By Saritha Rai
 |
| The Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Spacecraft mounted atop a rocket at the /European Pressphoto Agency |
Just
days after the launch of India India Hollywood
“The
mission is a triumph of low-cost Indian engineering,” said Roddam Narasimha, an
aerospace scientist and a professor at Bangalore Jawaharlal Nehru Center
“By
excelling in getting so much out of so little, we are establishing ourselves as
the most cost-effective center globewide for a variety of advanced
technologies,” said Mr. Narasimha.
“Ours is a
contrasting, inexpensive and innovative approach to the very complex mission,”
said K. Radhakrishnan, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization,
or ISRO, in an interview at the space agency’s heavily guarded Bangalore India
“If
necessity is the mother of invention, constraint is the mother of frugal
innovation,” said Terri Bresenham, the chief executive of GE Healthcare, South Asia , who is based in Bangalore India
In
India
ISRO
has learned to make cost-effectiveness a daily mantra. Its inexpensive but
reliable launch capabilities have become popular for the launches of small
French, German and British satellites. Although the space agency had to build
ground systems from scratch, its Chandrayaan moon mission in 2008 cost
one-tenth what other nations’ moon shots cost, said Mylswamy Annadurai, mission
director.
The most obvious way ISRO does it is
low-cost engineering talent, the same reason so many software firms use Indian
engineers. India ’s
abundant supply of young technical talent helped rein in personnel costs to
less than 15 percent of the budget. “Rocket scientists in India cost very
little,” said Ajey Lele, a researcher at a New Delhi think tank, the Institute
for Defense Studies and Analyses, and author of “Mission Mars: India’s Quest
for the Red Planet.”
The average age of India ’s
2,500-person Mars team is 27. “At 50, I am the oldest member of my team; the
next oldest is 32,” said Subbiah Arunan, the project’s director. Entry-level
Indian space engineers make about $1,000 a month, less than a third of what
their Western counterparts make.
The Indians also had a short
development schedule that contributed heavily to the mission’s low cost, said
Andrew Coates, planetary scientist at University College London and a leader of
the European ExoMars expedition planned for 2018. The engineers had to compress
their efforts into 18 months (other countries’ space vehicles have taken six
years or more to build). It was either launch by November 2013 or wait another
26 months when the geometry of the sun, Mars and Earth would again be perfect
for a launch.
“Since the time was so short,
for the first time in the history of such a project, we scheduled tasks by the
hour — not days, not weeks,” said Mr. Arunan. Mr. Radhakrishnan added: “Could
we pull it off in less than two years’ time? Frankly, I doubted it.”
The modest budget did not allow
for multiple iterations. So, instead of building many models (a qualification
model, a flight model and a flight spare), as is the norm for American and
European agencies, scientists built the final flight model right from the
start. Expensive ground tests were also limited. “India ’s
‘late beginner’ advantage was that it could learn from earlier mission
failures,” said Mr. Lele.
“It is a question of philosophy,
and each country has its own,” explained Mr. Radhakrishnan. “The Russians, for
example, believe in putting large amounts of time and resources into testing so
that the systems are robust.”
His agency curbed costs by
another technique familiar to businesses in India :
transforming old technology into new. The launch vehicle was first developed in
the late 1970s and was augmented several times to become the solid propulsion
system currently used in its latest Geosynchronous Satellite Launch
Vehiclelauncher.
The G.S.L.V.’s engine also dates
back to the early 1970s, when ISRO engineers used technology transferred from France ’s
Ariane program. The same approach, which the Indian scientists call modularity,
extended to building spacecraft and communication systems. “We sometimes have
to trade off an ideal configuration for cost-effectiveness, but the heritage is
being improved constantly,” said Mr. Radhakrishnan.
Cost savings also came from
using similar systems across a dozen concurrent projects. Many related
technologies could be used in the Mars project; Astrosat, an astronomy mission
to be launched in late 2014; the second moon mission, which is two years away;
and even Aditya, a solar mission four years out.
Systems like the attitude
control, which maintains the orientation of the spacecraft; the gyro, a sensor
that measures the satellite’s deviation from its set path; or the star tracker,
a sensor that orients the satellite to distant objects in the celestial sphere,
are the same across several ISRO missions.
“The building blocks are kept
the same so we don’t have to tailor-make for each mission,” said Mr. Annadurai
of the moon mission. “Also, we have a ready backup if a system fails.”
Teams also did the kind of thing
engineers working on missions do around the world. They worked through weekends
with no overtime pay, putting in more hours to the dollar. Mr. Arunan slept on
the couch in his office through the 18 months, rereading his favorite P. G.
Wodehouse novels to relieve stress. "This is the Indian way of working,”
said Mr. Annadurai.
Despite its cost-effectiveness,
many have argued that India ’s
extraterrestrial excursions are profligate in a country starved of even basic
necessities like clean drinking water and toilets. Millions sleep hungry at
night, critics have emphasized. They condemn the Mars mission as nothing more
than showing off.
But scientists have argued that
early Indian satellites paved the way for today’s advanced disaster management
systems and modern telecom infrastructure. In the 1970s, cyclones killed tens
of thousands of people. Last year, when Cyclone Phailin struck India ’s
east coast, the casualties were in the single digits. In the 1980s, television
broadcasts were available in only four Indian cities, but today they are found
countrywide.
The Mars mission is also having
a multiplier effect on Indian industry. Companies like Larsen & Toubro and
Godrej & Boyce, which built vital parts for the satellite, will use this
high-tech expertise to compete for global aerospace, military and nuclear
contracts worth billions of dollars. Godrej, for example, has begun making
engine parts for Boeing.
Scientists have also said that
space exploration and the alleviation of poverty need not be mutually
exclusive. “If the Mars mission’s $75 million was distributed equally to every
Indian, they would be able to buy a cup of roadside chai once every three years,”
said Mr. Narasimha, the aerospace scientist, referring to the tea that many
Indians drink.
“My guess is that even the
poorest Indians will happily forgo their chai to be able to see their country
send a rocket all the way to Mars.”
