ISRO to test multiple burn fuel stage/engine on December 16

[HariPrasad]

ISRO to test multiple burn fuel stage/engine on December 16
Published December 16, 2015
SOURCE : IANS

The Indian space agency on Wednesday will be testing its ability to restart the fourth-stage engine of its rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on shutting it down after putting into orbit six Singaporean satellites.
Technically speaking, India will be testing its multiple burn fuel stage/rocket engine for the first time.

“The restart and shut off of the fourth stage engine is done as a first step towards launching multiple satellites but in different orbits,” a senior official of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), speaking on the condition of anonymity, told IANS.

Launching of multiple satellites with a single rocket is nothing new for ISRO and it has been doing that for several years. The challenge is however to launch several satellites at different orbits with one rocket and this is what ISRO will be testing out after PSLV ejects out six Singaporean satellites on Wednesday.

The PSLV rocket is a four stage/engine rocket powered by solid and liquid fuel alternatively.

“Restarting a rocket engine soon after it is shut off is a critical technology that has to be mastered. Once a rocket engine is activated, then the heat generated is very high. The trick is to cool it down in the space and to restart it at a short gap,” an industry expert told IANS.

“This is entirely different from switching on and off the communication satellite’s engines in the space. The interval between two restarts of a communication satellite engine will be in days. But in the case of restarting a rocket engine, the time gap will be in hours,” the expert added.

“By that time the rocket’s engine has to be cooled down. This part of the experiment is very critical,” he explained.

On Wednesday, ISRO’s PSLV rocket will blast off from the first launch pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, around 80 km from here, with the six Singaporean satellites. All the satellites will be put into orbit around 21 minutes into the flight at an altitude of 550 km.

After that the rocket’s fourth stage will be shut down.

“It will be coasting after that,” an ISRO official told IANS.

Around 46 minutes after the launch of the sixth satellite, the fourth stage will be restarted when it is in a lower altitude of 523.9 km.

The engine will be in operational for four seconds and would go up to an altitude of 524 km before the stage is cut-off.

Meanwhile ISRO officials told the countdown for the December 16 evening launch of PSLV rocket is progressing smoothly.

On December 16, ISRO will be flying the ‘core alone’ variant of the PSLV rocket. The rocket will not have the strap on boosters, its standard feature

The successful launch of the six Singaporean satellites will take ISRO’s total flights of foreign satellites to 57.

Out of the six satellites, the 400 kg earth observation satellite called TeLEOS-1 is the main passenger for the PSLV rocket and hence the mission is called TeLEOS mission by ISRO.

TeLEOS-1 is Singapore’s first commercial earth observation satellite designed and developed by ST Electronics.

The other five co-passenger satellites are VELOX-C1 (123 kg), VELOX-II (13 kg), Kent Ridge-1 (78 kg), Galassia (3.4 kg) and Athenoxat-1.

The December 16 mission will be the last rocket launch mission for ISRO in 2015.

So far in 2015, ISRO has launched 14 satellites (three Indian and 11 foreign) from its rocket port in Sriharikota. Thirteen satellites were launched with PSLV rocket and one communication satellite – GSAT-6-with geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV).

Last month India also launched its communication satellite GSAT-15 using the Ariane rocket of the European space agency which takes the total number of satellite launches in 2015 to 21 (17 foreign, four Indian).

 

[jamahir]

when will 53-year-old isro stop being a glorified satellite maker and launch and equal or surpass this...

The reusable space rocket is nearly here with Blue Origin’s first successful landing | The Verge

or this...

SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station | NASA

or this...

NASA orders first crewed mission from SpaceX to the International Space Station | The Verge

 

[Indika]

when will 53-year-old isro stop being a glorified satellite maker and launch and equal or surpass this...

The reusable space rocket is nearly here with Blue Origin’s first successful landing | The Verge

or this...

SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station | NASA

or this...

NASA orders first crewed mission from SpaceX to the International Space Station | The Verge

yeah dump some 30 billion dollars then india can build whatever it wants. For billion dollars this is all you get.

 

[Kal Muah]

when will 53-year-old isro stop being a glorified satellite maker and launch and equal or surpass this...

The reusable space rocket is nearly here with Blue Origin’s first successful landing | The Verge

or this...

SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station | NASA

or this...

NASA orders first crewed mission from SpaceX to the International Space Station | The Verge

Sir, is their any reason we should follow others always? Let ISRO do what is working for them. Their is no need to fix something which is not broken.

