India Successfully Test Fires Its Heaviest Rocket 56
vasanth (908280) writes India on Thursday moved forward in rocket technology with the successful flight testing of its heaviest next generation rocket and the crew module . The 630-tonne three-stage rocket, Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, carried active solid boosters, liquid core stage and a passive cryo stage and a crew module to test its re-entry characteristics. This rocket is capable of doubling the capacity of payloads India can carry into space and it can deposit up to four tonne class of communication satellites into space. India also plans to use this rocket for ferrying Indian astronauts into space. For India, ISRO (the Indian space agency) perfecting the cryogenic engine technology is crucial as India can save precious foreign exchange by launching heavy duty communication satellites by itself.
$25 Million? (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA says the firing cost $25 Million.
NASA don't get out of bed for $25 Million.
Re:$25 Million? (Score:5, Insightful)
The demise of the Apollo program was probably the worst thing that ever happened to American space technology. We are just now regaining knowledge and capability we had in the 70s.
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But now...we in the US can just go pick up new rockets at the Kwik-E-Mart (albeit at slightly elevated prices).
Thank you....Come again!!
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The demise of the Apollo program was the inevitable outcome of trying to sustain sending up a skyscraper of advanced technology and getting a small walk in closet and a few astronauts back. Unfortunately it seems its a lesson we're going to have to learn again with SLS as its basically the same system using our current technology. You have to have some level of reusability, I'm not saying that we're going to be able to get space travel near an airline like model anytime soon but we have more than enough t
Re:$25 Million? (Score:4, Insightful)
if they can really put this thing in orbit for $25M that would be one heck of a good deal. Wikipedia says the payload is 10,000kg to LEO, which would make it half the cost of a Falcon 9 with about 3/4ths of the payload. And even if this is understated, it still looks to be a pretty good $/kg rate.
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Careful throwing numbers around. We have absolutely no idea how accurate that figure is. Could well be 'Bollywood Accounting', could be something made up by a bureaucrat flunky. Could even be real.
It does presage an era where there are potentially a large number of groups, both government and private, with the capability of launching commercially and strategically significant payloads into LEO or geosynchronous orbit.
(Raises pinky.)
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"We have absolutely no idea how accurate that figure is."
Haha, kind of like how NASA threw out that "$500 Million" per launch number for SLS. I think even the best case scenarios put the program cost at over $40 Billion just to get the first 4 or so vehicles off the ground.
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"We have absolutely no idea how accurate that figure is."
Haha, kind of like how NASA threw out that "$500 Million" per launch number for SLS. I think even the best case scenarios put the program cost at over $40 Billion just to get the first 4 or so vehicles off the ground.
And considering that they only have 25 SSMEs, the SLS won't see much more than those 4 flights anyway.
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What does Indian Space tech have to do with Bollywood? You just want to sound derisive about India. Why don't you thrown in some irrelevant xenophobic rant about H1B's taking your jaabs, while you are at it?
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I assume he was making a joke about "hollywood accounting" where people cook the books to make movies look like they do not make a profit, in order to cheat actors dumb enough to get paid out of the profits.
Certainly all government contracts in the US have the same kind of funny accounting going on. I had been thinking of SpaceX, who is quite up front about the real costs of their flights. But India might very well be like SLS in that there is no way to tell how many untold billions are blown on the thing.
Re:$25 Million? (Score:5, Insightful)
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FWIW, I got the reference.
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So you expect all those engineers and scientists to go out of work because you feel that a country shouldn't do anything at all until all its ills are dealt with?
nirvana fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
And India is showing you why : they make a lot of progress, and in fact if their rocket is good enough (not many failure) they might get a good size of the satellite launching market, thus bringing in money and being able to concentrate on their other problem better, more so than as if they had instead investing that money in just food or basic sanitation.
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I think you missed the point of the rocket launch - it was not to impress you.
Whether you are impressed, unimpressed, love India or loathe India.. we dont care a damn. The G7 dont interact with the developing countries unless there is a huge monetary payoff and that is the only reason you are nice to India.. our market.
Remember - China's corrupt, polluted, no freedom of speech and lacks human rights... and yet, most things in your house are probably Chinese made .. including the defective condoms your dad u
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Re:Now if India would just invest in its own peopl (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a job for every indian.
Not for 'the government' or 'the space agency'.
As long as a two year old toddler can sit on the middle of a road crossing, with cars navigating around it, and no one picks it up, and calls 'authorities' or tries to find the mother, there is something seriously wrong in the attitude to live, other people, children etc. Nothing a 'government' can fix over night.
Same for a dead man lying on a road, all the passing people and car drivers consider him sleeping. Even if he is, what
How does it compare to Canada's rocket launch? (Score:2, Funny)
Here's a video [youtube.com] of Canada's most successful rocket launch.
