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.

Comments

$25 Million?

[TechyImmigrant]

TFA says the firing cost $25 Million.

NASA don't get out of bed for $25 Million.

Re:$25 Million?

[sycodon]

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.

Re:$25 Million?

[nitehawk214]

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.

Re:$25 Million?

[cayenne8]

he 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.

But now...we in the US can just go pick up new rockets at the Kwik-E-Mart (albeit at slightly elevated prices).

Thank you....Come again!!

Re:$25 Million?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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).

Re:$25 Million?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

How does it compare to Canada's rocket launch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a video of Canada's most successful rocket launch.

Re:Now if India would just invest in its own peopl

[Coren22]

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?

nirvana fallacy

[aepervius]

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.

Re:Now if India would just invest in its own peopl

[peted56]

Not that much unlike the USA really.

Weird design

[gman003]

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.

Re:Now if India would just invest in its own peopl

[CohibaVancouver]

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?

Sour grapes anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sour grapes anyone?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_(rocket)

What are you prattling about? I was clearly talking of the Viking engine . The similarly-named rocket has nothing to do with that.

So, US rockets are just a ripoff of Germans. And Germans just ripped off the Russians.

No, they're not. There's nothing in German rockets that was copied in either American or Russian designs, post-1950. Whereas the Indian engine in question is pretty much identical to Ariane's engine. Furthermore, the reason I've mentioned it is because it explains how hypergolics got into the core stage (not for military reasons). I'm sorry that your reading comprehension sucks so badly. I hope you'll get better.

Re:Sour grapes anyone?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Very much incomparable. There was a lot of knowledge transfer from the German engineers, but mostly in the theoretical area, whereas Vikas is a case of virtually identical flight hardware. That wasn't the case in the US beyond some initial experiments with V-2s; all the US hardware had to be developed from the first principles. For example, the German regenerative cooling on V-2 sucked, so it couldn't be used, and even after that problem was solved, nobody in the world - not even Germans - really knew how to build really large engines, so US engineering had to step into an unmapped territory with the F-1. And essentially identical knowledge to what was transferred back then after the war plus a lot of new knowledge is now pretty much textbook material (and has been for a few decades) that you can buy from Amazon - where do you think Elon Musk learned it?

And again, what has that to do with me explaining why the core stage uses toxic fuels? How are Americans or Germans related to the problem of how GLSV Mk III ended up using those fuels?

Re:Off topic

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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.