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India's Successful Commercial Satellite Launch

Posted by kdawson on Tue Apr 24, 2007 01:42 PM
from the join-the-club dept.
Space Science
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday India successfully launched an Italian astronomical satellite. A BBC article (view video clip) notes that the launch grants India membership in the exclusive group of nations that can sustain commercial satellite launches. India's launch vehicle has less overall capacity than the competition — up to 1,500 kg to orbit — but the country plans to sweep the low end of the market by offering the lowest cost per launched kilogram for smaller payloads."
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India's Successful Commercial Satellite Launch 50 Comments More /

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  • ISS: Houston, we have a problem.

    New Delhi: Hello, please spell your name and give me your complete customer ID.
    • "Have you tried rebooting your spacecraft?"
      "Do you have your Emergency Repair CD?"
      ...long, forehead whapping, circular conversation, going nowhere...
      "I am most sorry that I am unable to help you with your meteorite damage problem."
      "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
    • SpaceCo: Thank you for calling SpaceCo technical support, my name is David (pronounced Dahveed) how may I help you?
      ISS: I am having trouble with my 2nd lab computer
      SpaceCo: What I need you to do is make sure the power cord is plugged in. I will wait while you check.
      ISS: Yes, it is plugged in! The mouse pointer isn't moving when I touch the touch pad.
      SpaceCo: Ok, now what I need you to do is to plug the power cord into a different device to confirm that is is working correctly. I will wait whi
  • ...how much their atom bomb weighs.

    Wonder what Pakistan thinks of this?

  • pun (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hope this will help them to curry favor with other space-industrialized nations.
  • There more important launch is that of Chandrayaan, India's Lunar Probe. That will show them getting out of Earth's well, as well as ability to send a probe elsewhere. That helps everybody WRT to understanding what is on the moon esp at the poles. Do not get me wrong. I am not trying to be glib about India's success. But they have done numerous other LEO (and I believe a couple of GEO) launches. So other than being commercial, it is nothing.

  • Holy Cow... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Notquitecajun (1073646) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @02:06PM (#18859605)
    What CAN'T you outsource to India?

    And there's a "thank you, come again" joke around here somewhere...
    • Not sure this has anything to do with outsourcing, but it appears to have everything to do with good old fashioned commercial competition. Good for India.

  • list please? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tverbeek (457094) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @02:26PM (#18859985) Homepage
    It is too much to ask, that a link labeled "nations that can sustain commercial satellite launches" might actually include information about which nations can sustain commercial satellite launches?
  • The PSLV I remember was a 1500Kg class vehicle and the summary said it is on the low end. The article clarifies that in this mission they launched it without the six strap-on boosters that nominally forms the zero stage. Here they have launched 530 Kg in to 550Km orbit. Not bad. But the base vehicle is not the low end of the market. What ISRO has demonstrated is its flexibility in using PSLV to launch 1500Kg sattelites or PSLV-lite to launch 500Kg sattelites.

    It is a good job, but launching rockets is not

      • The strap-ons are cheap. Six strap-ons together costs less than the first stage of a PSLV. ISRO would have gotten a bigger bang for the buck, by adding the strap ons and putting 1500Kg in the orbit. Cost goes up by some 25%, payload goes up by 300%. Why didn't they?

  • and you call the control center that is monitoring the satellite's orbital decay, you get a Bangalore employee named "Bob" who asks you to reboot your PC.
  • I love Indian cuisine. And now I rejoice in the knowledge that should I ever make it into orbit I can send for a curry!
  • I've all but stopped reading /. threads on Indian technical developments. The predictable torrent of snide little stereotypical racist comments that seem to get modded 'funny' is a bit off-putting, and they usually outnumber any vaguely interesting or informative comments by about 7 to 1. The /. crew needs to grow the hell up.
    • First, if something gets modded funny by more people than mod it overrated, than it is funny. /.'s mod system is as good as anything else at defining humor, and better than a lot of TV network panels, if you ask me. They're certainly not perfect, but funny is not something individuals can pick so well. Can something be funny and insulting? Sure, but if you're going to get offended by something in that vein, I'm not sure /. (or many public message boards) are for you.

