Why America Needs India's Rockets (bloomberg.com) 112
Since 2005, U.S. satellite manufacturers have been prohibited from hiring India's space agency to launch their equipment. Private American launch companies, such as SpaceX, are quite happy with this arrangement, which was intended to protect them. But the ban is not only wrong in principle -- it's actually impeding an exciting new American industry, according to Bloomberg. From the article: Last month, under pressure from satellite operators and manufacturers, U.S. trade officials began reviewing the decade-old policy. They should heed the pressure and overturn it. Emerging India may seem like an unlikely competitor for Silicon Valley rocket companies. Yet since 1969, the Indian Space Research Organization has consistently punched above its modest weight class, racking up a series of cheap and practical achievements. One of its most important feats was the development of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, which was designed to carry satellites for monitoring agriculture and water resources, among other things. What made the PSLV unique was that it was designed to launch small satellites. And that's a good niche to occupy at the moment. Over the past few years, the small-satellite market has boomed as advances in miniaturization made space accessible to governments and companies that might never have considered it. The uses for such gear seem almost limitless, from shoebox-sized climate-monitoring devices to Samsung's plan to use thousands of micro-satellites to provide global internet access. Some $2.5 billion has been invested in the industry over the past decade. But getting all those satellites into space is now proving to be a problem, and U.S. policy is partly to blame.The article adds that apart from SpaceX, no other U.S. company has offered a rocket for small satellite launches, even though the demand has surged. This in turn, has resulted in American satellite companies with few choices. Though the U.S. Trade Representatives has offered occasional waivers from the moratorium, India continues to offer a far cheaper reliable option, and it's not even being considered.
To offer more context, India's Mars mission has a budget of $73 million -- making it far cheaper than comparable missions including NASA's $671 million Maven satellite. Further reading on Vox.com, "India's mission to Mars cost less than the movie Gravity."
To offer more context, India's Mars mission has a budget of $73 million -- making it far cheaper than comparable missions including NASA's $671 million Maven satellite. Further reading on Vox.com, "India's mission to Mars cost less than the movie Gravity."
First Kwik-E-Mart on Mars... (Score:5, Funny)
Kwik-E-ending. (Score:1)
Re: First Kwik-E-Mart on Mars... (Score:2)
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> STFU u rasist piece of shit u sound like a trump suportor
So? Are you someone with actual standing or is this just a "white man's burden" thing for you?
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Whoa...hey, grow a little thicker skin and have a sense of humor....
So, I take it you're not a fan of The Simpsons [wikipedia.org] ?
They've had beloved Apu there for a couple of decades now...So are you now advocating that we drop that show and any reference to it for political correctness?
Sheesh...get a life.
And..maybe you can learn to spell a little better?
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Foreign satellite launches (Score:1, Informative)
They were banned due to the threat of terrorism.
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Reasonable assumption given how corrupt indian society is.
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What does corruption have to do with terrorism? Hitler was absolutely uncorruptible and Roosevelt took so many bribes that even Hillary would be shy.
Can we india to moon so that the jobs can come bac (Score:1)
Can we india to moon so that the jobs can come back?
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BS (Score:5, Informative)
The Indian Mars mission was tiny, about a quarter of the size and weight of the MAVEN, with about 1/4 of the science payload. Hence, 1/4 the cost. If they tried to build an American-sized scientific satellite, with all the same capabilities, they'd cost as much as we do. Just like the Russians and the Chinese cost about as much as we do. Some things take up size and require power and can't be done with small sats. Incidentally, our small sats cost about as much as theirs do.
More propaganda out of msmash about Indian supremacy. Kudos on not having blatant misspellings this time.
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The Indian Mars mission was tiny, about a quarter of the size and weight of the MAVEN, with about 1/4 of the science payload. Hence, 1/4 the cost.
Sending weight into space is nonlinear, so probably more like 1/10th the cost.
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There is no fixed cost per unit mass. However, most mission designers cost out a spacecraft so that launch costs are 10-20% of the entire mission cost.
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Great points. No arguments here.