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Slightly more successful than this. [youtube.com]
Outsourcing to India (Score:1)
First IT department and now space cargo.
Weird design (Score:5, Interesting)
Those boosters aren't boosters, they're a side-mounted first stage, because the first liquid engine isn't even ignited until shortly before the boosters separate.
The first stage, then, is a pair of pretty standard solid rockets. A bit under half the thrust of a Shuttle booster, and about a third the mass.
The second stage is a pair of hypergolic liquid rockets, using UDMH and N2O4. Normally that's a sign of military heritage - hypergolic fuels are common in ICBM designs because they're storable at room temperature, and guarantee that the missile will at least launch. Purely civilian designs rarely use such fuels, because they're dangerous as hell, RP-1+LOX is cheaper, and you would generally prefer an aborted launch to an explosion. But in this case it actually makes sense - if you were on the ground and RP-1+LOX failed to ignite, you just try again tomorrow, but if you're already in the air, you're screwed if it doesn't ignite. It also gets about the same efficiency as RP1+LOX.
The third stage is supposed to be LH2+LOX, but was not used on this test flight. Perfectly reasonable for an upper stage, where the low thrust is less important than the high efficiency.
Overall, a bit different design than most rockets, but not in a bad way.
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Normally that's a sign of military heritage - hypergolic fuels are common in ICBM designs because they're storable at room temperature, and guarantee that the missile will at least launch. Purely civilian designs rarely use such fuels, because they're dangerous as hell
Well, in this case, it's because of Ariane (1-4). The engine is a rip-off of Viking.
Sour grapes anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, in this case, it's because of Ariane (1-4). The engine is a rip-off of Viking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... [wikipedia.org]
After World War II, the United States experimented with captured German V-2 rockets as part of the Hermes project. Based on these experiments the U.S. decided in 1946 to develop its own large liquid-fueled rocket design, to be called Neptune but changed to Viking. The intent was both to provide an independent U.S. capability in rocketry, to continue the Hermes project after the V-2's were expended
So, US rockets are just a ripoff of Germans. And Germans just ripped off the Russians. Oh wait, maybe it was the Chinese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
You know what? If all you can say that someone's achievement was nothing but a ripoff of your past technology, maybe it's just sour grapes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves.
Oh, it's 2000 years old and quoted just so you don't try to say it was a ripoff from some more modern tale. 2000 years old and still applies.
PS. Congr
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_(rocket)
What are you prattling about? I was clearly talking of the Viking engine [b14643.de]. The similarly-named rocket has nothing to do with that.
So, US rockets are just a ripoff of Germans. And Germans just ripped off the Russians.
No, they're not. There's nothing in German rockets that was copied in either American or Russian designs, post-1950. Whereas the Indian engine in question is pretty much identical to Ariane's engine. Furthermore, the reason I've mentioned it is because it explains how hypergolics got into the core stage (not for military reasons). I'm sorry that your reading comprehension sucks s
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Very much incomparable. There was a lot of knowledge transfer from the German engineers, but mostly in the theoretical area, whereas Vikas is a case of virtually identical flight hardware. That wasn't the case in the US beyond some initial experiments with V-2s; all the US hardware had to be developed from the first principles. For example, the German regenerative cooling on V-2 sucked, so it couldn't be used, and even after that problem was solved, nobody in the world - not even Germans - really knew how t
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You used the word 'ripoff', and AC used that to try to pull us into his worldview. We didn't invent shit; we ripoff the world, so on and so forth...
Yeah, we took everything the Germans had, including rockets, after beating them in the war. Germans are pretty smart btw, so after that man had whipped them into a frenzy, they had the best rockets by far.
Which they got from Robert Goddard, an American. Of British descent though. So, who gets the credit?
AC misses the point of America. Everything we have is 'ripp
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You used the word 'ripoff'
I did, because it's an accurate description of Vikas. The US equivalent of Indians adopting Vikas would be the US flying to the Moon with the V-2 engine - which obviously didn't happen. The Indian equivalent of replicating the US post-war engine development would be Indians letting French guys immigrate and develop a much improved new engine on Indian salary - which didn't happen either. That's why I considered the topic digression to post-war US completely inconsequential. Their new CE-20 engine is fully d
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Avesome (Score:2)
Awesome missile for sending one of India's Hydrogen bombs to any city on the planet.
Avesome (Score:1)
When you want to send up nukes you don't build something nearly this big, immobile & easy of a target. It would take something like a delivery of a Tsar Bomba to need something this big for nuclear bomb purposes.
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What about a platform for releasing steerable tungsten rods, able to impact in minutes within 1m of any target over 70% of the Earth's surface? The kinetic energy of a small nuke, with no pesky fallout. (Unless you hit a nuke plant.)
Well, I'm just sayin', that's more useful than a Tsar Bomba.
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Off topic (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Off topic (Score:5, Insightful)