      Second, the Indian customer service

      • First, if something gets modded funny by more people than mod it overrated, than it is funny. /.'s mod system is as good as anything else at defining humor, and better than a lot of TV network panels, if you ask me. They're certainly not perfect, but funny is not something individuals can pick so well. Can something be funny and insulting? Sure, but if you're going to get offended by something in that vein, I'm not sure /. (or many public message boards) are for you.
        Oh, so not only is racism funny, but /. is now a racists-only zone? Thanks for clearing that up.

        Second, the Indian customer service phenomenon, which is the majority of cultural humor on this topic, is a big deal in India; has made a huge impact on life there--and they have their own sitcom about it!* Do the jokes get cliched and watered down after a while? Certainly. And some are much better than others. But I for one am glad that they are there.
        Well bully for you. Personally I think that racist jokes are as inappropriate as they are cliché and irrelevant to the topics that provoke them. How would you like it if every story submitted about the US space program was met with a deluge of wisecracks about redneck moonshine-distillers, John Wayne, a gun-toting population, and your half-educated president? You'd start to wonder if it were possible to have a sensible discussion on anything, wouldn't you?

          • Re:can you blame them? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by fiannaFailMan (702447) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @07:22PM (#18863699) Journal

            if by competitive you mean undercutting first world by living in "developing" conditions, settling for income which wouldn't qualify to pay for a refrigerator box in the middle of highway 1 let alone raise a family, then yeah.. it's competitive.
            Damn straight it's competitive. It's less than what you earn, more than what he would earn without outsourcing and therefore makes life better for him. If you can't compete, get another job. Innovate. Start a business. Get off your ass and do something. Don't just sit there expecting some communist-style subsidy or GW Bush-style protectionist tarriffs to keep your standard of living inflated to such dizzy heights while half the world squats in poverty. I know you'd just love to keep all that wealth to yourself but there are about 6 billion other people in this world too you know. If they can raise their income at the expense of a certain gas-guzzling nation that burns up 25% of the world's resources but only has 5% of the world's population, then fair fucks to them.

            youre really sensitive to racism but youre perfectly ok with the dispossession of the middle class of an entire nation for the sake of another which should be building its own middle class without draining the wealth of another... im confused as to what political affiliation youre supposed to have.
            Your justification of racism is noted. And I'm a bit confused as to why you think the USA is entitled to keep all the world's wealth to itself. Is that part of your 'manifest destiny' or something?

              • Re:can you blame them? (Score:5, Insightful)

                by fiannaFailMan (702447) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @07:48PM (#18863885) Journal

                stop contradicting yourself
                Wait until I start contradicting myself and I'll think about it. "Troll" indeed!

                youre either for the communist ideal of wealth redistribution or youre not. if youre for it you cant use "communist" as a derogatory term, and if youre not you have no right to assert the rights of other nations to steal american's jobs.
                "Steal?" That would be an illegal thing. Here is the news. Open markets and free trade are LEGAL! Outsourcing is LEGAL. "Theft" has shit all to do with it. Communism is all about putting artificial constraints on the market. Free trade is the opposite, leading to a better distribution of wealth. Better distribution of wealth isn't an ideal exclusive to communists, free marketeers would like to see it too. But feel free to redefine free trade as 'communism' for the purposes of your argument if you want.

                if india wants the freaking jobs, they should start their own companies and create their own job market rather than destroying the american job market.
                Oh here we go! So you're another protectionist "keep the jobs in the hands of good, white, god-fearing christian folks y'hear" merchant? What makes your country so special that you're entitled to hang on to all the world's cool jobs when there's a bunch of people elsewhere who can do the same work for less, hmm? Anything to do with skin colour? Or is it a nationality thing? Something to do with your 'manifest destiny' or something?

