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Space Technology

India Plans Hypersonic Space Plane by 2007 566

Posted by michael from the reach-out-and-touch-someone dept.
MaximusTheGreat writes "While India has announced plans for a hypersonic plane (speeds greater than mach 5) before, this is the first time a firm date for test of an unmanned plane has been given. Final version of this plane called Aerobic Vehicle for Hypersonic Aerospace Transportation (AVATAR) is envisaged to deliver a 500 kg to 1,000 kg payload to low earth orbit. It will reduce the cost of space travel to a fraction to what it is today, by being completely reusable. Also, by allowing hypersonic speeds, it would for example reduce the travel time from Sydney, Australia to New York to less than 3 hrs. The crucial technology in the development of Hypersonic planes is supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet). India has already demonstrated the basic technology of ramjets by the development of world's fastest cruise missile Brahmos which outspeeds famous US Tomahawk by three times, and by ground tests of scramjets. US, Australia and Japan are also pursuing similar programs."
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India Plans Hypersonic Space Plane by 2007 More

India Plans Hypersonic Space Plane by 2007

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  • Great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by brian728s ( 666853 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:10PM (#7853914)
    Now they can outsource my job to orbit, where they don't have to pay for gravity or air...

    • Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Davak ( 526912 )
      I don't understand the combination of "hypersonic" and "space plane." I thought the key behind the US hypersonic plane was its ability to compress and use oxygen to increase its speed and function.

      Here's a couple of links that compares and contrasts these two.

      I don't understand the way the combination of the two would work.

      Space Plane Link [howstuffworks.com]

      Hypersonic Plane Link [howstuffworks.com]

      Davak

      • Just the usual... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cheesybagel ( 670288 )
        There is this tendency to say scramjet powered vehicles are space planes, but the truth is they are very poor space vehicles. Why?

        Because something travelling at Mach 5 max will never reach escape velocity. So this thing is suborbital at best.

        Not to mention scramjets only work from Mach 2 or thereabouts, so you need an alternative engine to speed the plane up to Mach 2, then you use the scramjet to go up to Mach 5. Plus there is the additional problem that liquid hydrogen is low density, cryogenic fuel.

  • Indian engineering (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gilesx ( 525831 ) * on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:10PM (#7853920)
    Now *that's* what I call the fastest call center on Earth!

    • And in other news: Pakistan is planning a Venus landing by 2009! And last I heard Cambodia is bouncing back from Pol Pot and is planning to resettle all the former Khmer Rouge on Mars byt 2010!

      I mean seriously, WTF is the deal with all these HUUUUUGE announcements? These countries (China, India, et al) have larger problems than the lack of a space program, don't have the resources to actually fund OR launch these programs (over half of india can't READ!), etc.

      We may have to see this kind of never gonna

  • In a stunning announcement (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:10PM (#7853921)
    India said they planned to outsource the programming to lower paid US programmers.
  • They have nuclear weapons and they'll be able to place objects in orbit cheaply...
  • Pakastan announces they will be developing a satellite missle defence system by 2006.

    The Pakastan/India conflict is eventually going to explode.

    So sad.

    Davak
    • What's probably the saddest bit about this is that the India/Pakistan cold war is proving to be just as much of a boon to technological development as the US/USSR cold war was. It's as if it's impossible to leapfrog in technology without the political motivation of an enemy to mobilize it.

      In the US, for example, it's hard to imagine that considerations of intellectual property, patents, NDA's and the like would have been allowed to hamstring the development of strategic military technologies. But peacetime
      • That is funny. Pakistan is 1/7th the size of India, and with stangnant economy, it is falling way behind with each passing year. Why do you think there is this sudden talk of peace etc.? Pakistanis are scared, that in a few years they will loose all leverage.
        The only thing that pakistanis have that makes people in US equate them is some chinese nukes with north korean missile.
        Anyway, India is developing its military potential not in race with Pakistan, but its other neighbor China.

    • The Pakastan/India conflict is eventually going to explode.

      And you can thank the britshit for this. Before they lay their dirty hands on India, everyone there lived together. Now, it's three different countries who hate each other's guts.

      The britshit are very good with partitionning countries, and it always blows-up in their face: Ireland, India, Koweit.

