India has a space program with project budgets less than the movie 'Gravity.' They have successfully launched a spaceship that arrives in Mars orbit this September. Cost? $75 Million! Wow!
How do they keep costs down?
Although costs for engineers are $1000 a month, that alone cannot reduce the costs to the level they need. So they use a lot of typical Indian cost savings:
- Repurposing old technology into new. Rather than starting from scratch, they refine 1970's propellant technology to work today.
- Modularity. Everything fits together like lego blocks across all their projects.
- Less testing. (Yikes!)
- Younger engineers
- Unpaid overtime due to a motivated workforce
The projects seem to be working and I believe there is a lot we can learn from this program.
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