                Here is the news. There's a big bad world out there and it's got COMPETITION for you. If you don't compete, you get eliminated. So you either do it right (i.e. do a better job than the Indians) or get out of the heat of the kitchen and do something else. It's very simple.

                And in the meantime, you might also want to think about fixing that little racism problem.

                  • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                    by univgeek (442857)

                    how about.. we founded and grew our own economy.. hmm? We didn't pull this crap of draining the wealth of other nations to build our own. We invented and exported the majority of what makes today's world modern.

                    Err, your American economy was based on the destruction of the Native American economy. Secondly, European expansion and growth was mainly funded on colonial profits. Find out about the enormous amounts of wealth siphoned out of Asia and Africa over the last 500 years.

                    You guys have had a good time for the past few hundred years. The rest of the world (the 'South') hasn't. Arguments for free-trade have been made and have been accepted both by China and India. And now that BRIC are competing with the Europea

  • the country plans to sweep the low end of the market by offering the lowest cost per launched kilogram for smaller payloads

    So, more orbital debris. But at least this will be smaller stuff.

  • But are they competitive? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Palmyst (1065142) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @03:39PM (#18861063)
    According to various reports, they charged the Italians USD 11 million for the launch of the 350 kg satellite. Roughly $30k per kg while international norm is 10-15k per kg for LEO. Also the launch cost them $15 million. So the launch is still subsidized by the Indian government and they are charging the customer more than the market rate. How is this "commercial", and how is it competitive?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by vvmaha2 (1092815)
      Source: http://www.hindu.com/2007/04/24/stories/2007042414 931500.htm [hindu.com] While the international rates for launching a satellite ranged between $10,000 and $15,000 a kg, Antrix Corporation Limited (The marketing agency of the Department of Space, India) charged more because Agile had to be put into a specific orbit of about 550 km at a low inclination of 2.5 degrees to the equator, Mr. Sridhara Murthi said. This was a difficult orbit and inclination to achieve, and hence the premium rates.
  • Can we put a beowulf cluster up there?
  • "nations that can sustain commercial satellite launches."

    More accurately, "nations that can support the launching of commercial satellites". If a nation's support is required, it's not a commercial launch, it's a government launch. The parent's wording is misleading. That doesn't matter to most people. It does to those interested in commercial space development.

    Governments do these things using peoples' money whether or not they want their money used that way. Companies do things with their own money and ma
  • > the country plans to sweep the low end of the market by offering the lowest cost

    Oh great. I just switched careers from programming to aerospace because my programming job was outsourced to India.

    Porn industry, here I come!

    • Re:Next superpowers... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by vivaoporto (1064484) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @01:51PM (#18859337) Homepage
      Well, I don't know if in a multilateral world (as opposed to the Bi-polarized Cold War world) there is space to the concept of "Superpower" anymore, but if there is (along with India and China), Brazil, South Africa and Australia stands a chance too. A lot of economic and technological development happening barely unnoticed south of the equator too.
      • I'd put the EU in that list as well. Was the EU left out because it is just assumed they will be a major player, or because they are so socialist and it is assumed they won't be?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by vivaoporto (1064484)
          I left E.U., Japan, U.S. and Russia out because they are already major players.
          • That's the reason I hoped you had left them off, rather than the typical US "dang soshlist ferners cain't do nutin' right!" reasoning. ;-)
              • You don't think people in America have a knee-jerk reaction against socialism for the poor? I say socialism for the poor because our country is founded on the principle of socialism for the rich.

                The smiley negated nothing, and here is a raspberry just for you :-P

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Semptimilius (917640)
            And the reason you put Australia on the list but left off Canada? Assuming it would be absorbed into the US?