      Perhaps it is time to get rid the world of the anglo-saxon incompetence, because whenever anglo-saxons touch something, they fuck it up irremediably.

      D

  • What? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dj28 ( 212815 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:16PM (#7853977)
    From the article: "Brahmos which outspeeds famous US Tomahawk by three times, and by ground tests of scramjets."

    The Tomahawk cruise missile was intentionally made subsonic. The sound from a supersonic cruise missile with a range in exceess of 800 miles would negate much of the stealth aspect of the missile.

    If you want to compare it to a US missile, compare it to some of our anti-ship or anti-air missiles.

    • What, Insightfull? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Teun ( 17872 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:34PM (#7854098)
      The Tomahawk cruise missile was intentionally made subsonic. The sound from a supersonic cruise missile with a range in exceess of 800 miles would negate much of the stealth aspect of the missile

      Pray explain what noise would make it audible before it physicaly arrives.
      It's Supersonic i.e, faster than sound!!

      The fact that the bang might be heard and the news radioed ahead is rather trivial as cruise missiles don't need to follow a straight line of attack.

      • Ah, but that's the wonder of radio - its omni-directional. You don't need to tell one potential target that a cruise missile's coming. You tell every target you deem important that its on its way, and they throw up a wall of fire or do whatever they need to to shoot it down when its within range.

      • Re:What, Insightfull? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Thursday January 01, 2004 @04:09PM (#7854313) Homepage Journal
        The fact that the bang might be heard and the news radioed ahead is rather trivial as cruise missiles don't need to follow a straight line of attack.

        Advanced warning of a cruise missile attack would still allow evacuations and air defense response. The targets of cruise missiles would be fairly obvious - command and control, airfields, power stations, etc., regardless of the evasive path the missile might take.
        • Advanced warning of a cruise missile attack would still allow evacuations and air defense response.
          Tomahawks can still be heard and seen, even if not quite as easily as if they had a sonic boom. The fact that a supersonic missile is much faster would make such an early warning much less useful.
      • yup, as early warning reports from one site can't be called in faster than sound methods of radio, electricity or fiberoptics.
      • Pray explain what noise would make it audible before it physicaly arrives. It's Supersonic i.e, faster than sound!!

        Faster than sound does not mean faster than light or electricity. If it travels more than 200 KM, there is plenty of time to bring most defenses on-line. Obviously, if it is only traveling 50 KM, then you are most likely gone before advance warning can happen. That simply begs the question of why did you allow somebody that close.

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spicedhamhawg ( 718466 ) <jbyrne@texaport.org> on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:50PM (#7854216)
      Don't forget to talk about the short range of Brahmos, only 280 km. Sure, you could bring your ship in close and fire a supersonic Brahmos from no more (and probably less) than 280 km from the target, and it would quickly arrive and blow up something. And before you could escape, you'd have aircraft all over you and they'd blow your ass out of the water.

      Kind of negates a lot of the advantage of the speed. The Tomahwak may take longer to get there, but because of its range, retaliatory strikes are difficult to make, and there is plenty of time to be prepared for them and attempt to defeat them.

      Or viewed another way, the Brahmos may be plenty fast and plenty accurate and have a low radar signature, but you shoot you Brahmos at me and I'll shoot my Tomahawk at you. 20 minutes after the Brahmos fell in the ocean because it ran out of fuel, my Tomahawk will arrive at your location.

      Also, they make no mention of air or submarine launch capabilities, something Tomahawks have long had. Only land and surface ship launches are mentioned in the Brahmos article. In view of its short range and limited launch options, I don't see Brahmos taking center stage away from the Tomahawk anytime soon.

      • Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 17028 ( 122384 )
        OTOH, most of Pakistan's inhabited region is within 280 km of India.

      • Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lommer ( 566164 )
        Well, the Brahmos is a different kind of missile, designed for a different mission profile. First of all your point about no air/submarine launch capabilities is downright wrong, as the article specifically mentions the flexibility in launching platforms as a reason for choosing to focus development on cruise missiles (as opposed to airplanes, etc.). The second point is that obviously the Indian's aren't going to be launching Brahmos' at targets that are out of range, that would just be retarded. Brahmos' m
    • I agree...And have some additional points. The Brahmos has a warhead of 440 pounds, wheras the Tomahawk has a 1000-pound warhead. The point about not being supersonic has not been stressed enough. If you launch a dozen Tomahawks from a submarine, nobody is going to know what happened until things start blowing up somewhere, 800 miles away. If you launch a dozen Brahmos' from the same (non-existent, since it's not a SLCM) submarine, as soon as it goes supersonic, you have given everybody in audible range

  • Scramjet research on a shoestring (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Iron Sun ( 227218 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:18PM (#7853993)
    You don't need to be a superpower to experiment in this area. The University of Queensland here in Oz has the HyShot [uq.edu.au] program which, despite a few teething problems, is producing world class results. The US has yet to see any results from its X-43 [popularmechanics.com] series. It will be interesting to see if India can live up to its own hype. Good luck to them.

  • I don't understand why everytime India advances technologically, people immediately think "oh they have nuclear weapons". The United States has Nuclear weapons and continues to develop and is the *only* country to ever have used them in war - and it is very debatable whether they needed to - definitely, not the second bomb.

    Anyway, I digress - the point I am trying to make, why don't we see this as it is - other countries (besides the US, Germany, UK, France) are also trying to develop advanced avaition an

    • Re:India does something & nuclear angle comes (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wmspringer ( 569211 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:28PM (#7854051) Homepage Journal
      Probably because India and Pakistan appeared to be very close to going to war fairly recently, and there are sufficiently advanced weapons on both sides to make people nervous.

      Even if you assume that India will never use thier nukes, won't an increase in power on thier part make thier neighbors feel that they need to increase thier military power as well?

      On the other hand, cheap space travel is really cool no matter who is developing it.. :-)
    • I don't understand why everytime India advances technologically, people immediately think "oh they have nuclear weapons".

      Probably because, unlike the US or Russia, they have no agreement with other countries on what they can/cannot do with those nuclear devices (regardless of the fact that we don't always respect the agreements).

    • India lives in a very tough neighborhood bordering Pakistan and China, with Afghanistan only a hundred miles from the border. They have to develop nukes to keep the enemies at bay.

      Not really. The whole "nuclear deterrent" thing is grossly overrated. If any one country decided to attack another- it'd start world war three, and it'd pretty much be "Us versus the World". Pakistan wouldn't stand a chance against even one world superpower, and China survives off its exports to prevent its economy from coll

  • More so than the US it seems. With NASA pulling the funding on every new shuttle replacement just before it starts working and our commercial aerospace industry relegated to Boeing, who seemingly can't compete on a level playing field, it seem slike all the exciting advancements are going to happen in China and India.

  • Fall of Western civilization ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:22PM (#7854021) Homepage
    With more and more scientific advancements in ex-third world countries, I'm starting to wonder if this is the often predicted end of Western civilization.
    The Western countries have lost their population advantage long ago - there are much more Chinese and Indians than Europeans and Americans.
    The military advantage is already gone in thecase of e.g. France or UK or is already decreasing like e.g. US and Germany.
    The industrial advantage is also gone: most industrial consumer products are not produced in Western countries these days leading to the huge trade deficit of the US.

    What is remaining is the technological advantage.
    However, India and China are catching up.
    The US has traditional 2 strategies to keep this advantage:

    1. Sucking brillant minds out of 3rd world countries by getting them into the US via e.g. graduate schools.
    2. Blocking advancement in 3rd world countries by covering every rubbish with patents.
    However, both strategies are failing these days:
    • Foreign graduates from India and China are in fact returning to htheir home countries. By this they are exporting the US technology there and creating unbeatable (cost !) conpetitors to US businesses.
    • With reducing importance of the US in the world China and other countries are less and less willing to accept the US patent dictatorship - killing the exploiting by IP strategy of the US.
    Bush tries to cover these facts by made up wars in the middle east. But the Iraq war wouldn't last forever and the US public will be forced to face their bleak future.

    • Re:Fall of Western civilization ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:34PM (#7854102) Homepage Journal
      I would agree with some of your points, but this almost reads like a troll given some blazing factual errors.