 

[Vyom]

when will 53-year-old isro stop being a glorified satellite maker and launch and equal or surpass this...

The reusable space rocket is nearly here with Blue Origin’s first successful landing | The Verge

or this...

SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station | NASA

or this...

NASA orders first crewed mission from SpaceX to the International Space Station | The Verge

The Day we do something like Operation paper clip and billions of $ in funding like an average of $15.818 billion per year over a fifty-year period.

 

[AyanRay]

when will 53-year-old isro stop being a glorified satellite maker and launch and equal or surpass this...

The reusable space rocket is nearly here with Blue Origin’s first successful landing | The Verge

or this...

SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station | NASA

or this...

NASA orders first crewed mission from SpaceX to the International Space Station | The Verge

But but... All those examples are from a capitalist country!!!! How can India follow examples set by a capitalist country that too the USA.

 

[Skull and Bones]

when will 53-year-old isro stop being a glorified satellite maker and launch and equal or surpass this...

The reusable space rocket is nearly here with Blue Origin’s first successful landing | The Verge

May be that is why US private entities are contracting with ISRO for satellite launch.

The only real development in space launch system is Skylon, every other random launch system is a derivative of one another.

 

[jamahir]

yeah dump some 30 billion dollars then india can build whatever it wants. For billion dollars this is all you get.

you are incorrect to quote 30 billion dollars in context of spacex and "blue origin" and it is a very wrong perception in india that just throwing huge money and thousands of college degrees will bring technological achievements and social development... the difference between isro and spacex/blue-origin is simply the degree of capability.

1. "blue origin", established in year 2000, has only 350 employees and as for investment[1]...

As of July 2014, Bezos had invested over $500 million of his money into Blue Origin.[13]

and this cost not only developed the recently tested reusable rocket but also the six-astronaut capsule.

for more[2].

2. spacex, established in year 2002, has presently employees... the launch cost of the spacex falcon v1.1 rocket is 61 million dollars ( the lowest in the commercial launcher market ) and for developing its predecessor, the very successful falcon 9, the cost has been[3]...

A NASA analysis shows that it cost significantly less for SpaceX to develop the Falcon 9 using the COTS private-partnership approach than it would have under NASA’s traditional approach to contracting.

Under methodology #1, the cost model predicted that the Falcon 9 would cost $4.0 billion based on a traditional approach. Under methodology #2, NAFCOM predicted $1.7 billion when the inputs were adjusted to a more commercial development approach. Thus, the predicted the cost to develop the Falcon 9 if done by NASA would have been between $1.7 billion and $4.0 billion.

SpaceX has publicly indicated that the development cost for Falcon 9 launch vehicle was approximately $300 million. Additionally, approximately $90 million was spent developing the Falcon 1 launch vehicle which did contribute to some extent to the Falcon 9, for a total of $390 million. NASA has verified these costs.
​

as for the dragon space capsule, the current version called dragon v2 is derived from the original dragon development which began in 2004, only two years after spacex's establishment ( compare with isro ) and as for funding of its development[4]...

Likewise, SpaceX developed the Dragon spacecraft - a free-flying, reusable spacecraft - from a clean sheet of paper to the first demonstration flight in just over four years for about $300 million.

continual development of the dragon raised the cost but not greatly[5]...

Development funding

In 2014, SpaceX released the total combined development costs for both the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon capsule. NASA provided US$396 million while SpaceX provided over US$450 million to fund both development efforts.[91]

the dragon v2 would have of course incurred some extra development costs because it has a powered descent system and some improvements, and the costs are[6]...

Considering the billions already spent on Orion and what is projected to be spent in the future (an estimated total of $16.5 billion) versus the small fraction of that amount ($2.6 billion in the latest NASA commercial crew contract) space by NASA for Dragon v2, the capabilities of the latter are much more impressive.

though certainly, like any space agency, spacex too ( as would be "blue origin" ) benefited from previous developments by others[6] but much of their development has been in-house...

SpaceX designed the Dragon’s thermal protection system (TPS) to perform far beyond what it needs for orbital reentry. Instead, its heat shield is made to withstand the extreme high heat and stresses associated with an atmospheric reentry from a direct return to Earth from Mars. To accomplish this feat it relies on a modern heat shield substance called PICA that was developed by NASA and improved upon by SpaceX.

