Slashdot Mirror
Indian Satellite Lost in Launch Explosion
An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that the recent communications satellite launch in India has met with disaster. The satellite, designed to enhance India's telephone and communications network, was lost when the rocket carrying it veered off course and exploded. This is the second disappointment in recent launch attempts, coming just one day after the failed long-range ballistic missile test launch."
How come that there is always a 404 right after a story was submitted?
I guess it's a good thing NASA doesn't outsource.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Monday's flight was also supposed to set the stage for an Indian mission to the Moon.
Something tells me there may be a lack of volunteers for this now...
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
Rockets is hard!
Homer Simpson who said it best .... "DOH!"
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
Building rockets is as hard as rocket science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm not surprised. It sounds easy to launch a rocket (hell, we've been doing it since forever, right?), yet in the light of this failure, North Korea's blown ICBM launch, and SpaceX's spectacular failure a while back, perhaps the difficulty of such things needs to be reassessed in the minds of the average Slashdot reader.
:).
Certainly, the ESA and NASA have something to be proud of when they actually manage to get stuff into orbit
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I have a lot of respect for countries which have a space program and attempt to launch rockets into space, whether they succeed or not.
He's referring to India's failed AGNI III missile test launch
Actually it was one day after India tested their missile.
From the Article:
"It came a day after a test-fire of India's longest-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile ended in failure."
Yep, it didnt get much press, guess no one cared since it was a "friendly" country testing this time.
Submitter is referring to the failed Indian ICBM test launch, not the North Korean launch.
In other news, Pakistan is reporting that it will not seek retribution for the explosion which rocked their capital earlier this morning, as no casualties have been reported. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Azis was quoted as saying, "Satellite my ass, you missed bitch"...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
Did I get that right? An unattentive commenter mistakes an Indian satellite for a North Korean ICBM?
Doesn't anybody screen these postss?
The article said INDIA ... I thought the headline said "Indian Satellite Lost in Launch Explosion", thus the missile ("The Agni-III surface-to-surface missile crashed into the Bay of Bengal."(from article)) must be an INDIAN missile is indeed, from what I understand, you must imply that : A) only North Korea is using missiles B) The rest of the world does not have an arsenal of ICBM (or other) long-ranged missiles C) Yes, that does include the USA, Russia, -insert-your-country-here- , ... D) Basic reading is hard, yet replying is easy
have a nice day :x
loaded it up with thousands of cups and strings.
Outsourced the shuttle to a private company
Nasa is looking to outsource even more!
The article title made me laugh in light of your comment.
Like almost every other branch of the government, NASA does outsource. They contract out the building of almost any sort of vehicle out to private companies who are all competing for it.
Now if you think I'm just picking apart your statement for fun, you're only half right, look at this:
In light of this article, scary.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
In all the history of rocketry, the successes are actually outnumbered by the failures. That's how we got this far.
Maybe someday, rocketry will be as reliable as, say, telephony or jet travel; but for now, it's an incredibly risky affair.
Somebody mod the parent up, please.
Yep, it didnt get much press, guess no one cared since it was a "friendly" country testing this time.
Some animals are more equal than others.
Anyone else reminded of "1999 was the year that the Indian nuclear satellite went out of control."?
Wil
wiki
It was a communications satellite, right? Anything that limits the possibility of my tech support calls getting routed to India is just fine by me.
As far as I know, India (and other countries in the region) follow well established _protocols_ to let the other countries know of their planned tests of missiles well in advance.
Nice try though.
The GSLV had 2 successful launches before, launching the GSAT experimental satellite and the EDUSAT educational satellite. India's moon mission is unmanned and will use the PSLV rocket which has had six successful launches so far.
They have had 12 successful commercial launches in a row, a good record. But now they're 0 for 2 in their last to big launch attempts.
Note to self, stay out of the Bay of Bengal when they're launching. ;-)
--- Just another Code-Monkey
Snagged it at my local video store when they were throwing out old stock.
I'm surprised no one else has responded to you.
Even though this launch failed, I would think the Indian Space Research OPrganizaiton is doing a tremendous job. Given their meagre budget ($700 million ISRO Wiki ) , their past record is definitely impressive . Most of their launches so far have been in polar orbits (remote sensing and spy satellites). They used ESA's Ariane rockets till yesterday for their geostationary communication satellite requirements.