      Blocking advancement in 3rd world countries by covering every rubbish with patents.

      Patents currently work on a per-country basis. The Chinese can develop whatever they like under their own system. If Western civilization does crumble, as you predict, then China won't be interested in selling to the US so much anymore, but to its own citizens and neighbours, whose patents will be different to those of the US.

      The military advantage is already gone in thecase of e.g. France or UK or is already decreasing like e.g. US and Germany.

      Germany has a weak military compared to both the UK and France. I'm not sure where you're getting your statistics from. You're also confusing military power with power in general. Israel has a very powerful army by international standards, but they're hardly a superpower in any sense.

      You have also missed that the UK (and the US, to a point) holds an advantage over its European peers by being the world's largest creditor, raking in billions from ever growing third world debt.

      I do not see the gloom and doom you seem to, however. I think the development of the second and third worlds will improve the world as a whole, even if it puts a little dent into our own standard of living. As a supplier, myself, I'll take a dip in my standard of living if it means I can have the whole world as a giant marketplace, rather than just the US and Europe.
      • Patents currently work on a per-country basis.

        So how does the US get away with telling Brazil and other 3rd world countries that they can't distribute to their citizens their own generic versions of AIDS drugs that are under US patents?
      • Germany has a weak military compared to both the UK and France.

        References? Germany [cia.gov] and UK [cia.gov] spent $38.8 billion and $31.7 billion on the military in 2002. France [cia.gov] spent $46.5 billion. Perhaps you're referring to Germany's lack [wikipedia.org] of nuclear weapons?

        :w

    • Re:Fall of Western civilization ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CountBrass ( 590228 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:41PM (#7854155)

      *cough*Until about 100 years ago the US was way behind Europe in general and the UK in particular.

      Countries catching up is perfectly normal. In any case - what makes you so special ? Is there something you did that makes you deserve to be "ahead' of Indians, Chinese, whatever ? Or was that just an accident of birth ?

      Personally I look forward to the day the whole world is without poverty and want. And there isn't one dominating military super-power.

      Zero sum gain (to win someone else has to lose) as an economic theory was discredited a long, long time ago.

    • Technology is not going to be the downfall of the USA 'empire'. It will be its governments policies, and its citizens willingness to give up their civil liberties in exchange for 'security'. The USA is not much of an adventurer any more. The last bold move it made was going to the moon. The citizens seem to want to legislate a 'safe' world. USA citizens want to outlaw or control anything harmful moving responsabilty for their actions to the government.

      But they attacked Iraq! Wasn't that bold? No, there wa

    • Whenever people talk about fall of western civilization they make two serious assumptions which are wrong--
      a)West has always been rich and powerful. FALSE
      Figures for 1750
      share of world wealth China+India ==56%
      share of Asia == 80%
      share of west = 18% share in word population

      west = 20%
      asia = 60%
      And, this was true for pretty much all of the known history, asia being even wealthier as you go back in time. Why do you think columbus wanted to discover india? and ended up discovering America.
      After 1750, bristish d

    • Re:Fall of Western civilization ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by servasius_jr ( 258414 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @05:15PM (#7854735)
      Dude. Where do I begin?

      With more and more scientific advancements in ex-third world countries, I'm starting to wonder if this is the often predicted end of Western civilization.

      Even if we accept the implicit assumption that so called ex-third world countries are poor and backwards -- even when the people are poor, often the goverment isn't, but let's not even get into that -- their success doesn't necessarily take anything away from us. If I'm rich, and my neighbor is poor, but becomes rich, his becoming rich doesn't automatically make me any poorer. If my toaster learns how to talk and perform higher maths, I don't become any dumber. It's not always a zero-sum game. Western civilization will not end just because India improves itself.

      The Western countries have lost their population advantage long ago - there are much more Chinese and Indians than Europeans and Americans.

      "Population advantage"? What's that? Numbers are an advantage? It seems to me that the British Empire had a pretty good run -- tiny little Island dominating huge and populous territories.

      Most people aren't white like you. It's always been that way. And that's the real issue here, isn't it? Sorry, man, but you're going to have to get used to the idea.

