Kryten

Source? I've seen explicit statements from ISRO employees that they didn't time this mission in order to beat the chinese.

It's mostly a technology development mission-laying ground for the Chang'e 5 sample return probe in a few years. That's not to say it doesn't have a reasonable science payload, but the science objectives are all very vague; 'lunar surface material composition and resource survey, Sun-Earth-Moon space environment detection and lunar-based astronomical observation'. Other than the UV telescope that I think has already been mentioned in this thread, most of the instruments seem to be the kind of thing Chang'e 5 might use to select samples.

If he's thinking of a secondary he can't be terribly picky about orbits. I think most slot providers don't actually offer a choice at all, other than 'take it or leave it'.

No it's not. Stifling the united states economy stifles their own economy-they have to emport that stuff to somewhere, you know.

Do you support shutting down NASA? America has got around half a million homeless people; surely having a space program with that level of extreme poverty isn't at all helpful? What do you think brings people out of poverty? Jobs and education, not handouts. How many reasonable-paying jobs is a country going to have if the entire government agenda is growing and distributing subsidised food?

Because, of course, this mission represents a massive proportion of the Indian governments education or healthcare budget, right?

'Mangalyaan' is something the press came up with the mission was announced (by analogy with the 'Chandrayaan' moon mission); ISRO refers to it solely as 'mars orbiter mission'. They seem to have something of a liking for extremely literal names; they actually called their first satellite launch vehicle 'satellite launch vehicle'.

If the guitar hadn't been on board, nothing would have replaced it. It was a last minute addition, and not part of the contracted payload. The cost to launch the rocket would have been exactly the same.

Cost per kilogram isn't some kind of constant. In this case you've got slightly highly payload at the same price, the cost per kilogram goes down. It gets closer to the ideal 'cost-per-kilogram' people might use to compare rockets.

They don't have a meaningful effect. It's not like they'll bother putting slightly less fuel in the rocket or anything of that sort.

That makes no sense. On the mission where the guitar was sent up, NASA already had a launch of an MPLM ready, and it already included the payload they considered necessary to take on the mission. Adding the guitar would only have added the cost of working out the effect on CoM and carefully strapping it in, which can't have been a terribly large amount. This doesn't apply to 10,000 guitars because it's effectively impossible for a launch to have that much excess payload.

It's because the thrust of the engine on the craft is rather low-it's going to have to burn for something like half an hour in total to do the TMI burn. If they attempted to do this as a single burn, an enormous amount of fuel would be wasted because only a small portion of the burn would have been done near periapsis.

It should really be pointed that this is stuff published by the main chinese rocket developer (CAST) themselves, on a proposal they've made to the government: it's not a funded project yet, and it's not at all certain it ever will be. LM-5 is the heavy-lift rocket they're developing right now, it's roughly in the same range as the Atlas V or Proton (~25 tons to LEO). This proposal is 'LM-9'.

I highly doubt roscosmos and/or NASA would take too kindly to a request for a container full of rocket fuel and corrosive, probably toxic oxidiser to be brought into the pressurised area of their space station.

Sounds about right. PSLV is mostly solids, so it leaves the atmosphere pretty rapidly.

No it isn't. The 3.5 billion figure is pure unit cost without R&D; if you do factor it in, it's seven billion a pop.

Launch in about forty minutes, streaming should start in about five minutes. Webcast links; http://216.185.104.74/isro http://webcast.gov.in/live

It effectively was cancelled, when you look at what the DoD originally wanted; 32 of these and 19 more of a slightly different (larger, probably even more expensive) class.

Soyuz and Shenzhou are only launched both full and with crew (with the exception of a few missions for testing of new variants)-there are always only as many seats available as there are astro/cosmonauts.

How exactly would it be supposed to slow down upon arrival?

There's also the issue that this 'SR-72', even in this ridiculously optimistic piece of LM PR, isn't supposed to even exist for 15+ years.

Do you really want a pilot that could 'whack out' at any moment piloting an armed aircraft? We already have autonomous aircraft being trusted to carry out combat missions (we call them 'cruise missiles'), and they haven't faced any real issues. Why does it suddenly become unthinkable if the aircraft is able to return?

What exactly would stop a drone from being able to prioritise targets, or evade a missile? Either would simply be a matter of programming.

What are you talking about? It's being built by LM at the michoud facility. Last time I checked, New Orleans is in fact part of the US.

Wouldn't most stuff set in pop-culture 'asteroid belts' fit that pretty well?