There was a small, secret "hey, our new invisible space-based laser has worked three times in a row now" party at Vandenberg AFB.
...is because it only takes 25 a day to live there. Things cost less there. The rest goes towards fun, mirth and glee.
You're a better bomb than I, Gunga Din.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Excuse me...I was looking for the new, long-awaited "Rocketboom" video, but it appears I am in the wrong thread.
Oh wait...........
Assuming you do want to go 100% rocket, though, you'd obviously want to over-engineer the rocket as much as you can. Instead of building a rocket that can just handle what you'd expect, you want to build a rocket that has a wider margin of safety. You'd probably want to launch a whole bunch of rockets laced with sensors to figure out just how wide the margins need to be.
You'd also want to have something that self-corrects. Having rockets self-destruct on you is expensive. If a rocket flies off-course, then it would seem likely to be the guidance system or the rocket nozzle. Backup guidance systems would seem cheaper than new rockets, even allowing for the fact that the extra weight will require more fuel. (I'm sure plenty of top-of-the-line rockets do, in fact, have such backups - it's just not very likely that too many budget launchers do.) A backup nozzle would be tougher, but not impossible - it's just a question of symmetry. Even if you can't self-correct, having a means of ejecting the payload safely so you can recover it and try again is a damn-sight cheaper than rebuilding such modules from scratch.
Of course, rocket scientists aren't stupid. Often underfunded for what they try to do, yes, and in an economy that emphasises cheapness over quality, shortcuts are inevitable. The Russians seem to prefer recycled ICBMs over their Soyuz systems, even though the Soyuz seems to be a lot better built, can certainly carry more, are probably newer, and probably carry fuel that is fresher. Why? Because the missiles are cheap and they've got plenty they can waste. They're not being used for anything else and they're already built, so there's almost no cost in refurnishing them.
India really doesn't have many half-decayed rockets, but the problems come from the same cause - very little money being spent to complete a very difficult task, in the knowledge that this is money they'd need to burn on rocket R&D anyway, if their nukes are to be useful. They're getting paid to do the stuff they'd have to do anyway. The telecos can't really afford to go elsewhere, so they've a captive market that has no practical alternative but to buy their products. They have every reason to experiment, play with ideas, try things out, and none at all to build something that's reliable out of the box.
(Experimentation is great, when it comes to new tech, but it should be done honestly and not at the expense of customers. And in this case, where pure rocket solutions are not regarded as particularly a good way to do things, it's experimentation in technology that has no value. We're at the point where newcomers to space rocketry using rockets for the first stage are being as sensible as corporations hacking the CERN webserver to run on CP/M, and getting CP/M to run on a PDP-8. Neat, sort-of, but utterly pointless and far from the neatest thing you could do with the same amount of effort.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Offtopic I know, but just wanted to say my thoughts are with India after the bombings today. Fucking terrorists :(
I would laugh, but then I'm American...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Well, military applications aside, the truth of the matter is that satellites of all kinds have had a tremendous positive impact on economies and populations the world over. Communications, weather-monitoring, resource exploitation, scientific research ... no, I can't fault India for trying to use near-space to its advantage. Why not ... everyone else is. Besides, if you want to alleviate issues of social networking and education (two big steps towards improving living conditions in general) advanced communications are important. Satellite technology is one way to get that, and given the size and population of India, I would rather think that building out surface infrastructure would be prohibitively expensive, at least in the near term. Hell, it took the United States decades and billions of dollars to put a phone in every house, and I don't think India wants to wait that long.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm surprised the tinfoil hats haven't said it was the U.S. Military using the airborne laser weapon LOL. http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/
Fear sells more papers.
It is not that the media is trying to mislead the public. It is not that the media thinks some people are "more equal" than others. It just the invitable result of human nature, capitalism, and journalism combined.
But please, if you can find a way to get popular media to provide a more complete picture of the world; and you can do it without violating freedom of speach, PLEASE SHARE!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
That's a great book.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Are you suggesting that a democratic nation, which has a good record of treating its own citizens well and abiding by international law *should* be considered equal with the most barbaric totalitarian dictatorship on the planet - a nightmare of a country that starves its own citizens, gases them, kidnaps citizens from other countries, carries out terrorist attacks on its neighbours, and regularly threatens to nuke them?