      The military advantage is already gone in thecase of e.g. France or UK or is already decreasing like e.g. US and Germany.

      Add Russia, and you've got the five largest navies in the world; airpower is roughly the same. Also, the major shareholders in the Nuke club. Other countries may be able to field more rifles, but both Iraq wars have shown how useful that is against a technologically superior foe.

      The industrial advantage is also gone: most industrial consumer products are not produced in Western countries these days leading to the huge trade deficit of the US.

      Five largest economies: US, Japan, Germany, France, UK. I think the order is about right, but I'm not sure. You can look up any of this stuff for yourself -- the CIA World Factbook is good, and available online. If the GDP of 50 million or so Brits is bigger than that of a billion-odd Chinese, it stands to reason that the West still has a little industry left, eh?

      What is remaining is the technological advantage.
      However, India and China are catching up.
      The US has traditional 2 strategies to keep this advantage:

      Sucking brillant minds out of 3rd world countries by getting them into the US via e.g. graduate schools.

      And then a lot of them go back home. Which is fine. I know it doesn't fit very well with your war-of-cultures mindset, but more educated people means a better world for everybody, regardless of where they're from, or whether or not they look and talk like you. And Universities have always been magnets for foreigners.

      Blocking advancement in 3rd world countries by covering every rubbish with patents.

      Yeah, with those magical international patents we have.

      However, both strategies are failing these days:
      Foreign graduates from India and China are in fact returning to htheir home countries.

      How dare they? Whoever could have forseen this?

      By this they are exporting the US technology there and creating unbeatable (cost !) conpetitors to US businesses.

      Allowing them to sell us cool things at reasonable prices, while the US, with its tremendous combination of physical and intellectual capital, abundant natural resources, stable government, and military hedgemony lumbers on, lordly, unconcerned.

      With reducing importance of the US in the world

      Unproven, and unsupportable.

      China and other countries are less and less willing to accept the US patent dictatorship -

      They never really were, and that was never the point.

      killing the exploiting by IP strategy of the US.

      Uhh. . . yeah.

      Bush tries to cover these facts by mad

  • I think that they could do it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dalek_killer ( 661544 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:22PM (#7854023)
    Well India has more people with Doctorate degrees per capital than any other country in the world. So I could see India getting the plain up and running by 2007.
    • I don't know where you got that "fact", but it's far from true. I believe South Korea holds that distinction (most number of doctorates per capita), with Seoul being the city with the densest PhD population. New Zealand is another country which ranks high in that statistic. I wouldn't be surprised if India was nowhere in the top 50, given the billion+ population and the low literacy rate. Oh, I'd try and preview posts if I were you - it's hard to take someone who spells plane "plain" and per capita with an

  • 20 years for a jet fighter-how long for this one (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:28PM (#7854052)
    India has been working for more than 20 years on an indigenous jet figher to replace its Mig-21s, and also a jet trainer to replace its Hawks. The latest report: some Mig-29s and new Hawks have been rented "temporarily" from Russia and England to "fill in" until the local products are ready.

    So - if it has taken India 20 years to produce some Mach 1.5 aircraft, how long will it take to produce a usuable Mach 20 spacecraft?

    sPh
    • If you take a look at the India of 20 years ago and the India of today, I think you'll see startingly different countries, particularly in terms of technological education and infrastructure.
      • Well, no, actually. The India of 20 years ago had plenty of good scientists and a lot of good scientific research going on. It isn't knowledge or understanding I am pointing out: it is the ability to turn that knowledge into something useful via a long-term, structured development project. Which is what India seems to have trouble with. Of course, that is a gross generalization given the size and diversity of the country, but the last few big aerospace projects haven't turned out so well.

        That said, co

    • Re:20 years for a jet fighter-how long for this on (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @04:53PM (#7854570) Journal
      20 years is actually not that very long. I've worked on military research before, and while I was doing so a report stated that the average time between the start of a military research project and a deliverable hitting even limited deployment was 10 years (in the UK and USA). Given that a lot of projects are quite simple upgrade to existing technology, 20 years isn't that bad.

  • Priorities screwed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CountBrass ( 590228 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:28PM (#7854055)

    Why ?

