Space Updates From Three Countries (indiatimes.com)

The Indian Space Research Organisation continues developing a reusable launch vehicle, which could cut the costs of satellite launches by 90%. William Robinson quotes the Business Times: India will use a mini-rocket with a booster to fly a winged reusable launch vehicle into lower earth orbit on May 23... If everything goes well, it will reach about 70 kilometers from earth, and will plunge into the Bay of Bengal...to demonstrate hypersonic and aero-thermodynamics of the winged re-entry vehicle with autonomous mission management
Meanwhile, Thelasko shares this reminder from BlastingNews that the U.S. Air Force's mysterious X-37B celebrated the one-year anniversary of its launch: Today, the maneuverable craft operates in a 220-mile orbit, a higher altitude it briefly held last fall and roughly the same perch occupied twice by the previous X-37B mission, according to satellite-tracking hobbyist Ted Molczan. This X-37B carries at least two payloads, revealed by the military before the ship took off â" an experimental electric propulsion thruster to be tested in orbit and a pallet to expose sample materials to the space environment.
And MarkWhittington writes that "The latest Chinese space station, the Tiangong 2, is slated to be launched later in 2016 and will be visited by Chinese astronauts in a Shenzhou spacecraft. But, according to Spaceflight Insider, the Chinese are already looking ahead to their permanent low Earth orbit space facility, the Tiangong 3, slated to begin construction in 2018."

Comments

Dawn of a new round of space race

[Taco Cowboy]

Actually this is good for humanity

No matter which entity wins, we all win

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[invictusvoyd]

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 5th Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress estimated that 1.56 million people, or one in every 200 Americans, experienced homelessness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...


They really gotta shut that NASA down .

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[phayes]

First off, experiencing homelessness at some point in ones lifetime != habitually shitting where you live.
Secondly, the homeless in the USA generally use public accessible facilities connected a functional sewer system. In India, even people with homes just dump it out the window.

That said, I'm not one of those who says "people need to take care of social ill X before spending any money on space.

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm no.

Half of the population of India have no access to any type of sewage system. They take their sewage waste to the nearest river or street. The small upper class of India have no sympathy for those people and rather put their money in these ridicilous space expeditions that help no one. A third world shit hole wasting money in missiles and crappy space probes is a waste of time and money.

Ah, I see.

So what you're saying is that unless a society is already living the utopian dream, they absolutely must not spend any money on anything other than fixing their problems.

Right.

Perhaps the US should fix all their problems before launching any more rockets as well?

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Plammox]

I'm not sure how many new sewers liquidating the ISRO will buy you...

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be a party pooper (sorry, couldn't resist). I recently looked through photo albums of my grandparents' home in a German town, pre WWII. In those days wood and water would be carried in, and toilet waste be collected in a certain area right next to the house (throwing distance with a chamber pot from a window if you were lazy - ahhh, remember the concept of a chamber pot?) These collection bins would be emptied once a month or so. My mom recalls that farmers in the vicinity would often come to collect the humanure for fertilizer purposes, else a few neighbors would need to get together, obtain the necessary wagon transport, and do the job for their houses. No nanny municipality, no nanny state. And this was less than a century ago.

I was born in South Africa (my grandparents left at the start of the N... era). If you remember that country has/had nuclear weapons, a nuclear power station, and satellites in space (and also a current president that changes wives and "air force one-style" airplanes with almost more frequency than I change my underwear - but I digress). When I grew up, our house (on a farm) had a septic tank system (hand built, with not more skill than required for any basic brick house building work). The closest town had the municipality collect buckets with waste twice a week (also very low-tech, just a waggon, drawn by oxen and later a tractor). I later moved to a city next to Johannesburg, the economy of the region having long trumped that of the rest of the continent combined, and I work in IT having done work for multinationals and being sent to assignments in both Europe and North America. While I now have municipal water and electricity connections (which mostly even deliver), my sewer is still a septic tank system not unlike the one I grew up with (thankfully - one less thing the municipality can screw up).