3. isro, established in year 1962, has 15809 employees assigned into 17 departments[7] and its budget only for 2015-2016 is 1.2 billion dollars[8] which means that isro has been given huge amounts of government money for 53 years, at least 15 billion dollars, and this is unlike jeff bezos who put his own relatively very less money into "blue origin" or elon musk who put just 100 million of his own money into starting spacex and this was out of the 180 million dollars he received as his cut from the sale of paypal to ebay.

Sir, is their any reason we should follow others always? Let ISRO do what is working for them. Their is no need to fix something which is not broken.

i agree to your first statement that one should generally find a independent path and that is what spacex and "blue origin" have done... sadly, isro is not a space agency that be credited with the words "creative" and "ambitious", which is why it remains a glorified satellite maker and launcher while the two smaller and private companies mentioned above have achieved human-crew capabilities within 12 years and 15 years of establishment respectively.

a little example of spacex's deviation from traditional approach[5]...

As a condition of the NASA CRS contract, SpaceX analyzed the orbital radiation environment on all Dragon systems, and how the spacecraft would respond to spurious radiation events. That analysis and the Dragon design – which uses an overall fault-tolerant triple-redundant computer architecture, rather than individual radiation hardening of each computer processor – was reviewed by independent experts before being approved by NASA for the cargo flights

Radiation tolerance
Dragon uses a "radiation-tolerant" design in the electronic hardware and software that make up its flight computers. The system uses three pairs of computers, each constantly checking on the others, to instantiate a fault-tolerant design. In the event of a radiation upset or soft error, one of the computer pairs will perform a soft reboot.[45] Including the six computers that make up the main flight computers, Dragon employs a total of 18 triple-processor computers.

isro can keep launching satellites but a call must be given out to private individuals/groups willing to create a private space agency that will find or adopt innovative ways of achieving a human space program which works on a pan-south-asia basis.

isro has benefited so much from developments by others in the world but remained a boring and useless agency that followed obsolete text book approach even when many such approaches were discarded by others... the few things it said it is innovating, example the reusable launcher, have not moved beyond cad/cam drawings in years... it is one thing to claim its mars mission was developed at a cost less than the hollywood film "gravity", it's another thing to actually see that this particular mission compares nothing to nasa's "curiosity" mission which landed a 900 kg rover of that name on mars two years earlier ( 2011 ) and it's yet another thing to know that two private american space agencies have achieved human space launch and tourism capabilities at lot lot lesser cost than isro.

the failure of isro is really because of the anti-innovation anti-ambition environment in india... just some months ago, n.r. narayanamurthy said that india hasn't contributed technologically to humanity in 68 years[9].

The Day we do something like Operation paper clip and billions of $ in funding like an average of $15.818 billion per year over a fifty-year period.

that cannot be used to excuse away the incapability of isro... as i showed above, money wasn't a problem for isro compared to spacex and "blue origin"... as for building of knowledge, isro has benefited from nasa, esa and ussr/russia for five decades.

what about the "35 percent indian scientists at nasa" without whom nasa would collapse??

can't they, if they exist at all, reshape isro into something respectable??

----

[1] Blue Origin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Blue Origin | Our Approach to Technology

[3] NASA Analysis: Falcon 9 Much Cheaper Than Traditional Approach at Parabolic Arc

[4] Statement: Elon Musk, SpaceX: NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program: Accomplishments & Challenges

[5] Dragon (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] The Space Review: The future and the past: comparing Dragon and Orion

[7] http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/article-files/right-to-information/HumanResources.pdf

[8] India Allocates $1.2 Billion for ISRO Space Activities

[9] no invention from India in 60 years: n. r. narayana murthy

 

[punit]

when will 53-year-old isro stop being a glorified satellite maker and launch and equal or surpass this...

The reusable space rocket is nearly here with Blue Origin’s first successful landing | The Verge

or this...

SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station | NASA

or this...

NASA orders first crewed mission from SpaceX to the International Space Station | The Verge

dont worry collaboration with Libya is on the cards !

 

[jamahir]

But but... All those examples are from a capitalist country!!!! How can India follow examples set by a capitalist country that too the USA.

spacex and elon musk are socialistic in approach, and "blue origin" is the personal vision of jeff bezos not comparable to citibank or general motors.

May be that is why US private entities are contracting with ISRO for satellite launch.

yes, satellites - small-to-medium-weight satellites actually, and not people.