    I regularly donate cash to charities to drill wells in India and other such poverty relief measures - and yet their government spends a ton of cash on nuclear weapons and prestige projects.

    Time to redirect my charity I think.

    • Ah, the same old give a man a fish conundrum. If you had limited resources, would you invest them in building a boat, or buying fish from he market?
      By developing high tech, India is trying to keep all its good engineers to go to the good old USA. See it is those engineers/scientists from all the other countries immigrating into US which have kept it rich. So, coming back to the fish analogy, India has two choices
      a) Send the boat builders(engineers/scientists) to US, and get aids money
      b) keep some of the boa

  • Regarding Cruise Missles (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Grip3n ( 470031 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:28PM (#7854060) Homepage
    Regarding those missles, yes, India's missle is indeed faster, but the article states that it has a range of only 280km. That, compared to the American Tomahawk of anywhere between 1100km to 2500km, is just a drop in the bucket. The article states that had India been able to fire off some missles at the same time as the Americans that their chances of getting Bin Laden would have been greater. The problem is with a range of only 280km, they'd have to get pretty close to or within the country. With the Tomahawks extremely long range, the American's can fire from the Ocean without taking any land. Although its slower, the fact that it has between 4 and 9 times the range of the BrahMos, the Tomahawk would realistically 'get there sooner' because of its longer firing range in a real world situation.

    Oh yes, I'm not American, I'm Canadian. This is an objective perspective.
    • Well, India has different missile defense needs than the U.S because of different geopolitical situations. The U.S. has the entire Western Hemisphere in its backpocket. No country in the Western Hemisphere would dare to stand up to American power and influence for too long and get away with it. The closest enemies of the U.S. are 1100 to 2500 km away from the lower 48 states.

      On the other hand, India is in the midst of a minefield. Immediately bordering on India's west is Pakistan, its sworn enemy. Immedia

  • Moo (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The thought of a missle named after a cow just dosn't scare me somehow.
  • Would be nice to see this done but 2007 is an apolloesqe time scale ( meaning lack of time ) for deploying a scramjet and sufficent shielding for atmospheric hypersonic speeds for any significant duration flight.

    The flight profile for a space launch by an Air breathing engine requires a great deal of acceleration to be done where there is still significant amounts of atmosphere to provide friction... the vehicle would essentially go through re-entry twice on a mission rather than just once ( shuttle does m
    • Actually, the summary is wrong - 2007 is the date for a flight test of a scramjet engine, they are by no means presuming to be able to construct a full space plane by then. As you mentioned, after the scramjet engine is developed, there are HUGE challenges in shielding and hypersonic aeronautics to overcome before a spaceplane is feasable. If the Indians can succesfully do it however, props to them.

  • Mmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by No_Weak_Heart ( 444982 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @03:48PM (#7854202)

    Sharks with laser beams... er, what was I thinking. Oh right, mmm num num.

  • Clueless Manager:
    hmmmm..... yeah..... I'm going to need those TPS reports. Yeah, and uhm, no faxes. I don't know where you hide, but I'm going to have to ask you to walk right up here and hand those TPS reports to me. Yeah..

    Response:
    Your willing to pay for me to come to your office, very well sir.

    Clueless Manager:

    Yeah, and don't park in my spot when you get here.

    AngryPeopleRule [angrypeoplerule.com]

  • I know the stock Markets are doing well world-wide, but here is what BBC caried on India's Economy yesterday.

    Boom time for India's economy [bbc.co.uk]

    India's economy has joined the ranks of the world's fastest growing economies, official figures show. The economy expanded at a scorching 8.6% between July and September.

    And here is an article from yesterday's NY Times ... Indian Soybean Farmers Join the Global Village [nytimes.com]

    At least once a day in this village of 2,500 people, Ravi Sham Choudhry turns on the com

  • Not directly related to the Indian project, but something I've always wondered...

    Why is re-entry always performed by using the atmosphere for braking? What is the main obstacle to building a craft that uses its engines to reduce its speed to well below orbital velocity while "hovering" outside the atmosphere in a non-sustainable orbital path until it's slow enough to reduce stress from air resistance and heat? Maybe the cost incurred by carrying the controlled descent system around would be offset by sav
    • it would be like trying to hover in mid-air without helicopter blades. You'd fall because of gravity.

