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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.
The demise of the Apollo program was probably the worst thing that ever happened to American space technology. We are just now regaining knowledge and capability we had in the 70s.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
if they can really put this thing in orbit for $25M that would be one heck of a good deal. Wikipedia says the payload is 10,000kg to LEO, which would make it half the cost of a Falcon 9 with about 3/4ths of the payload. And even if this is understated, it still looks to be a pretty good $/kg rate.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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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Careful throwing numbers around. We have absolutely no idea how accurate that figure is. Could well be 'Bollywood Accounting', could be something made up by a bureaucrat flunky. Could even be real.
It does presage an era where there are potentially a large number of groups, both government and private, with the capability of launching commercially and strategically significant payloads into LEO or geosynchronous orbit.
(Raises pinky.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They still haven't build the presumably rather expensive (deeply cryogenic) third stage, so don't count on the final version being so cheap. Plus the improving standards of living in India will inevitably push the price upwards, whereas Falcon development is definitely going to either push the price down or at least stabilize it at a rather low level, if at least one of 1) reusability or 2) increased launch frequency pans out. (The latter is almost certain.) And finally, the advertised Falcon 9 price tag is a market price (with profit margins included), whereas this is presumably just the total sum of expenses for this test (and without the third stage, it will be only a fraction of the launch expenses for the real thing).
Ezekiel 23:20
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?
What does Indian Space tech have to do with Bollywood? You just want to sound derisive about India. Why don't you thrown in some irrelevant xenophobic rant about H1B's taking your jaabs, while you are at it?
They won't get out of poverty unless India becomes a developed country, and India won't become a developed country unless they venture into new branches of industry. Plus, ISRO isn't NASA, they're recovering costs by doing commercial launches.
Ezekiel 23:20