            • Re:Next superpowers... (Score:4, Insightful)

              by vivaoporto (1064484) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @04:15PM (#18861675) Homepage
              Canada is also already one of the big players, and a very nice one too. One of the biggest economies of the world, fierce enough to have entered both world wars as soon as Britain did, but peaceful enough to stay out of most of the conflicts the rest of the world got involved afterwards.

              I didn't mentioned the current top dogs because then can't go higher, they are already at the top. But Brasil, India, China, Australia, South Africa, all these countries still have an unfulfilled potential, and I hope that in the next decades they will get their act straight and rise to the place they are supposed to be.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by vivaoporto (1064484)
          Good lucky bombing big and populous countries like:
          • China: Most populated country, 3rd biggest country in territory, 2nd GDP
          • India: 2nd most populated, 7th biggest in territory, 4th GDP
          • Brasil: 5th most populated, 5th biggest in territory, 10th GDP

          Even if indiscriminately nuking these countries (all of them reportedly with nuclear capabilities) would not ensure Mutual Assured Destruction, the aftermath of this unlikely event would be disastrous for U.S. and worldwide economy in general, and the curr

            • Re:Next superpowers... (Score:4, Informative)

              by vivaoporto (1064484) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @06:27PM (#18863291) Homepage
              Well, good lucky bringing democracy to Brasil. Because (don't they teach history and geography around there? wherever there is), Brazil is already a democracy, and a strong one too. The current president, Lula [wikipedia.org], just won the second term receiving impressive 58.2 million votes, after winning his first term with 56.7 million votes, for a population of around 180 million people.

              Compare that with 50.4 million votes for Bush on his first term, and 62 million votes on his second term, to measure the strength of Brazilian democracy, taking in account that, differently from U.S.A, not only there are more than 2 effective parties in Brazil but any candidate from any party appears equally on the ballots in the whole federal territory.

              Add that to a nationwide deployed electronic voting system (even in the middle of the amazon forest there is electronic voting) that really works, and you can understand how much Brazilian people trust the electoral process there, unlike U.S.A.

              I cannot speak for India (that happen to be a democracy too, afaik), but at least Brazil needs no help from U.S. Actually, the more far away U.S. gets from Latin America democracies, the better (go lookup "Operation Condor" and "Escuela de las americas" to understand how U.S. undermine Latin American democracies in the past).

    • I hope that the Indian government can use their own satellites to help improve the lives of the average Indian citizen.

      Or, at least use the rockets for ICBMs to mess up the lives of the average Chinese/Pakistani citizen. Remember, one of the goals of the original space race was to show the enemy that anything could be dropped on them at any time.

      I wonder if the U.S. will turn a blind eye to such things (like we did with our recent fissionable materials agreements) because India is currently our friend...

      • Re:W00T! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by namityadav (989838) on Tuesday April 24 2007, @02:04PM (#18859567)
        No government spends all it's money on sanitation first before looking into something more progressive like Space research. I appreciate it when a country looks towards the future, and not just the immediate short-term solutions.
        The somewhat betterment of the conditions (And I do not turn a blind eye to the fact that these betterments are still only on the surface) in India is largely because of it's new-found IT power, opening of market to the west and getting more exposure to the outside world. Not because India was employing more people in the Sanitation department. Continuing in the same direction will have a good enough trickle-down effect to eventually help sanitation too (I know that you used sanitation only as an example. I am also using it only as an example).

        Moreover, unlike most other space agencies, the Indian program still focuses a lot on educational broadcasting and remote sensing. Better than launching those "Spy" satellite, IMHO.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nyeerrmm (940927)
      Actually the Italians have what seems to be a productive (if low budget) space agency. While they don't run many of their own high profile missions, they have payloads attached to both the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Casini-Huygens mission.

      Not to mention that the top orbital mechanics professor in my department is an Italian, and the Italian grad students I've gotten to work with have been wonderful. Plus of course Galileo himself was Italian as well, even if his government and church weren't the

      • even if his government and church weren't the most supportive
        And the understatement of the year award goes to... Nyeerrmm!

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