It's not a book, it's a quote from a book. You should read your own sig again.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I would have my own satellite and launch my own interplanetary probes since NASA is trying to relive the 1960s.
Damned hippies in the White House. Shouldn't they have sobered up by now?
Is that a SCSI connector or are you just glad to see me?
NASA seems to loose more launch vehicles, and definitely more people, per launch than anyone else
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Talk about yer bad week... what else can go wrong for India this week? Ugh, and it's only Tuesday.
You may find my appearance and demeanor foolish, but it is you who plays the fool.
we'll get it right eventually. The US didn't get it right the first couple of times either.
Well, military applications aside, the truth of the matter is that satellites of all kinds have had a tremendous positive impact on economies and populations the world over.
Why put military applications aside? Orbital guidance and communications systems have allowed western militaries to put one bomb on one "safe house" where we used to have send in a battalion of soldiers for a protracted firefight. Or used to have to pave over the whole town with bombs.
Being able to precisely target things has turned into a bigger deterrent than the old strategic nukes. Doesn't help with some guy carrying a backpack bomb into a market square, but that's a different problem (unless we got his boss in the safe house earlier).
And, of course, when the Navy rolls into a giant tsunami diasaster area, it's space-based imaging and comms that make them able to move as quick as they do.
Anyway - military apps aren't bad, just because the word "military" is in the phrase.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I was of course refering to the book that the quote came from, obviously the quote is not a title.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Link to the interview with G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation. http://indianexpress.com/story/8316.html
Actually it is an old Star Wars Orbital Laser from the Regan years. Unfortunately it has been malfunctioning for years and the U.S. still cannot get control of it to turn off its automatic targeting and firing mode. It has already shot down two shuttles, several air liners and a few other missiles. Three in the last few days.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
NASA was created around 1958. It's 2006. That's what, 48 years? In fact, wikipedia gives NASA's budget from 1958-2005 -- it adds up to $591.2B 1996 USD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_budget
Quite a bit less than TRILLIONS.
Having said that, they do need to change the way they do things.
Err ... rockets are hard. Rocketry is hard.
:p.
Just sayin'
Oh, I agree ... I was just trying to point out that investment in space isn't intrinsically wasteful, even if you're a nation with a lot of poor people.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Aa aaighalya. Lavda tondat gheoon chokhat bas.
:) just kidding.... not.
tuzhya aai chi pucchi.
I don't know where to start. Let's see:
1) India is a sovereign country. Enough said.
2) India lets all its neighbours know of the missile tests in advance.
3) India is a democracy, unlike its neighburs. Enough said.
4) India has a no-first use policy as far as Nukular Weapons are concerned.
5) India has enough (internal) things to worry about. "War on Terror" anyone?
You know, for all the high IQs around here, I am disappointed.
Now if you think I'm just picking apart your statement for fun, you're only half right, look at this:
[indiadaily.com]
In light of this article, scary.
Yes, those brackets can be scary sometimes.
[[[indiadaily.com]]]
AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
the satellite dint just explode but was made to explode when its path deviate from the intended one... thats a big difference.. http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=398107
"Following this, the vehicle deviated to about 10 degrees, leading to the mission control giving the 'destruct command'."
Is it just me or is the timing of this article in somewhat poor taste in light of the train bombings?
I know it happened, and no correlation between the two is being drawn, but come on...
There are over 140 dead in a terrorist attack in Mumbia and we get info on a failed rocket?
Slashdot used to be "Stuff that matters" and not just "News for nerds."
Of course I dont see them as equal as far as relations with most of the world. However, with the sabre rattling that India and Pakistan have engaged in over the past couple years, im not real thrilled about either of them having Nukes either. Its been relatively quiet lately but it was only a short while ago that their bickering was quickly elevating to complete lunacy.
Yes. This launch failure was preceded by a long-range ballistic missile failure as well. Pakistan must have been surprised that there was no indignant cry of outrage at such a blatant flexing of muscle ... but of course no country of any importance could have been hit with it unlike North Korea's blatant yah-dah, yah-dah.