However your counter-points are a little beside the point of the article/summary, which is it doesn't make sense to bar US companies from using Indian launches. As you stated, Indian rocket costs are roughly on par with other nations. They have demonstrated numerous times they can successfully complete launches, including to Mars. The US has no problem with using cheaper labor and regulations in other countries for other industries. Also as US and Russia relations get more an
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Perhaps New Zealand could be considered more friendly than India and some business will come down South. Their URL even has "USA" in it to show how US-friendly they are.
They haven't launched a production Electron vehicle yet, but the launch site is built and first try is scheduled for some time in the next few months.
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MOM was 1/10th the cost of MAVEN. It was not a scientific mission (it only carried 4 instruments). It was a proof of concept to show that the Indian Deep Space Network could actually control spacecraft over such a distance. Given that this was the first deep space mission the 73 million cost includes the one time cost of setting up all infrastructure for Deep Space control which in the case of MAVEN was 0 as it was the 7th or 8th MArs mission for NASA and all DSN was already setup. All of Maven's budget cou
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Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)
For the level of GDP/capita India has India produces far more scientists and Engineers than other countries. Thats the punching above their weight I am referring to. As for the poverty its a fact that India does not have significant levels of Oil.
The Richest countries in the world have become rich by industrializing on top of cheap Energy. UK,France,Germany did it with Coal. US,USSR,China did it with Oil . Even today the top 5 oil producers in the world are USA,Russia,China,Saudi,Iran with USA and China still needing to import but the abundance of cheap energy makes it easy to become rich. USA in the 20s was the Saudis of the 80s. People who got off the farm and came to the city because suddenly their was a lot of oil.
Japan realized this trap and went for resource colonization of Korea and China to build up their industrial base. India on the other hand just got independent 70 years back after 200 years of colonization during which the Industrial revolution was forbidden by law. It missed the coal based industrialization and had no oil. India has Coal and could industrialize based on Coal but now the Global Warming laws are holding it back just like the British laws favoring British goods over Indian goods during colonization.
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They got a lot of help from the Americans who needed strong anti USSR allies. Japan is also a very hierarchical and structured society. They literally worked themselves to death for 40 years to get there. The American military dictatorship ruling the country for 15 years after WW2 helped in lot of strong armed central planning and kept the country on a war footing. Basically Japan did not finish fighting WW2 till the 1980s. Also during the 70 years they were a colonial power they did manage to modernize the
Disagree (Score:1)
I suspect that the Indians must have at least some cost advantages. The cost of a very comfortable, middle-class lifestyle there is something like 1/3 that of anywhere in the developed world.
However that isn't my main point. We want the Indian space program available to us because it gives launch customers options. Those options are going to be useful because the list of suppliers of satellite launches is still rather small. Competition and choice will be good for this industry.
Even more so is my concer
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Why act like a hysterical nit wit. The only thing in danger is PROPERTY. PROPERTY can be replaced and insured. You would be just as foolish to do less even if your payload was on a NASA rocket.
Re: Have you seen India's electrical wiring? Toile (Score:1)
I'm not surprised they're cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I'm not surprised they're cheaper (Score:5, Informative)
Lets Disband NASA till we can have Lead free water in Flint, working levees in New Orleans or paid maternity leave for mothers (which India has BTW).
Just because a nation has problems doesn't mean it shouldn't work on other things. A nation is a huge entity and can work on solving multiple problems at multiple levels.
Yes their are parts of India less developed than parts of India. There are also parts of India more developed than parts of US (Delhi vs a coal mining town in Kentucky)
Do you expect all the highly educated kids whose dream is to work on rockets to go clean toilets in villages till everyone has a working toilet? People have dreams and aspirations based upon their capability and education. Ignoring Space science would mean your best and brightest would just go work for NASA (as it is NASA wouldnt survive without the constant import of brainpower from India).
At least India doesnt spend 600 Billion on defense. India's spending on defense is less than its spending on education. Not something you can say for the US.
Its easy to judge when you have an entire almost empty continent full of natural resources to exploit instead of a country where all the easily reachable resources have been exploited in the last 4000 years and almost every part is inhabited (there is lterally no virgin wilderness in India which does slow down development whenever you want to build a road or a dam as someone lives EVERYWHERE)
defense as % of GDP (Score:1)
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India spends only 4% of GDP on defense. It is woefully underarmed for its situation but it has no aims of attacking anyone and the nukes make sure noone will attack India - nukes are a low cost solution to national defense.