Please tell me again about first world and third world problems. The real problem I see is the socialist mindset that want to make (sh)people dependent on some central authority. No, let those people who defecate on their street, continue to do so if it makes them happy. If they have a problem with it, they have numerous options, all low tech and low income enough for people that already can afford houses and streets: e.g.: (1) move away, (2) build toilets, composting or pit latrines or otherwise, either private or communal, (3) organize the homeowners on a block to take turns to clean up collection bins. (4) organize home owners to install covered sewers for their street, block -- etc. etc. etc.

Come on, it has already been done 6000 years ago. I doubt that it is due to a lack of money or technology - more due to a lack of will and the culture to affect a change.

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[110010001000]

Utopia >> pooping in the streets

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[110010001000]

Uh, it might also because there are 1.2 billion people in India...12,000+ people per sq/km in some of the cities. I'll bet your city didn't even have close to that. That kind of makes it a wagon and oxen solution non-workable.

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[LWATCDR]

And you have got to stop wasting time posting on slashdot, playing video games, watching tv, and going to the movies. You should also eat the cheapest food possible and work as much as humanly possible.
You should then take all that money and use it to help the homeless....

Let me teach you about the logical fallacy called the fool's dilemma.
Shutting down NASA will not fix the homeless problem. At no time has there been a vote in congress to spend x on the space program or spend it on the homeless.
Do you want to give up weather satellites? Communications satellites? How about GPS?
I don't and I do not want to give up all the basic research that NASA does as well as space exploration. I am willing to bet that the majority of people on slashdot agree with me.
So NO YOU ARE WRONG!

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Opportunist]

Sounds a lot like the US in the 60s. Though the "small upper class that has no sympathy for them" sounds more like the contemporary US.

You sure you're talking about India?

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[LWATCDR]

reference?
Of course the funny part is that none of the programs in the story are being funded by NASA. Also one projects is being funded by India which has a much higher poverty rate than the US.

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[backslashdot]

If non-Indians have no sympathy for Indians (read: do nothing to help), then why should an Indian? Just because you arent from someone's country doesnt mean you cant or shouldn't help does it? You are not a _____ so you won't help a _____? How is that any more ethical than being a _____ and helping a _____?

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[hey!]

More like ummm, maybe.

It all comes down to marginal utility in the long term, which of course is uncertain because it hinges on predictions of the future. Things would be easier if you could just spend all your money on your most pressing problem, solve that, and move on to the next most pressing problem. You would take money,say, from education and put it into hunger, because hunger is lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs than self-actualization. After you'd licked hunger you'd go on to the next thing and eventually get around to education.

Clearly a space program makes no sense for a country like Bengladesh with a GDP of 150 billion. India has a GDP approaching two trillion dollars. And while it has a lot of poor people, there are more middle class Indians than the middle class Americans. Those people work in industries like defense, technology and aerospace, that generate revenue.

Does this mean any space project makes sense for India, given its poverty problems? Of course not. But the development of hypersonic aircraft/spacecraft is clearly applied research. That not only helps Indian companies, it helps with the brain drain project by giving the most capable engineers all the more reason to work at home rather than going overseas.

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Type44Q]

The difference is that we've evolved to shit in an outhouse

Speak for yourself, Mr. "Evolved Yesterday" - you might have mutant "outhouse genes" amongst your DNA (Arkansas or West Virginia?) but the rest of us most assuredly do not. ;)

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Type44Q]

Actually, many Ivy League colleges did a study

And clearly a study of such magnitude wouldn't be possible with just one Ivy League "college," hence the need for "many" (those are actually universities, by the way).

Incidentally, have you considered the possibility that you might just be stupid??

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[lgw]

Your post oozes "they're just not smart enough to solve their own problems" racism and/or class-ism. We already know how to solve these problems cheaply (and city housing in India isn't so cheap, at least by third world standards - Bangalore isn't cheap by anyone's standards). It is a matter of will, and to some extent education.

That doesn't automatically mean the government isn't a good way to sort it all out, but when your government is quite corrupt, maybe that isn't the right way.

