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India just landed on the Moon for less than it cost to make Interstellar | The Independent::undefined
India just landed on the Moon for less than it cost to make Interstellar | The Independent::undefined
Cool.
The average income in India is 25x ish less than that of the US. If we scale the $75 million cost to land on the moon by 25 times, we get $1.8 billion. The Perseverance rover’s cost is estimated at $2.75 billion and that thing landed on Mars.
It’s incredibly impressive that India has landed on the moon on their 2nd try. Nothing should take away from that, and India should be very proud of their achievement. But geez this is a braindead article. Yes, poorer countries can pay people less do the same amount of work as someone in another country.
I respectfully disagree with you. It’s a bit misleading to compare average incomes like that. I would assume the income disparity is nowhere near as large for valuable scientists and engineers working for a national space program. In addition, you are only comparing labour costs. Some materials can be cheaper in India, but certainly not by a factor of 25 and certainly not all of them. Therefore, I wouldn’t say the article is braindead.
The difference in income is by about 9-10 time. Salary for a NASA scientist can go in the range of ₹1 to 2 crores (converted from dollar to rupees). For a ISRO scientist however, they may earn in ₹10-15 lakhs.
I’ve made a comment explaining why the mission was so cost-effective, you can read it here. But yes, salary is not even one of the main reasons.
For people who are not able to understand lakhs and crores, it’s a part of the numbering system used in India. For the international numbering system equivalent, you can read this comment.
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You mean the international numbering system? It hasn’t got anything to do with the metric system the former is a positional system in the power of tens and the latter a decimal-based system of measurement, but I can understand that most people outside of South Asia might probably not understand, so here you go.
I’m taking the salary of NASA employees from this page - this is about five years old, so I’m sure the new wages would be slightly higher. GS-15 are the top-level employees at NASA, who earn around $105,123 to $136,659. $136,659 is about ₹11,295,344.66.
From this site, we see that ISRO scientists earn around ₹720,000 to ₹2,400,000). S Somanath, the chairman of ISRO, has disclosed to the local media that he earns about ₹250,000 per months, so on a yearly basis, it would be around ₹3,000,000, which is almost accurate with the salary given in the above site.
Taking the highest range of salary, 11,295,344.66/2,400,000 ~= 4.71 approximately. I’d imagine that low-level employees earn about 8-10 times less than their NASA counterparts. Now, this is not the best way to calculate the difference in wage, perhaps I should’ve taken the mean and gone about with it, but it should still give you a rough idea about how misleading the “25 times less income” claim is.
Except that the cost wasn’t lowered because of the labour. It has everything to do with how well-optimised the rocket launch was. And by well-optimised, I’m talking about extremely optimised launch.
The launch location was the most important factor here - SDSC (Satish Dhawan Space Centre), Sriharikota. This particular region allows a rocket to be launched in the eastern direction, taking advantage of the Earth’s rotation.
Sriharikota is also located closer to the equator, making it easier to break out into the space thanks to the extra centripetal force. Neither does the USA, China or Russia have that advantage. African nations in the future may have a lot of advantage, especially countries in the eastern coast like Egypt, Somalia and Ethiopia.
Another reason for the low cost was that the organisation had lots of experience sending launch vehicles to the outer space.
Some parts had to be outsourced from international companies, which may also add to making this mission not being cost-effective. By just saying that the wage of scientist was x times less, you’re invalidating the efforts of ISRO scientists in low-cost material research.
This comparison is predicated on every part of the manufacturing process occurring in each country. As soon as India are buying parts from other countries they’re not paying India prices anymore
Some guy at NASA: “We estimate that the cost of this part should cost 1.8Million dollars. “
Some guy in India: “You know, my cousin can make that part for 35 dollars”
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