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India Successfully Test Fires Its Heaviest Rocket
vasanth (908280) writes India on Thursday moved forward in rocket technology with the successful flight testing of its heaviest next generation rocket and the crew module . The 630-tonne three-stage rocket, Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, carried active solid boosters, liquid core stage and a passive cryo stage and a crew module to test its re-entry characteristics. This rocket is capable of doubling the capacity of payloads India can carry into space and it can deposit up to four tonne class of communication satellites into space. India also plans to use this rocket for ferrying Indian astronauts into space. For India, ISRO (the Indian space agency) perfecting the cryogenic engine technology is crucial as India can save precious foreign exchange by launching heavy duty communication satellites by itself.
TFA says the firing cost $25 Million.
NASA don't get out of bed for $25 Million.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Here's a video of Canada's most successful rocket launch.
So you expect all those engineers and scientists to go out of work because you feel that a country shouldn't do anything at all until all its ills are dealt with?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
First IT department and now space cargo.
Very impressed by your opinions. Pontificating to 1.25 billion people using a tech website as pulpit takes extraordinary courage and exquisite skill. How do you do it?
Or whatever it is alled : expecting all basic ills to be solved before technological progress is considered. It is impracticable in the modern world and asking for it as you seem to do , shows a distinct problem at understanding how the world work. In practice you do not portion your whole finance to some problem as food or sanitation, otherwise you reach only stagnation. You have to dedicate some to technology advance.
And India is showing you why : they make a lot of progress, and in fact if their rocket is good enough (not many failure) they might get a good size of the satellite launching market, thus bringing in money and being able to concentrate on their other problem better, more so than as if they had instead investing that money in just food or basic sanitation.
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Because countries with a billion+ people can only do one thing at a time ?
I think you missed the point of the rocket launch - it was not to impress you.
Whether you are impressed, unimpressed, love India or loathe India.. we dont care a damn. The G7 dont interact with the developing countries unless there is a huge monetary payoff and that is the only reason you are nice to India.. our market.
Remember - China's corrupt, polluted, no freedom of speech and lacks human rights... and yet, most things in your house are probably Chinese made .. including the defective condoms your dad used.. that resulted in you!
Not that much unlike the USA really.
Those boosters aren't boosters, they're a side-mounted first stage, because the first liquid engine isn't even ignited until shortly before the boosters separate.
The first stage, then, is a pair of pretty standard solid rockets. A bit under half the thrust of a Shuttle booster, and about a third the mass.
The second stage is a pair of hypergolic liquid rockets, using UDMH and N2O4. Normally that's a sign of military heritage - hypergolic fuels are common in ICBM designs because they're storable at room temperature, and guarantee that the missile will at least launch. Purely civilian designs rarely use such fuels, because they're dangerous as hell, RP-1+LOX is cheaper, and you would generally prefer an aborted launch to an explosion. But in this case it actually makes sense - if you were on the ground and RP-1+LOX failed to ignite, you just try again tomorrow, but if you're already in the air, you're screwed if it doesn't ignite. It also gets about the same efficiency as RP1+LOX.
The third stage is supposed to be LH2+LOX, but was not used on this test flight. Perfectly reasonable for an upper stage, where the low thrust is less important than the high efficiency.
Overall, a bit different design than most rockets, but not in a bad way.
"but not in a bad way."
I don't know, having a witches brew of 253,500lbs of flaming/exploding UDMH, hydrazine and N2O4 raining down on Earth should the core stage or boosters fail doesn't sound all that great to me. RP-1 (highly refined Kerosene) isn't great either, but its definitely far less unpleasant.
In 1962, when Kennedy gave his famous "Choose to go to the moon" speech, the US still had 'white' and 'colored' drinking fountains. Many rural Americans in the Appalachians and the south were in deep poverty and had no indoor plumbing. Should America have fixed those things first before they went to the moon?
How many horses is that?
Awesome missile for sending one of India's Hydrogen bombs to any city on the planet.
Well, in this case, it's because of Ariane (1-4). The engine is a rip-off of Viking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
After World War II, the United States experimented with captured German V-2 rockets as part of the Hermes project. Based on these experiments the U.S. decided in 1946 to develop its own large liquid-fueled rocket design, to be called Neptune but changed to Viking. The intent was both to provide an independent U.S. capability in rocketry, to continue the Hermes project after the V-2's were expended
So, US rockets are just a ripoff of Germans. And Germans just ripped off the Russians. Oh wait, maybe it was the Chinese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
You know what? If all you can say that someone's achievement was nothing but a ripoff of your past technology, maybe it's just sour grapes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves.
Oh, it's 2000 years old and quoted just so you don't try to say it was a ripoff from some more modern tale. 2000 years old and still applies.
PS. Congrats to India on successful test.
Gurkha, flying in his swift and powerful Vimana, hurled against the three cities of the Vrishnis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousand suns, rose in all its splendor.
It was the unknown weapon, the iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas.
The corpses were so burnt they were no longer recognizable. Hair and nails fell out.
Pottery broke without cause. Foodstuffs were poisoned. To escape, the warriors threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their weapons.
When you want to send up nukes you don't build something nearly this big, immobile & easy of a target. It would take something like a delivery of a Tsar Bomba to need something this big for nuclear bomb purposes.
This is a job for every indian.
Not for 'the government' or 'the space agency'.
As long as a two year old toddler can sit on the middle of a road crossing, with cars navigating around it, and no one picks it up, and calls 'authorities' or tries to find the mother, there is something seriously wrong in the attitude to live, other people, children etc. Nothing a 'government' can fix over night.
Same for a dead man lying on a road, all the passing people and car drivers consider him sleeping. Even if he is, what is the damn problem to get him off the road to the pedestrian side walks? No one cares about anything in india, only 'outsiders' care about corruption, that is so sad, it is not even funny!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
FWIW, I got the reference.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This might be off-topic or even seen as discriminatory but I will take the chance. I'm appalled at India's Government for putting it's space program above the welfare of its people. There are many Indians living in abject poverty whilst her government fritters money away on fancy projects that ultimately do nothing at all save for showing off to the world.
There are homeless and hungry in every country in the world. Would you cancel the US space program using the same logic?
And that, my friends, is the death knell that you hear sounding for America.
Think of how many poor people this thing will take care of!
No problem!