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Why America Needs India's Rockets (bloomberg.com)
Since 2005, U.S. satellite manufacturers have been prohibited from hiring India's space agency to launch their equipment. Private American launch companies, such as SpaceX, are quite happy with this arrangement, which was intended to protect them. But the ban is not only wrong in principle -- it's actually impeding an exciting new American industry, according to Bloomberg. From the article: Last month, under pressure from satellite operators and manufacturers, U.S. trade officials began reviewing the decade-old policy. They should heed the pressure and overturn it. Emerging India may seem like an unlikely competitor for Silicon Valley rocket companies. Yet since 1969, the Indian Space Research Organization has consistently punched above its modest weight class, racking up a series of cheap and practical achievements. One of its most important feats was the development of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, which was designed to carry satellites for monitoring agriculture and water resources, among other things. What made the PSLV unique was that it was designed to launch small satellites. And that's a good niche to occupy at the moment. Over the past few years, the small-satellite market has boomed as advances in miniaturization made space accessible to governments and companies that might never have considered it. The uses for such gear seem almost limitless, from shoebox-sized climate-monitoring devices to Samsung's plan to use thousands of micro-satellites to provide global internet access. Some $2.5 billion has been invested in the industry over the past decade. But getting all those satellites into space is now proving to be a problem, and U.S. policy is partly to blame.The article adds that apart from SpaceX, no other U.S. company has offered a rocket for small satellite launches, even though the demand has surged. This in turn, has resulted in American satellite companies with few choices. Though the U.S. Trade Representatives has offered occasional waivers from the moratorium, India continues to offer a far cheaper reliable option, and it's not even being considered.
To offer more context, India's Mars mission has a budget of $73 million -- making it far cheaper than comparable missions including NASA's $671 million Maven satellite. Further reading on Vox.com, "India's mission to Mars cost less than the movie Gravity."
To offer more context, India's Mars mission has a budget of $73 million -- making it far cheaper than comparable missions including NASA's $671 million Maven satellite. Further reading on Vox.com, "India's mission to Mars cost less than the movie Gravity."
Thank you...come again!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They were banned due to the threat of terrorism.
Orbital Sciences has been launching small satellites for ages. There, I didn't even have to search the web to come up with a counterexample.
The Indian Mars mission was tiny, about a quarter of the size and weight of the MAVEN, with about 1/4 of the science payload. Hence, 1/4 the cost. If they tried to build an American-sized scientific satellite, with all the same capabilities, they'd cost as much as we do. Just like the Russians and the Chinese cost about as much as we do. Some things take up size and require power and can't be done with small sats. Incidentally, our small sats cost about as much as theirs do.
More propaganda out of msmash about Indian supremacy. Kudos on not having blatant misspellings this time.
India has a massive and largely abandoned underclass combined with lax environmental laws (and we're not talking the 'save the whales' kind we're talking the cancer villages kind). I don't expect our want American businesses to compete with that. You'll notice we're not blocking German rocket launches..
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Next question!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
for a race to the bottom. Trump 2016!
From the article:
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan's administration sought to protect nascent private launch companies from subsidized foreign competition by setting up Commercial Space Launch Agreements. The idea was simple: In exchange for the chance to put U.S. satellites into space, foreign governments agreed to launch quotas and set fees. Both China and Russia signed such agreements. In 2005, India was asked to do the same. While the U.S. waited for an answer (it was and continues to be "no"), it imposed an export moratorium on satellites for Indian launch.
So it sounds like it was a trade deal that fell through. Like, the U.S. offered India the same terms as China and Russia, but they weren't interested. If that's indeed the case, well, China and Russia aren't really known for their laid-back attitude toward these things, so if India's requirements are even more stringent then perhaps we shouldn't be in business with them anyway.
Mind you, I don't know anything about the specifics. Can anyone provide more background on this?
...from shoebox-sized climate-monitoring devices to Samsung's plan to use thousands of micro-satellites to provide global internet access.