The one good thing in India is that India has no Military Industrial Complex. It imports its weapons so there are no Members of Parliament with Defense factories in their constituencies pushing for increasing military spending.
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What is the benefit to Americans from policing the world? America spends billions on a worldwide military presence and a bloated State department. This in turn means that American corporations are not messed with all around the world. The benefit is to the corporations while the price is paid by the taxpayers. Lets take the example of Iraq. American taxpayers paid 2 trillions for a war in debt, taxes and foregone social spending. During the reconstruction corporations like Halliburton and KBB got billions
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India's spending on defense is less than its spending on education. Not something you can say for the US.
You can if you acknowledge that most education expenses are covered at the local level rather than the federal.
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From the same article, America's defense is 19.3%, and 17.1% going to education.
IOW, America spends close to the same % on defense, but we spend a lot more , relative to India, on our educaiton
Next time, please try to be honest and not just a lobbyist for your nation.
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I was quoting %age of GDP and you are quoting %age of federal budget. India's tax burden as a portion of GDP is much lesser than US. Please compare apples to apples.
Race to the Bottom [Re:I'm not surprised they're c (Score:5, Insightful)
The 1% constantly sells the idea, directly or indirectly, that we have to become more like the 3rd world to compete with the 3rd world.
We'd have to relax our environmental, labor, and safety laws to achieve this.
If you bring this up with the 1%, they'll typically reply that our pollution rules are written by "paranoid meddlers using fake science" and that long hours should be a choice an individual can make. During recessions it becomes work-long-hours-or-get-fired, though.
I believe we should try the opposite: tell the 3rd world we'll tariff their products unless they conform to certain standards. If enough countries do this, they will change and modernize. Without pressure, they won't change; it's human nature.
And don't claim they have to be export-driven to grow. There's no Law of Economics that says that; it's merely a copy-cat habit that we help feed by giving in. Unleash consumers, not just factories, and your econ will grow.
Re: Race to the Bottom [Re:I'm not surprised they' (Score:2)
>I believe we should try the opposite: tell the 3rd world we'll tariff their products unless they conform to certain standards. If enough countries do this, they will change and modernize. Without pressure, they won't change; it's human nature.
That was the original point behind creating the WTO, but Kissingerist idiots insistend on letting countries lile Nicaragua and China in.
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It has nothing to do with "underclass" or "environmental laws" just generations of skill and really hard work.
India just ensured its very best students got to work on rockets every year with the needed funding. Thats work, not theory.
Indian Space Research Organisation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The goal was to ensure self-reliance a
Easy, we don't (Score:2)
Next question!
Space is no place... (Score:1)
for a race to the bottom. Trump 2016!
money can be exchanged for goods and services (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan's administration sought to protect nascent private launch companies from subsidized foreign competition by setting up Commercial Space Launch Agreements. The idea was simple: In exchange for the chance to put U.S. satellites into space, foreign governments agreed to launch quotas and set fees. Both China and Russia signed such agreements. In 2005, India was asked to do the same. While the U.S. waited for an answer (it was and continues to be "no"), it imposed an export moratorium on satellites for Indian launch.
So it sounds like it was a trade deal that fell through. Like, the U.S. offered India the same terms as China and Russia, but they weren't interested. If that's indeed the case, well, China and Russia aren't really known for their laid-back attitude toward these things, so if India's requirements are even more stringent then perhaps we shouldn't be in business with them anyway.
Mind you, I don't know anything about the specifics. Can anyone provide more background on this?
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How is this legal under the WTO? The US seems to be violating the WTO rules. It is probably getting away as it has a stranglehold on the banks which run the global economy. This is very similar to how the US is violating WTO rules by having an H1B cap of 65000 a year. When India and US signed the WTO , India agreed to let USA sell its Coca Cola, Caterpillar combines and bunch of other things in India which India was perfectly capable of producing. The quid pro quo was India can sell software services in the
What is "small"? (Score:5, Interesting)
...from shoebox-sized climate-monitoring devices to Samsung's plan to use thousands of micro-satellites to provide global internet access.