The only real development in space launch system is Skylon, every other random launch system is a derivative of one another.

sure, skylon[1] ( a aeroplane-like orbital reusable spacecraft ) is innovative in engine technology, respectable for its aim ( ssto - single stage to orbit ), respectable for its reusibility capability ( 200 times before breakdown?? )[2], respectable for the potential large human crew/passenger capacity of 24 to 30, respectable for luggage capacity of 15 tons to 17 tons to "low earth orbit", respectable for the resulting innovations in overall design, but the engine is not even built fully and the company says the first operational flight will only be in 2030 !!

by which time, there could be radical innovation in propulsion technology... i don't know if that "emdrive" concept actually works.

dont worry collaboration with Libya is on the cards !

what a mature response.

---

[1] Skylon (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Skylon Spaceplane: The Spacecraft of Tomorrow | Private Spacefiight

 

[Vyom]

you are incorrect to quote 30 billion dollars in context of spacex and "blue origin" and it is a very wrong perception in india that just throwing huge money and thousands of college degrees will bring technological achievements and social development... the difference between isro and spacex/blue-origin is simply the degree of capability.

1. "blue origin", established in year 2000, has only 350 employees and as for investment[1]...

and this cost not only developed the recently tested reusable rocket but also the six-astronaut capsule.

for more[2].

2. spacex, established in year 2002, has presently employees... the launch cost of the spacex falcon v1.1 rocket is 61 million dollars ( the lowest in the commercial launcher market ) and for developing its predecessor, the very successful falcon 9, the cost has been[3]...



as for the dragon space capsule, the current version called dragon v2 is derived from the original dragon development which began in 2004, only two years after spacex's establishment ( compare with isro ) and as for funding of its development[4]...



continual development of the dragon raised the cost but not greatly[5]...



the dragon v2 would have of course incurred some extra development costs because it has a powered descent system and some improvements, and the costs are[6]...



though certainly, like any space agency, spacex too ( as would be "blue origin" ) benefited from previous developments by others[6] but much of their development has been in-house...



3. isro, established in year 1962, has 15809 employees assigned into 17 departments[7] and its budget only for 2015-2016 is 1.2 billion dollars[8] which means that isro has been given huge amounts of government money for 53 years, at least 15 billion dollars, and this is unlike jeff bezos who put his own relatively very less money into "blue origin" or elon musk who put just 100 million of his own money into starting spacex and this was out of the 180 million dollars he received as his cut from the sale of paypal to ebay.



i agree to your first statement that one should generally find a independent path and that is what spacex and "blue origin" have done... sadly, isro is not a space agency that be credited with the words "creative" and "ambitious", which is why it remains a glorified satellite maker and launcher while the two smaller and private companies mentioned above have achieved human-crew capabilities within 12 years and 15 years of establishment respectively.

a little example of spacex's deviation from traditional approach[5]...




isro can keep launching satellites but a call must be given out to private individuals/groups willing to create a private space agency that will find or adopt innovative ways of achieving a human space program which works on a pan-south-asia basis.

isro has benefited so much from developments by others in the world but remained a boring and useless agency that followed obsolete text book approach even when many such approaches were discarded by others... the few things it said it is innovating, example the reusable launcher, have not moved beyond cad/cam drawings in years... it is one thing to claim its mars mission was developed at a cost less than the hollywood film "gravity", it's another thing to actually see that this particular mission compares nothing to nasa's "curiosity" mission which landed a 900 kg rover of that name on mars two years earlier ( 2011 ) and it's yet another thing to know that two private american space agencies have achieved human space launch and tourism capabilities at lot lot lesser cost than isro.

the failure of isro is really because of the anti-innovation anti-ambition environment in india... just some months ago, n.r. narayanamurthy said that india hasn't contributed technologically to humanity in 68 years[9].



that cannot be used to excuse away the incapability of isro... as i showed above, money wasn't a problem for isro compared to spacex and "blue origin"... as for building of knowledge, isro has benefited from nasa, esa and ussr/russia for five decades.

what about the "35 percent indian scientists at nasa" without whom nasa would collapse??

can't they, if they exist at all, reshape isro into something respectable??