Those are both way smaller than the PSLV's LEO payload capacity of 3.8 tons, or even its GTO payload capacity of 1.4 tons. Even a shoebox-sized gold brick (~250 kg) doesn't weight nearly that much.
So, the PSLV has the same fundamental problem for such missions as U.S. commercial launchers: it's too expensive to launch tiny satellites one at a time on a huge rocket, which means they have to be launched in batches. But, satellites launched in batches are all deposited in the same orbital plane. That's problematic because different missions require different orbital planes, and making large plane changes after achieving orbit is very, very expensive - especially in LEO.
So, I'm not sure what problem the author thinks the PSLV solves for people launching micro-satellites - it's actually sized for launching medium or mini satellites.
Is American ability to independently launch rockets more important or to have cheaper satellites? Because I think SpaceX dies if we use Indian rockets. Just like our chip fabricators.
From TFS:
Well, no. The demand for smallsats hasn't actually surged, at least not outside the press release, PowerPoint, and blog industries. (There's been a short term spike, but not a long term surge.) The surge has been in demand for microsats - and in a large part that surge has been powered by the availability of cheap rides as a secondary payload on someone else's flight. That being said, there are a number of US companies working towards smallsat launch capability, but it remains to be seen whether their attempts will pan out.
sounds like their ICBM chain of plutonium/uranium/thorium distributors trying to get startup capital for a hypersonic drone version...
If America wants India's rockets, America will take them. Just as we will take whatever we need. Under President Hillary Clinton the world will have no choice but to bow to US supremacy! Surrender or be destroyed! CLINTON! CLINTON! CLINTON!
Maybe "United States" is unambiguous with context, but it is not universally unambiguous.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If the US is considering using a cut-rate Indian launch service then the rest of the hemisphere can't even contemplate using something more expensive. Nor do they have their own delivery platforms.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Lol
Not really.
"America" is an informal term referring usually to "The United States of America", much like "Ireland" is sometimes substituted for "The Republic Of Ireland" even though Ireland is actually an Island. We also often say "China" instead of "The People's Republic of China".
The "Americas" with an "S" on the end refers to both North and South America. If you wanted to refer to a specific continent you would specify "North" or "South".
So yes, "America" is very formal, and not technically correct, but it is understood by most people as an informal way of referring to the USA just as China is understood to mean the PRC.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Incorrect. "America" is short for "The United States of America". "The Americas" (plural) refers to the continents North America and South America. If you'd like to refer to them individually, you'd need to actually write North America or South America. Note also that while much of Latin America teaches they are the same continent, this isn't true for any reasonable definition of the word.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Whoever wrote this knows nothing about rocketry. India's space program is largely based around UMDH and RFNA powered rockets. While there are definite use cases for hypergolic rocket systems, for example ease/reliablilty of start/restart and long term storage (re: ICBM), they are very expensive compared to RP-1/LOX or NH4/LOX based systems and require larger rockets, both due to lower energy density of the fuel/oxider and extra mass to accommodate the very material incompatible nature of UMDH & RFNA.
India chose the "cheap" route just as China did with their space program. Cheap with respect to the fact they can very easily stand on the shoulders of those that came before without having to spend significant R&D cycles developing reliable and more efficient cryogenic pumping systems like the Russians (gas generator) or US (staged combustion) did.
Continents are a very colonial concept. They have no relation to reality. e.g. Europe is considered a continent though its part of the Asian landmass due to cultural reasons while India is considered a sub continent of Asia. Any reason you give for treating Europe as a different continent (different language, culture, separated by the Caucasus) applies to India as well (larger in size than Europe , 800 languages, differnt food and culture and the Himalayas separate it from and the Iranian plateaus separates it from 'Europe'
Technically before the Panama and Suez canals we had only 4 continents - Eurasia-Africa(Old world), Americas, Australia and Antarctica (All new world)
If you want to divide continents based on sharp change in Culture South America, Sub saharan Africa and India all need to be recognized as continents distinct from North America, North Africa and Asia.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The 1% constantly sells the idea, directly or indirectly, that we have to become more like the 3rd world to compete with the 3rd world.