Those are both way smaller than the PSLV's LEO payload capacity of 3.8 tons, or even its GTO payload capacity of 1.4 tons. Even a shoebox-sized gold brick (~250 kg) doesn't weight nearly that much.
So, the PSLV has the same fundamental problem for such missions as U.S. commercial launchers: it's too expensive to launch tiny satellites one at a time on a huge rocket, which means they have to be launched in batches. But, satellites launched in batches are all deposited in the same orbital plane. That's problematic because different missions require different orbital planes, and making large plane changes after achieving orbit is very, very expensive - especially in LEO.
So, I'm not sure what problem the author thinks the PSLV solves for people launching micro-satellites [wikipedia.org] - it's actually sized for launching medium or mini satellites.
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It has the capacity to launch in multiple orbits.
There is a big difference between "multiple orbits" and "multiple orbital planes". Any rocket with a restartable upper stage can deposit payloads at multiple orbital altitudes, but it is obvious from its specifications that the PSLV doesn't have enough deltaV to reach many widely separated orbital planes in a single launch (and neither does any other present-day launch system).
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The last pslv launch involved placing satellites into two orbits.
http://m.hindustantimes.com/in... [hindustantimes.com]
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As I said to the AC above, "multiple orbits" is not the same as "multiple orbital planes". The launch you reference did nothing which could not have been done by pretty much any launch system with a restartable engine on the upper stage.
All of the satellites on that launch for which I was able to find orbital parameters have the same inclination (98 degrees). I'm sure they have approximately the same longitude of the ascending node, as well.
It depends on what is more important (Score:1)
Is American ability to independently launch rockets more important or to have cheaper satellites? Because I think SpaceX dies if we use Indian rockets. Just like our chip fabricators.
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The types of hi tech jobs and what state gets them. The political leadership who control the funding, not based on merit. The stop start of budgets and lack of long term projects over generations and decades.
By not keeping skills, having to spend to contract for lost skills, budgets are lost to private sector profit. US metallurgy once the best is
Mostly in their dreams (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFS:
Well, no. The demand for smallsats hasn't actually surged, at least not outside the press release, PowerPoint, and blog industries. (There's been a short term spike, but not a long term surge.) The surge has been in demand for microsats - and in a large part that surge has been powered by the availability of cheap rides as a secondary payload on someone else's flight. That being said, there are a number of US companies working towards smallsat launch capability, but it remains to be seen whether their attempts will pan out.
Who cares. (Score:1)
If America wants India's rockets, America will take them. Just as we will take whatever we need. Under President Hillary Clinton the world will have no choice but to bow to US supremacy! Surrender or be destroyed! CLINTON! CLINTON! CLINTON!
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So the choice is under Clinton we will be surpreme and everyone bows to us OR under Putin Russia will be surpreme and we will bend for Putin.
Re: Who cares. (Score:3)
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Maybe "United States" is unambiguous with context, but it is not universally unambiguous [wikipedia.org].
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If the US is considering using a cut-rate Indian launch service then the rest of the hemisphere can't even contemplate using something more expensive. Nor do they have their own delivery platforms.
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Not really.
"America" is an informal term referring usually to "The United States of America", much like "Ireland" is sometimes substituted for "The Republic Of Ireland" even though Ireland is actually an Island. We also often say "China" instead of "The People's Republic of China".
The "Americas" with an "S" on the end refers to both North and South America. If you wanted to refer to a specific continent you would specify "North" or "South".
So yes, "America" is very formal, and not technically correct, but
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Continents are a very colonial concept. They have no relation to reality. e.g. Europe is considered a continent though its part of the Asian landmass due to cultural reasons while India is considered a sub continent of Asia. Any reason you give for treating Europe as a different continent (different language, culture, separated by the Caucasus) applies to India as well (larger in size than Europe , 800 languages, differnt food and culture and the Himalayas separate it from and the Iranian plateaus separate
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Please do name one reason that applies to Europe but not to India.
And you cant use "Europe is populated by good wholesome Christian folk and India is populated by those people".
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Arguing that a tectonic plate-base
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You do realize that India is on a different tectonic plate than Asia but it is still not considered a continent while Europe is?
As for North and South America they are not 2 plates - California is on a different plate so is the Carribean.
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A very small part of California is its own plate, and the Caribbean isn't part of either continent.