----

[1] Blue Origin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Blue Origin | Our Approach to Technology

[3] NASA Analysis: Falcon 9 Much Cheaper Than Traditional Approach at Parabolic Arc

[4] Statement: Elon Musk, SpaceX: NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program: Accomplishments & Challenges

[5] Dragon (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] The Space Review: The future and the past: comparing Dragon and Orion

[7] http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/article-files/right-to-information/HumanResources.pdf

[8] India Allocates $1.2 Billion for ISRO Space Activities

[9] no invention from India in 60 years: n. r. narayana murthy

And US's industrial and R&D environment has nothing to do with it ? at one time USA was investing as much as 4.4% of the federal budget in NASA. They have built a whole industry capable of churning out any design that they made. The budget that ISRO has is peanuts compared to NASA and the entire ecosystem of Areospace Engineers it has churned out.

not even the MIghty USSR could build anything comparable to Saturn V that was capable to put man on the moon. Blue origins is a company. that has leveraged an industrial ecosystem that was painstakingly built over 5 decades. Not to make the huge Millitary industrial complex whose technology was also utilized, do we have that industrial capacity? NO.

Forget Rockets look at even Car manufactures can Mahindra, Tata, can make the Semis trucks or Jeep SUVs here. NO.

As you have shown above is only a comparison of Apples and oranges and have completely ignored the historical building of ecosystem. Blue Origins developed everything from scratch after forming in 2000 ? Indian space program has benefited from wetsern programs.. how ? Did we get the Engine Technology from them ? the launch facilities ? Their manufacturing ? deep space network ?

Importantly our entire R&D spend is not even remotely close that of US. and if you look at this in just Isolation of its space programs, then you sir are Genius. I am a mere mortal.

 

[Skull and Bones]

sure, skylon[1] ( a aeroplane-like orbital reusable spacecraft ) is innovative in engine technology, respectable for its aim ( ssto - single stage to orbit ), respectable for the potential large human crew/passenger capacity of 24 to 30, respectable for luggage capacity of 15 tons to 17 tons to "low earth orbit", respectable for the resulting innovations in overall design, but the engine is not even built fully and the company says the first operational flight will only be in 2030 !!

by which time, there could be radical innovation in propulsion technology... i don't know if that "emdrive" concept actually works.

First, the scheduled first flight should come around early 20s if there is considerable global interest, the company which developed this radical engine for taking oxygen from the air, and liquefying it for combustion, just won a big contract for couple of 10s of millions for 5-6 such engines. Maybe the prototyping process already started.

And I won't hurry with human missions until we develop a very reliable delivery method, and some motives to achieve in space. India is too poor of a country to indulge in space tourism at this point of time.

 

[zebra7]

you are incorrect to quote 30 billion dollars in context of spacex and "blue origin" and it is a very wrong perception in india that just throwing huge money and thousands of college degrees will bring technological achievements and social development... the difference between isro and spacex/blue-origin is simply the degree of capability.

1. "blue origin", established in year 2000, has only 350 employees and as for investment[1]...

and this cost not only developed the recently tested reusable rocket but also the six-astronaut capsule.

for more[2].

2. spacex, established in year 2002, has presently employees... the launch cost of the spacex falcon v1.1 rocket is 61 million dollars ( the lowest in the commercial launcher market ) and for developing its predecessor, the very successful falcon 9, the cost has been[3]...



as for the dragon space capsule, the current version called dragon v2 is derived from the original dragon development which began in 2004, only two years after spacex's establishment ( compare with isro ) and as for funding of its development[4]...



continual development of the dragon raised the cost but not greatly[5]...



the dragon v2 would have of course incurred some extra development costs because it has a powered descent system and some improvements, and the costs are[6]...



though certainly, like any space agency, spacex too ( as would be "blue origin" ) benefited from previous developments by others[6] but much of their development has been in-house...



3. isro, established in year 1962, has 15809 employees assigned into 17 departments[7] and its budget only for 2015-2016 is 1.2 billion dollars[8] which means that isro has been given huge amounts of government money for 53 years, at least 15 billion dollars, and this is unlike jeff bezos who put his own relatively very less money into "blue origin" or elon musk who put just 100 million of his own money into starting spacex and this was out of the 180 million dollars he received as his cut from the sale of paypal to ebay.



i agree to your first statement that one should generally find a independent path and that is what spacex and "blue origin" have done... sadly, isro is not a space agency that be credited with the words "creative" and "ambitious", which is why it remains a glorified satellite maker and launcher while the two smaller and private companies mentioned above have achieved human-crew capabilities within 12 years and 15 years of establishment respectively.

a little example of spacex's deviation from traditional approach[5]...




isro can keep launching satellites but a call must be given out to private individuals/groups willing to create a private space agency that will find or adopt innovative ways of achieving a human space program which works on a pan-south-asia basis.