We'd have to relax our environmental, labor, and safety laws to achieve this.
If you bring this up with the 1%, they'll typically reply that our pollution rules are written by "paranoid meddlers using fake science" and that long hours should be a choice an individual can make. During recessions it becomes work-long-hours-or-get-fired, though.
I believe we should try the opposite: tell the 3rd world we'll tariff their products unless they conform to certain standards. If enough countries do this, they will change and modernize. Without pressure, they won't change; it's human nature.
And don't claim they have to be export-driven to grow. There's no Law of Economics that says that; it's merely a copy-cat habit that we help feed by giving in. Unleash consumers, not just factories, and your econ will grow.
Table-ized A.I.
The Cosgreve rocket -- which is the rocket referred to in the Star Spangled banner was based on the Mysorean rocket. Innovative features included metal casing. Where did the Mysorean rocket design come from? India.
India spends only 4% of GDP on defense. It is woefully underarmed for its situation but it has no aims of attacking anyone and the nukes make sure noone will attack India - nukes are a low cost solution to national defense.
The one good thing in India is that India has no Military Industrial Complex. It imports its weapons so there are no Members of Parliament with Defense factories in their constituencies pushing for increasing military spending.
**Life is too short to be serious**
>I believe we should try the opposite: tell the 3rd world we'll tariff their products unless they conform to certain standards. If enough countries do this, they will change and modernize. Without pressure, they won't change; it's human nature.
That was the original point behind creating the WTO, but Kissingerist idiots insistend on letting countries lile Nicaragua and China in.
Um... where the hell did you get the idea that the Russians use gas generators (inefficient) and the US uses staged combustion? That is almost perfectly backward.
Staged combustion was invented by a Russian, Aleksei Mihailovich Isaev.
The first staged combustion rocket engine built was the Soviet S1.5400, first flown in 1960.
The (ill-fated) Soviet N1 moon rocket used staged-combustion NK-15 and NK-33 rocket engines (the American Saturn V moon rocket used gas generator rocket engines).
The first western (German, not US) staged combustion engine was in 1963, and it was a laboratory test only.
The Russian Proton rocket family was using the staged combustion RD-253 rocket engine in 1965.
The US buys staged combustion RD-180 engines from Russia for United Launch Alliance's workhorse Atlas rocket family.
As far as I can tell, the first US-built staged combustion rocket to fly was the RS-25, better known as the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine), which first flew in 1981. It was a fuel-rich staged combustion cycle, made possible by the use of non-coking H2 fuel. However, by that point the Russians had been using oxidizer-rich staged combustion (which requires advanced metallurgy that the US could not duplicate for over two decades.
Now, both SpaceX and Blue Origin are US companies working on staged combustion rockets, but those are recent projects. In SpaceX's case, it is a full-flow staged combustion rocket, which is extremely tricky; no FFSC rocket has ever flown, although the Russians built and test-fired the RD-270 in the late 60s. SpaceX's Raptor has successfully fired on a test stand, the first FFSC rocket engine to do so since 1970 and the only US-built one to do so ever. The US (through private contractors Rocketdyne and Aerojet) experimented with FFSC in the "Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator", which wasn't even a full rocket motor; the front-end ("Powerhead") component was tested at full capacity in 2006, but then canceled; no full rocket engine was ever built using that design.
So yeah, the US historically didn't have shit on the Russians when it came to advanced rocket combustion cycles. That may be changing now, but it's driven primarily by private industry.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Yes but India is not policing the world, you just can't compare, the stakes are higher if America fail on that and, yes, due to this America developed a cancerous military complex. America has to reach the whole globe now that Russia is back on their 300 year cycle of imperialism. Comparing any military in the world to the US one is pretty dumb, no other country has that much "surface" for attack, aka, useless allies.
