India's Martian MOM leaves the nest India's Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM for short, is on its way to Mars. The cut-price probe has spent most of the last month whipping itself into a speedy frenzy, by looping about the Earth in a series of ever-higher egg-shaped orbits designed to give it enough speed to eventually fling itself in the direction of …
Because the Brits want to pretend that they have some leverage over India."
Aid, in the case of countries like India is not about aid per se, it's more of a "diplomatic bribe" to get preferential trade agreements and so on. UK aid to India ends in 2015. The US have begun a shift from "aid" to "strategic partnership" and are reducing their "aid"
Let me put it in a different way - there's no 'first world' overhead applied to the stuff designed, built and bought. Or are people saying that they've cut corners, coming up with something that's held together with the proverbial duct tape instead?
I'm sure the Indian space program used its resources much more economical. No telephone sanitizers and account executives on the payroll. Or numbers were fudged. Or both.
There is less "cost plus" to Boeing/Lockheed/Aerospatiale/Thales to subsidise their civil airline business or to cover up cost overruns on other military projects. But there are more direct "extra-contractual payments" to various government individuals.
Fortunately bribes are cheaper than boondongles.
If they could burn all that fuel quickly and be on their way in one go, I'm sure they'd do it.
But, a bigger engine might not have been available, or they chose a small one (that burns fuel more slowly) to save weight. With advance planning, it's really no big deal to make many small burns to increase the size of your orbit.
You are right. By not going on this mission they could have spent a whole $0.06 per capita on education and the like. Besides, by developing the capability to launch hefty kit into any orbit they please (cheaply), they are not gaining access to any kind of useful market. After all, satellites aren't money spinners, and level-headed business men like Elon Musk steer well clear of this kind of frivolous, money-wasting projects.
Aliens, because, well, it's about Mars, init?
Methane isn't necessarily created by biology, whilst most of it here on Earth is bacterial, some is produced abiogenically in geothermal areas.
The aim of this mission is to try and locate where the Martian methane is coming from as it appears to be largely localised into plumes. The second aim is to see if there are other gases associated with the plumes as these would help explain its origins. Again here on Earth, biological methane tends to be associated with tiny amounts of ethane, whilst geothermal methane is emitted along with sulfur dioxide.
But hats off to the Indians if they can first of all get to Mars and then find methane at levels of parts per billion and report the findings back across a couple of hundred million kilometres when I can't find my bloody headphones...
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