Uninformed fools. (Score:5, Informative)
Whoever wrote this knows nothing about rocketry. India's space program is largely based around UMDH and RFNA powered rockets. While there are definite use cases for hypergolic rocket systems, for example ease/reliablilty of start/restart and long term storage (re: ICBM), they are very expensive compared to RP-1/LOX or NH4/LOX based systems and require larger rockets, both due to lower energy density of the fuel/oxider and extra mass to accommodate the very material incompatible nature of UMDH & RFNA.
India chose the "cheap" route just as China did with their space program. Cheap with respect to the fact they can very easily stand on the shoulders of those that came before without having to spend significant R&D cycles developing reliable and more efficient cryogenic pumping systems like the Russians (gas generator) or US (staged combustion) did.
You got Russia and the US backwards. (Score:5, Interesting)
Um... where the hell did you get the idea that the Russians use gas generators (inefficient) and the US uses staged combustion? That is almost perfectly backward.
Staged combustion was invented by a Russian, Aleksei Mihailovich Isaev [wikipedia.org].
The first staged combustion rocket engine built was the Soviet S1.5400 [wikipedia.org], first flown in 1960.
The (ill-fated) Soviet N1 moon rocket used staged-combustion NK-15 and NK-33 [wikipedia.org] rocket engines (the American Saturn V moon rocket used gas generator rocket engines).
The first western (German, not US) staged combustion engine was in 1963, and it was a laboratory test only.
The Russian Proton rocket family was using the staged combustion RD-253 [wikipedia.org] rocket engine in 1965.
The US buys staged combustion RD-180 [wikipedia.org] engines from Russia for United Launch Alliance's workhorse Atlas rocket family.
As far as I can tell, the first US-built staged combustion rocket to fly was the RS-25, better known as the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine [wikipedia.org]), which first flew in 1981. It was a fuel-rich staged combustion cycle, made possible by the use of non-coking H2 fuel. However, by that point the Russians had been using oxidizer-rich staged combustion (which requires advanced metallurgy that the US could not duplicate for over two decades.
Now, both SpaceX and Blue Origin are US companies working on staged combustion rockets, but those are recent projects. In SpaceX's case, it is a full-flow staged combustion rocket, which is extremely tricky; no FFSC rocket has ever flown, although the Russians built and test-fired the RD-270 [wikipedia.org] in the late 60s. SpaceX's Raptor has successfully fired on a test stand, the first FFSC rocket engine to do so since 1970 and the only US-built one to do so ever. The US (through private contractors Rocketdyne and Aerojet) experimented with FFSC in the "Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator" [wikipedia.org], which wasn't even a full rocket motor; the front-end ("Powerhead") component was tested at full capacity in 2006, but then canceled; no full rocket engine was ever built using that design.
So yeah, the US historically didn't have shit on the Russians when it came to advanced rocket combustion cycles. That may be changing now, but it's driven primarily by private industry.
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Operation Paperclip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The rush to use very advanced German skills altered the existing US production lines and way contracts got offered.
The Germans not only designed and ensured the US finally understood the basics of quality control but also made sure the US got to enjoy big political projects and that huge big gov funding.
Dynamic US capitalism was lost
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India launched their first satellite using indeginously developed cryogenic rockets in september 2016
http://thewire.in/64280/gslv-m... [thewire.in]
America needed it for over 200 years (Score:3)
The Cosgreve rocket -- which is the rocket referred to in the Star Spangled banner was based on the Mysorean rocket. Innovative features included metal casing. Where did the Mysorean rocket design come from? India.
Nope. This is REAL bad Idea. (Score:1)
1) India manipulates their money against the dollar.
2) The stages are from India's missiles. IOW, we would be funding their military.
3) We are not allowed to use military tech to cheaply launch sats here, so, it is not fair to allow other nations to use that tech to lower their costs relative to ours.
4) this is the same BS that China tried on America, which helped undercut our own space program. As such, it should NOT be allowed.
No surprises here (Score:1)
apt comparison (Score:2)
"India's mission to Mars cost less than the movie Gravity."
Sounds like the reader never heard of the movie "The Martian." That movie was $108M to make.
America is importing Racism from India (Score:1)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/