I suspect that the Indians must have at least some cost advantages. The cost of a very comfortable, middle-class lifestyle there is something like 1/3 that of anywhere in the developed world.
However that isn't my main point. We want the Indian space program available to us because it gives launch customers options. Those options are going to be useful because the list of suppliers of satellite launches is still rather small. Competition and choice will be good for this industry.
Even more so is my concern about launch freezes after accidents. Rocketry is a dangerous and accident-prone business. Each time there is a major vehicle failure, the launch provider typically halts all further launches until an accident investigation is performed. It happens to NASA, the Russians, SpaceX, you name it. Even one launch freeze is still a major event in the rocket business. They can throw off launch schedules by two years or more.
With additional launch providers, you don't reduce the chances of a freeze at any single agency, but you can reduce the overall impact on the launch business.
Please do name one reason that applies to Europe but not to India.
And you cant use "Europe is populated by good wholesome Christian folk and India is populated by those people".
**Life is too short to be serious**
Tectonic plates are not a colonial concept, nor are geographical boundaries in human development. North America and South America reside on different plates, and should not be considered the same continent; digging a canal is not sufficient to divide one continent into two either. You're correct in that Eurasia should be considered one (very large) continent, but you're arguing against a statement I didn't make. You are wrong in that India is smaller than Europe, however.
Arguing that a tectonic plate-based continental model is "colonial" is the height of silliness. There should be six continents: Eurasia, North America, South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. Saying that these differences have "no relation to reality" is, quite frankly, just stupid.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
So now with all of the money going to pay for toys for oligarchs so they can smash stuff into the desert and occasionally into the ocean they want to outsource the US space program too. It is no surprise really as thee same oligarchs use visa abuse and outsourced labor to keep the bonuses rolling in at their other paying gigs.
"India's mission to Mars cost less than the movie Gravity."
Sounds like the reader never heard of the movie "The Martian." That movie was $108M to make.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
America is also subtly importing Racism from India
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/
Casteism
You do realize that India is on a different tectonic plate than Asia but it is still not considered a continent while Europe is?
As for North and South America they are not 2 plates - California is on a different plate so is the Carribean.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Yes, I know about the Indian tectonic plate. You do realize I just said Europe shouldn't be considered its own continent, right?
A very small part of California is its own plate, and the Caribbean isn't part of either continent.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
What is the benefit to Americans from policing the world? America spends billions on a worldwide military presence and a bloated State department. This in turn means that American corporations are not messed with all around the world. The benefit is to the corporations while the price is paid by the taxpayers. Lets take the example of Iraq. American taxpayers paid 2 trillions for a war in debt, taxes and foregone social spending. During the reconstruction corporations like Halliburton and KBB got billions in contracts from the new Iraqi govt but that only helps the shareholders of these corporations not all taxpayers.
Also because America is the world cop, the USD is the world currency of trade. This means every country in the world needs USD and also needs to hold large USD reserves (to prevent attacks on their currency by Soros). What this means in practice is America can print all the money it wants to fund social spending and military spending without local inflation as the money is sucked out by other countries who need USD , keeping the money supply constant. This is an advantage (basically USA never has to worry about the national debt) but it would not be needed if the US was not playing global cop. US could balance the budget AND ramp up social spending such as free healthcare and free college if it stopped playing global cop. The only losers would be the shareholders of multinational American corporations who benefit from Pax Americana (and dont pay their fair share by hiding money overseas) and whichever sucker country decided to be the next global cop.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Oh I'm ok with you, America would do way better with those extra TRIllions, anyone would do better with some of that trillions. I was not justifying or condoning America's approach, I was just pointing out that once you committed on something like this, theres really no easy way to get out that does not end trashing all the china and having to pay more, in the end, after having to use your military anyway.