i know this is a contrarian view and i apprehend howls of protest in this MOE for MOM (the first acronym is for Moment of Euphoria). dont get me wrong that i am trying to downplay the effort of ISRO, but i wanted to put the facts in a correct perspective. here is some info gleaned from Wikipedia: The USSR intended to have the first artificial satellite of Mars beating the planned American Mariner 8 and Mariner 9 Martian orbiters. In May 1971, one day after Mariner 8 malfunctioned at launch and failed to reach orbit, Cosmos 419 (Mars 1971C), a heavy probe of the Soviet Mars program M-71, also failed to launch. This spacecraft was designed as an orbiter only, while the next two probes of project M-71, Mars 2 and Mars 3, were multipurpose combinations of an orbiter and a lander. They were successfully launched in mid-May 1971 and reached Mars about seven months later. On November 27, 1971 the lander of Mars 2 crash-landed due to an on-board computer malfunction and became the first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars. In December 2, 1971 the Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing, but its transmission was interrupted after 14.5 seconds. in this moment of euphoria we are told that India is the first country to achieve the feet of putting a craft on Martian Orbit at our first attempt, thereby seemingly suggesting in a subtly smug manner that we are smarter/ more efficient/more rigorous. while this may be true or not, we are by and large referring to attempts made on 1962 or thereabouts. imagine the state of technology that existed then and as of today. if we adopt the Moores Law which has largely proved to be true that the density of transistors double roughly every two years. This has been supplemented by David Houses prediction that the chip performance would double every 18 months (this being a function of both density and efficiency of individual transistors). 52 odd years have passed since the initial nascent failed attempts in the field of electronics this translate to about 34 nos of 18 months period, so possibly our electronics are 2**32 times more efficient. this in common decimal system would be about 10 power 10 or a ten followed by 10 zeros time more efficient. so an electronic circuit which today weighs 10 gms would then have weighed possibly weighed 100000 tonnes (ok howls of protest that efficiency does not translate to weight, but i will ignore it, but the howlers would agree if i reduced the zeros to half and grant that tthe similiar electronics would weigh at least 300 tonnes.) apart from many computational tools not be available. this is the comparison in electronics, other essential fields like materials, fuels have also made improvements though not so dramatic. coming to the main point what i want to emphasise is celebrate by all means, but abandon the implied sense of smugness that we are the first nation which was able to achieve the feat on its first attempt. Alfred Einsteins words come to mind i have been able to see farther because i have stood on the shoulder of giants or something to that effect. we possibly had learnt a lot from others mistakes apart from worldwide technological advancement.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 17:40:07 +0000