It was not until 1992 that the first successful launch of the ASLV took place. At this point the launch vehicle, which could only put very small payloads into orbit, had achieved its objective.
The program starts in the '60s and only launches its first satellite in the '90s? Good for them, but at that rate the U.S. will be sending people to Mars and Russia will have Mir 2 by the time they start sending people up into space.
"I can't fault India for trying to use near-space to its advantage"
Actually India has mastered the near-space space (ref PSLV comments above). Its trying to master geosync space (~36,000 kms) (GSLV) and further....
Slashdot is a site for technology-oriented news. You can go to any other news site for news on the train bombing.
Yes, it's a shame that lives were lost. But it's not material for this website.
The engineers called tech support while assembling the rocket but couldn't quite understand the accent.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
From the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established NASA:
Hey, keep the USA out of this :-p /me ducks
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
This is so true though. I think digg is way better than slashdot. what do you guys think?
So, rest of the World are Animals for Americans.. fuck you pig. No wonder the world hates America.
did you forget to enter those numbers *AGAIN* ?!?
You're turning this island in a junkyard!
Why this has to go to outsourcing? Why can't this stay focused on good technical discussion? There is India beyond outsourcing and tech support.
About nationalistic pride and stuff, some of our countrymen tend to err little on pride side. But hey, the world looks different when your country and your race and your religion are not dominating the world.
-- Back to my transcendental meditation.
The parent's link that got lost.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Sadly and thankfully, its not up to you.. *Runs to the corner and chuckles*
Your idea for a propeller-powered launcher intrigues me.
I think those stories didn't belong either.
If it was built by Indians, i'm surpised it even made it off the launchpad...
if we see the past records, there also india have had some failures in the first one or two launches when they tried some new rockets...but soon after that, in next one or two launches they corrected the problem and now those technologies are working well (e.g. PSLV). This time also, they are trying something new and so few initial failiures are understandable. Soon in the one or two next launches they are going to correct the problem. Not only India, rather other countries also have had such failures...NASA's rockets, everyone knows about the disaster when the the guys were returning from the space station and the shuttle burnt away as soon as they entered into Earth's atmosphare, China's rocket launches...Japan's rocket launches are a complete failure till now...etc etc. Failures are acceptable in test phase and that is why they are called "test"!! :-) hail India!!
Animal Farm, no? Geez, pick up a book.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Didn't India do the same according to the article?
thankyou. Teaches me not to preview my messages.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
"The satellite, designed to enhance India's telephone and communications network, was lost when the rocket carrying it veered off course"
Is there any chance the poor little lost satellite will be found somewhere, maybe beeping in somebody's back yard?
...if India's fueding with Pakistan, WTF do they need a long range missle for? To hit people far away, obviously...people like Europe, Russia, and The US. Are they going to start shaking us down for handouts like Iran and South Korea?
Maybe they just are sick of Americans on the tech support lines abusing them because of their accents.
FYI,
. 0 50001.htm
Pakistan's response: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5162416.stm
US response: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1741846,00
Nothing to see here. Please move along.
Sorry. Had to.
Shouldn't that be:
"Teaches me to preview my messages"?
I don't care why you're posting AC
India is supposed to launch all of NASA's moon probes under the "vision for space exploraration" but clearly their solid fueled rocket is almost as unreliable as the space shuttle. What are they going to do now, hire Americans to launch their moon probes?
"Rejecting any comparison of the two, the Bush administration has underscored the stark contrast between the Indian and North Korean ventures. New Delhi, it noted, went about its test in a "transparent and non-threatening" way, while Pyongyang defied neighbours and fired missiles as a provocation without warning." What a bunch of horseshit. Why would anybody test a nuke delivery system if not to scream to the world "DONT FUCK WITH ME! I'LL KILL YOU ALL! BAAAAAAHAHAHAHAH!"
It is not mentioned much in news, but the satellite was destroyed by security officer present there after the satellite veered off its trajectory. This was done to save possible loss of life in heavily populated regions near the launch site.s _its_own_satellite_in_air_to_prevent_ground_deaths .html
http://www.playfuls.com/news_001546_India_destroy
That explains a lot about the fate of some recent NASA ventures.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
That's where the pig comes from
:)