Indian Space Agency Prototypes Its First Crew Capsule 48
First time accepted submitter sixsigma1978 writes "India is about to take one small step towards human space flight. Last week the country's space agency unveiled a prototype of its first crew capsule, a 4-meter-high module designed to carry two people into low Earth orbit. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is planning a test flight for later this year – even though it still awaits government approval and funding for a human space-flight program. The unpiloted capsule will fly on the maiden launch of a new type of rocket that would otherwise have carried a dummy payload."
Re:Something new? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stranger than I first thought. TFA talks about a 'carbon nose cap' to shield the heat of reentry. That sort of implies (subject to the translation failures of generalist journalists and PR folks) that it's going nose down through the atmosphere. However, it looks like the capsule has a posterior heat shield (like other manned capsules) albeit one that looks pretty thin in the picture.
Sigh. Be nice if they actually had real pictures of these things.
Re:Priorities (Score:3, Interesting)
Good argument. In point of fact, India has their population consuming less energy per capita than China does, but with the same growth in population and almost the same GDP per capita.
Now if they could just find a way to make Space Travel inexpensive, maybe we could colonize Mars, which we now know has water on it's moons and on the planet.