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Seems like a pretty ill conceived article. Might as well have written about how American car companies like GM are able to produce much less expensive cars tha
by IanDrake 12y ago
Seems like a pretty ill conceived article. Might as well have written about how American car companies like GM are able to produce much less expensive cars than the Italians like Ferrari. Both cars have engines, tires, etc... but WOW, can the Americans do it for so much less...
- mikeash 12y agoIf there was nothing on the roads but fancy Ferraris, and then somebody came along and made a cheap GM that got the job done for much less, that would be newsworthy.
- IanDrake 12y agoTo me it's not that it's newsworthy or not, but how it's presented. It's not that Americans/Europeans can't do what the Indians did, but that we're not interested in doing what they did. The article seems to confuse the two.
- mikeash 12y agoHow do you know they can do it, if they never have? "I could do that, I just don't want to" is the lamest excuse in the book.
- IanDrake 12y agoThat is a lame excuse in some contexts. However, if Superman leaps over an entire building, then is asked to jump off a curb and declines, I think you can safely assume he could do it, but doesn't feel like it. If I jump off a curb and say I could jump over that yonder building (if I felt like it, but I don't). Then, yes, that would be lame.
- mikeash 12y agoWhen have any of these agencies ever done the cheap space mission equivalent of leaping over a building?
- chdir 12y agoCould you be more substantive with your analogy. Ferrari is producing cars in a category because they have buyers/racers who want/need it. NASA wouldn't be interested in making luxury spacecraft just because they can. I'm more interested in your argument about what's the "value per dollar" that the two missions are achieving (rather than equating them with GM & Ferrari). This PSLV sent by ISRO was used to piggyback satellites from Canada, Germany, France & Singapore.