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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."
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
You're a better bomb than I, Gunga Din.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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 :(
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/
we'll get it right eventually. The US didn't get it right the first couple of times either.
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
No manned launch vehicle is more reliable than the shuttle. 114 out of 115 successful launches. 113 out of 114 successful re-entries.
Most people in the industry consider the shuttle the most advanced manned vehicle ever. It certainly has capabilities unavailable in any other vehicle.
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.
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'."
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.
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: