia completed the first successful Scramjet (Score:5, Informative)
There are actually FIVE countries that have successfully tested scramjets in flight - the list should include Australia. What is more, the Australian project (HySHot run from the University of Queensland) was the FIRST successful scramjet flight (in July 2002).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyShot
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Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not the cost of the propellant (or rather oxidiser) that matters - it's the MASS (and that of the associated tankage etc). Every kilogram of mass saved increases the payload - which in turn drops the $/kg launch cost.
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The cost of the propellant is irrelevant. The goal is reusability. This is difficult because of the propellant mass fraction a rocket needs (i.e. the fraction of its launch mass dedicated to propellants). For a pure rocket this is in the region of 95%, so the entire rocket structure and payload must be crammed into the remaining 5%. This makes it difficult to do reusability, because heat shielding etc. eat into your already-tiny payload fraction.
When you can use atmospheric oxygen, the propellant mass fract
Recent College Grads Aim To Land A (Score:2)
Call me from the Moon (Score:2, Funny)
"I was just a college student a couple of years ago and now I am working on an actual space mission, how cool is that," said Karan Vaish, 23, who is helping the team to design the lunar rover.
Pffft. I designed a lunar rover when I was 8 years old. And a spaceship for traveling to distant galaxies.
One of these days Alice, one of these days... (Score:2)
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Great kid. Don't get cocky. (Score:4, Insightful)
"I was just a college student a couple of years ago and now I am working on an actual space mission, how cool is that," said Karan Vaish, 23, who is helping the team to design the lunar rover.
Neil Armstrong was 38 when he walked on the Moon, 24 years before you were born -- after being a Navy pilot, graduating from Purdue, being a test pilot and being in the astronaut program for 11 years. You graduated from school and are playing with robots. Granted, they're "space robots" and that is pretty cool, but keep a little perspective.
That aside. Why is it news that younger people work on things too? Someone has to take over and do things. Young graduates with excellent training and skills seems appropriately normal. Hopefully the youngsters will learn from both the achievements and mistakes of their predecessors - you know, all the older folks that did it first.
Lunar junk (Score:2)
If these kinds of projects become more common, is there a risk that desirable landing zones on the moon will become junkyards of project flights and expired landers and rovers?
I'm guessing not, since the moon is about Asia's size in terms of surface area. But maybe due to all kinds of reasons some zone on the moon is easier to hit or more desirable to land on, actually making it something of a problem.
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Relax, there's trillions of other moons, if you travel far enough.
cigar adverts (Score:2)
Good you cleared that up. We might have thought they were referring to the one on the G string.