Recent College Grads Aim To Land A Robot On The Moon (thehindu.com)

Sunday the Indian Space Research Organization successfully test-launched a scramjet rocket, propelled by "an air-breathing propulsion system which uses hydrogen as fuel and oxygen from the atmosphere air as the oxidizer" rather than carrying a tank of liquid oxygen. "if the need for liquid oxygen is taken away, the space craft can be much lighter, hence cheaper to launch," notes one newspaper, adding that India is only the fourth country to flight-test a scramjet engine after the U.S., Russia and the European Space Agency.

But in addition, 15 former ISRO scientists are now helping Team Indus, one of the 16 teams remaining in Google's $30 million Lunar XPRIZE competition, who will use ISRO's polar satellite launch vehicle to send their spacecraft to the moon. GillBates0 writes: An official designated as "Skywalker", said that such space missions used to be limited to extremely elite people and PhDs in the past. That stereotype is now breaking. "I was just a college student a couple of years ago and now I am working on an actual space mission, how cool is that," said Karan Vaish, 23, who is helping the team to design the lunar rover. Eighty per cent of the team is reported to be less than five years out of college.

Comments

Re:well,

[murdocj]

And after they land rovers that last for years, orbit all of the planets, launch interstellar probes, and flyby Pluto, they'll be ready to finish catching up. In the meantime, NASA stands alone.

Why?

[n2hightech]

I just do not see why people keep trying to eliminate the weight of oxidizer and propellent. IE scram jets or space elevators when the cost of propellants is so small. The propellent cost for a Falcon 9 launch is only $250,000. The Falcon 9 can put 50,000 lbs of cargo in low earth orbit that's just $5 per pound for propellent. Propellent does not matter. What matters is the cost of the vehicle. We need 100% spacecraft reusability for 1,000's of launches to get the cost of space travel down. Space X is working towards that goal. The current engines that use Kerosene will wear out rather quickly because the engines need to run with excess oxidizer to prevent them from being fouled by carbon build up. The oxidizer causes the engine to rust out(titanium rust). The new Space X engine uses liquid methane fuel. It can be run with a more perfect oxidizer/ fuel ratio and eliminate the corrosion problem so much longer life.

Re:Why?

[n2hightech]

Rocket engines are incredibly powerful for their mass. Other engines are much more complex and have higher mass to thrust ratios. The tanks for fuel are very low mass compared to the fuel they contain. Scram jets require a booster system of some type to get them supersonic. Once super sonic they work until they run out of atmosphere and then the orbital system needs rockets to get into space. So in order to reduce the mass of oxidizer they add a subsonic to sonic booster system and then to operate in space they add a rocket. Seems much simpler and lower cost to just add bigger tanks to the rocket and forget all the other stuff.

Great kid. Don't get cocky.

[fahrbot-bot]

"I was just a college student a couple of years ago and now I am working on an actual space mission, how cool is that," said Karan Vaish, 23, who is helping the team to design the lunar rover.

Neil Armstrong was 38 when he walked on the Moon, 24 years before you were born -- after being a Navy pilot, graduating from Purdue, being a test pilot and being in the astronaut program for 11 years. You graduated from school and are playing with robots. Granted, they're "space robots" and that is pretty cool, but keep a little perspective.

That aside. Why is it news that younger people work on things too? Someone has to take over and do things. Young graduates with excellent training and skills seems appropriately normal. Hopefully the youngsters will learn from both the achievements and mistakes of their predecessors - you know, all the older folks that did it first.