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Space

India Launches Five Foreign Satellites 85

Posted by Soulskill from the high-five dept.
vasanth writes: "India has put into orbit five foreign satellites, including one built by France two from Canada and one each from Singapore and Germany. The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) has so far successfully launched 67 satellites, including 40 foreign ones, into space. The PSLV costs about 17 million USD and the cost is seen as a major advantage India has over other countries in terms of commercial launches. When talking about the cost of the project, the Prime Minister of India noted that the launch was cheaper than Hollywood film Gravity.
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India Launches Five Foreign Satellites More

India Launches Five Foreign Satellites

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  • Manned mission please... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by monzie ( 729782 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @01:37AM (#47366433) Homepage
    ISRO ( Indian Space Research Organization ) launch vehicles have attained the goals set for them. A politician recently pointed out that cost of sending 5 satellites to space was less than the budget of the movie Gravity ( I liked that movie, he should have picked Avatar for the example IMO ). The Mangalyaan ( Mars Mission ) costs less than â12 per km travelled, making it the most cost effective mars mission ever. These launches were done by the PSLV ( Polar satellite launch vehicle ) and cannot be used for manned launches. ISRO has suffered setbacks , notably with GSLV ( Geostationary satellite launch vehicle ) and in mastering the cryogenic engine. They have made progress and their track record makes them a very good contender to provide a good alternative to SpaceX.
    • That was "12 Rupees per km". Slashdot did something weird with the Rupee symbol.
      • The rupee symbol has an HTML representation 8377 or &#8377. Even if /. doesn't want to support Unicode, can't it at least support the HTML representations that are there, so that people using that can represent foreign currencies or other symbols?

    • Manned mission please... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That was true until the GSAT-14 launch. Those guys have talked about their commitment to delivering a better GSLV Mark III, so it'll be awaited.

      Technically, it doesn't make too much sense to send a human being as much as it makes to send a robotic creature down there. It's the same reason we use Drones and Surgical Arms. :-)

      Perhaps we may require humans on a space station if Robots can't handle certain sensing tasks too well. But that's pretty much the scope of human beings out there. What we could really b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cmarkn ( 31706 )

        The reason you need people in space is that people adapt, improvise and overcome obstacles when things go wrong, and Murphy rides on every mission. Look at Apollo 13. Because there were people on that spacecraft, they were able to complete the minimum mission, getting themselves home alive. Of course if this had it been two robotic vehicles, we could have just said they're only robots and let them fly away like the Voyagers. The point is that people adapt. Look at the Mars Exploration Rovers. They are runni

  • Great for India (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @01:41AM (#47366449) Journal
    They studied hard and ensured they fully understood every aspect of basic satellite lunch systems domestically before moving to the next stage.
    Other nations used military funding, the private sector, other governments and imports to try and boost their own domestic projects.
    So many failed as the cash needed never could make up for what India fully understood from the 1960's: its about not getting ahead of your own domestic science.
    Now India can enjoy lower cost launch systems without needing any other nations help, costly imports or permission.
    "Indian Space Research Organisation"
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      See? This only proves how much we don't need NASA. Daggone big gubmint boondoggles!
      Now we can add NASA to the privatization list by letting GE or Boeing or someone outsource our space program to India!

      (i'm merely impersonating other inviduals around here; i in no way believe we should actually do this)

    • They studied hard and ensured they fully understood every aspect of basic satellite lunch systems domestically before moving to the next stage.

      I can imagine an Indian scientist thinking "Hmmm... what do satellites like to eat for lunch, and what type of system can we build to feed it to them?"

  • Dead bodies into space, at least it'll cut down on the disease in the coliform bacterial wasteland known as the Ganges - where people bathe and drink because they're told it's sacred.
  • I wonder how accurate that figure is, even Russel Peters jokes about how if you want your taxes done "right" you take it to an Indian book keeper.

    • You know Russell Peters is a comedian, right? :-) I'll wait for the meta-episode where Peters makes fun of people who got suckered into believing what he said.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      Are you really making that joke in the land of Enron and a cast of thousands?
  • As launches closer to the equator are given a 'free' boost by the rotation of the earth. There was a doomed project called sea launch from sea platforms which sailed to the equator specifically for this purpose. Though granted Europe has Guyana which is even closer.

    • It really depends what your target inclination is. In general for a non-polar orbit, you want a launch complex with a latitude close to that inclination to minimize plane changes. This is why the ISS is at 51.65 degrees, to make it "easily" accessible from Baikonur. So yes, Sriharikota's proximity to the equator will be beneficial for low-inclination (near-equatorial) launches.

      This particular launch, however, was to a sun-synchronous polar orbit. Your launch complex's latitude is much less important when la

  • the Prime Minister of India noted that the launch was cheaper than Hollywood film Gravity.

    That seems like a wacky comparison to me.

    Ok, but maybe Gravity made more money than their launch?

    Or, maybe they didn't actually do the launch, but just faked it in a film, like those folks who claim that the Apollo landings were fake films made by Stanley Kubrick in Area 51 . . . ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )
      I found it a pretty goofy comparison, too. Gravity, according to imdb, cost an estimated $100 million to make. For that price, you could score a launch on almost any launch vehicle currently in service.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )
        Sounds like a good comparison. One star vehicle launched in a place with an unreliable power grid compared with another.
  • From reading all these comments I see lot of hate against India and Indians. Has /. now becoming like any other politically inclined news / blog.
  • Seriously, this is because they are manipulating the rupee against the $. This has to stop.

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