      To gain orbital 'altitude' you have to increase your orbiting speed tangental to the earth by firing your engines. Similarly, when you want to re-enter the atmosphere you fire your retro rockets to slow you down, but as you slow down you decrease your orbital altitude. At a certain speed you'll re-enter the atmosphere, but this speed is still relatively high and requires heat shields.

      So to sum it up,
  • Will this ever happen? Unlikely. Important part is to be "planning" to do something and making noise. And whether or not this will ever materialize doesn't matter.
  • Note the last para of the article suggests they may use it to boost their existing rockets. Or possibly future rockets, now that India is starting to consider manned spaceflight.

    The China/India/Pakistan space race could be far more interesting - and given the new technologies available - productive than the USA/USSR one.

    Vik :v)

  • The problem with Scramjets is... (Score:3, Informative)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @04:43PM (#7854519)
    One of the very important issues I see neglected in many of the news reports relating to SCRAMjet-powered craft is the issue of getting the damned things up to a speed where the SCRAMjet can actually start working.

    With a small unmanned craft the solution could be to use rocket boosters to get the vehicle up to around Mach 1 -- at which speed the SCRAMjet would be able to start producing sufficient thrust to continue the acceleration.

    However, what do you do with a passenger craft filled with people. The acceleration to 0.9M is going to need to be done far more gently (or they'd spill their prawn cocktails and Bucks Fizz). Perhaps they plan to use conventional turbojet engines -- in which case you're now talking about a whole heap of additional weight (engines plus fuel) and drag that will penalise the hypersonic performance. and range.

    Then there's the issue of landing...

    Since the SCRAMjet will not provide any useful thrust at mid to low subsonic speeds, what safety margins are built in for aborted landings or other problems. Sure, the space shuttle can glide to a landing -- but it has a dedicated runway, clear airspace and only seven lives at risk.

    Finally, one has to ask: just because we *can* build something, does that necessarily mean it's a sensible idea to do so?

    Increasing the flight-speed of a craft is an expensive business in terms of energy consumption. To double the speed requires four times the power (all other aspects being equal) so to push a craft along at mach 5 would require 256 times as much thrust as it takes to push it along at mach 1.

    Unless there's some clever magic involved, that means 256 times as much fuel being used to travel five times as fast -- making it 50 times *less* efficient in terms of miles to the gallon.

    Now think about this for a minute.. would you pay 50 times as much as it presently costs to fly from one place to another if it meant saving a few hours?

    The Concorde service died because it was too expensive and they only flew at Mach 2. How on earth then, could a hypersonic passenger service be economically viable?

    And don't make the mistake of thinking that liquid hydrogen is going to be cheaper than Jet-A fuel, last time I checked it was almost identical.

    A final note, even if this all panned out and India was able to introduce a hypersonic passenger jet service, would anyone use it? After all, just look at their railway safety record [google.co.nz]
    • Most fuel spend in a modern airliner doesn't go into that airliner's kinetic energy, it goes into overcoming atmospheric drag. A scamjet running at mach ten is going to be experiencing much less drag than a regular airliner, because it will be much higher. To keep from using a truly nutty amount of fuel, as well as to avoid melting from the heat, it will fly high where the atmosphere is much less dense. As such, you can't come up with a simple relation between speed and fuel consumption. It is entirely poss

  • AVHAT? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ingenuus ( 628810 ) on Thursday January 01, 2004 @06:02PM (#7855015)
    (A)erobic (V)ehicle for (H)ypersonic (A)erospace (T)ransportation == AVATAR?

    To what extent are we allowed to arbitrarily select letters to form a cool acronym?
    Maybe they felt that AVHAT was a little too close to "asshat"?

    On the other hand, since "avatar" is derived from Sanskrit and can mean "the incarnation of a Hindu deity, especially Vishnu, in human or animal form"... and since Vishnu is the "protector and preserver of worlds", perhaps AVATAR is meaningful symbolically rather than acronymically (is that a word?... didn't think so).

    Of course, in /. tradition, I've not yet read the article... I'm satisfied with just making fun of the summary. :)

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