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Thelasko]

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 5th Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress estimated that 1.56 million people, or one in every 200 Americans, experienced homelessness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... They really gotta shut that NASA down .

NASA doesn't have a spacecraft capable of launching a pencil to orbit. They are relying on private contractors. The X-37B in the article is a US Air Force project. If you want to see some government funding squandered, look at the military.

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Coren22]

Because clearly 1.56 million people who are homeless (1 in 200), likely due to addiction or other mental disorders, is equivalent to a 640 million Indians (1 in 2) without running water.

http://www.theguardian.com/soc...

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Coren22]

As opposed to? NASA has always used private contractors. Boeing built the shuttle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, how is commercial rocket launches really any different?

Re: Dawn of a new round of space race

[Coren22]

600 million Indians have no running water. That is 1 in every 2 Indians.
1.56 million US citizens live in homelessness (and likely use restrooms, rather than the street), that is 1 in 200.

Please, don't act like these two things are equivalent.

Three articles in one

[edittard]

Three articles in one. Another brilliant idea.

Re:Three articles in one

[Hognoxious]

Maybe it's an attempt to get the comment count into double figures.

Re:Three articles in one

[Thanshin]

I predict Partial Dupes in the near future.

Re:Three articles in one

[stealth_finger]

They post some kind of political or social thing, it gets 500+ comments, half of which are this isn't news for nerds etc. They post some actual science/space/news for nerds and no one's about. And half the people that did turn up are talking about shitting in the streets....

Freemason

[Anonymous Coward]

Illuminati = 666.

"Chinese astronaut"

[Anonymous Coward]

A "Chinese astronaut" is actually called a taikonaut.

Re:"Chinese astronaut"

[_merlin]

Not in China. Unlike "cosmonaut" which is an Anglicisation of the Russian word "kosmonavt", the word "taikonaut" seems to be an invention of English-speakers. Official English translations issued by the Chinese government use "astronaut". The native Chinese is yuhangyuan or hangtianyuan.

Lookslike everything has gone well...

[nikkipolya]

India will use a mini-rocket with a booster to fly a winged reusable launch vehicle into lower earth orbit on May 23... If everything goes well, ...

Lookslike everything has gone well [http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2016/05/23/indias-isro-says-it-successfully-launched-test-spacecraft/]

Re:Lookslike everything has gone well...

[Rei]

Congrats to them!

Am I the only one here who thinks what they're doing is great? It might even lead to a small space race with Pakistan - if they succeed, Pakistan isn't going to be happy with India having cheap access to space but not them. And the space race turned out to be a great pressure release valve between the US and USSR.

That said, a second-stage reusable isn't enough - they'll also need a reusable first stage that's cheap to refurbish for relaunch. But that, too, is potentially achievable.

Re:Lookslike everything has gone well...

[bondsbw]

It's a great step, and I don't like being pedantic... but they did not launch into orbit as stated in the article. This is clearly a suborbital launch, to an altitude of 70 km with the flight lasting about 10 minutes.

Re:Lookslike everything has gone well...

[Rei]

Cheap: These days, sub-$4k/kg would do.
Access: Ability to reach LEO or beyond.
Achieve: Private companies and government agencies pay huge amounts of money for you to launch their payloads for them.

Any more questions?

Re:Advice for the indian space program

[Coren22]

3- Do not launch in temps below 32 degrees f if you are not sure your o-rings are going to withstand launch stresses.

Perhaps India's lesson from this should be don't let politicians determine where your boosters are built, let the engineers decide. The reason that o-ring exists is that congress dictated that the SRBs be built in Utah, despite it causing the SRBs to be built as two pieces instead of a single unit and requiring the addition of the o-ring to seal the two pieces together. NASA wanted them built near a harbor so they could be sent on ships instead of trains, therefore be a single piece. I think their suggestion was Louisiana, but I could be wrong as I am working from memory.

Re:still insane.

[Coren22]

At least they are making with improving very most their English.

Shouldn't that be Engrish?

Re:Permanent Chinese low Earth orbit space facilit

[Coren22]

Chinese food delivery to the ISS? That would make the stay livable!