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

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:30PM   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."

 
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  • (Score: 1) by evilviper on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:05AM

    by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:05AM (#2225) Journal

    I think it says something unfortunate about our society, that we put so much more in the way of resources into movies than into space exploration.

    Movies make a profit... All that money comes back, and then some, in a few months. If I could fund some space mission for less than the cost of a house, I'd still go for the house.

    Velcro is nice and all, but these days we're not pushing through many major technological hurdles, so I'm not sure we'll get the kind of benefits we saw from Apollo. And if I hear one more NASA press release saying they've got found another tiny bit of evidence, giving them a grain more hope that there might have been life on Mars, I'm going to go out and blow up the deep-space network...

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  • (Score: 1) by mhajicek on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:19AM

    by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:19AM (#2416)

    One possible type of space mission with financial return in the foreseeable future is asteroid mining, hence the significant private investment there. Who wouldn't want a billion tons of Platinum?