isro has benefited so much from developments by others in the world but remained a boring and useless agency that followed obsolete text book approach even when many such approaches were discarded by others... the few things it said it is innovating, example the reusable launcher, have not moved beyond cad/cam drawings in years... it is one thing to claim its mars mission was developed at a cost less than the hollywood film "gravity", it's another thing to actually see that this particular mission compares nothing to nasa's "curiosity" mission which landed a 900 kg rover of that name on mars two years earlier ( 2011 ) and it's yet another thing to know that two private american space agencies have achieved human space launch and tourism capabilities at lot lot lesser cost than isro.

the failure of isro is really because of the anti-innovation anti-ambition environment in india... just some months ago, n.r. narayanamurthy said that india hasn't contributed technologically to humanity in 68 years[9].



that cannot be used to excuse away the incapability of isro... as i showed above, money wasn't a problem for isro compared to spacex and "blue origin"... as for building of knowledge, isro has benefited from nasa, esa and ussr/russia for five decades.

what about the "35 percent indian scientists at nasa" without whom nasa would collapse??

can't they, if they exist at all, reshape isro into something respectable??

----

[1] Blue Origin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Blue Origin | Our Approach to Technology

[3] NASA Analysis: Falcon 9 Much Cheaper Than Traditional Approach at Parabolic Arc

[4] Statement: Elon Musk, SpaceX: NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program: Accomplishments & Challenges

[5] Dragon (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] The Space Review: The future and the past: comparing Dragon and Orion

[7] http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/article-files/right-to-information/HumanResources.pdf

[8] India Allocates $1.2 Billion for ISRO Space Activities

[9] no invention from India in 60 years: n. r. narayana murthy

Mr. Cat Lover only Two questions

1. What is your Intention ?

2. Can you repeat the question Pls ?

 

[Kal Muah]

i agree to your first statement that one should generally find a independent path and that is what spacex and "blue origin" have done... sadly, isro is not a space agency that be credited with the words "creative" and "ambitious", which is why it remains a glorified satellite maker and launcher while the two smaller and private companies mentioned above have achieved human-crew capabilities within 12 years and 15 years of establishment respectively.

a little example of spacex's deviation from traditional approach[5]...




isro can keep launching satellites but a call must be given out to private individuals/groups willing to create a private space agency that will find or adopt innovative ways of achieving a human space program which works on a pan-south-asia basis.

isro has benefited so much from developments by others in the world but remained a boring and useless agency that followed obsolete text book approach even when many such approaches were discarded by others... the few things it said it is innovating, example the reusable launcher, have not moved beyond cad/cam drawings in years... it is one thing to claim its mars mission was developed at a cost less than the hollywood film "gravity", it's another thing to actually see that this particular mission compares nothing to nasa's "curiosity" mission which landed a 900 kg rover of that name on mars two years earlier ( 2011 ) and it's yet another thing to know that two private american space agencies have achieved human space launch and tourism capabilities at lot lot lesser cost than isro.

the failure of isro is really because of the anti-innovation anti-ambition environment in india... just some months ago, n.r. narayanamurthy said that india hasn't contributed technologically to humanity in 68 years[9].



that cannot be used to excuse away the incapability of isro... as i showed above, money wasn't a problem for isro compared to spacex and "blue origin"... as for building of knowledge, isro has benefited from nasa, esa and ussr/russia for five decades.

what about the "35 percent indian scientists at nasa" without whom nasa would collapse??

can't they, if they exist at all, reshape isro into something respectable??

----

Sir, having a personal connection with ISRO i chose to take your comment as an insult to this organisation. Allow me to explain:

1. **Budget** : Money has been the primary factor for all the technologies that has been invented. You may argue with me that money never comes first before creativity, well i partially agree with that. Being a failed startup founder let me tell you NO HARDWARE inventions is even possible without a huge budget allocation, and having a limited budget with creativity makes the work even more harder. A prime example of this is DRDO. When you force people with limited budget, to develop something totally new, you are only inviting self-destruction. Regarding your comparison of ISRO and SpaceX, well SpaceX is valued around 12$ billion, with funding from both NASA and GOOGLE, now look it up for ISRO.

2. **Model** : Due to limited funding from government, ISRO like SpaceX is dependent on launching sats for foreign countries, infact making it cheaper than other few aerospaces. That is the only model for ISRO to gain money from private companies other than government.

3. **Competition** : As you have stated why ISRO haven’t allowed other players to come into this sector and invest in new programs, Sir, Make In India is already there for space sector, if private investors are not getting into this, its not the fault of ISRO.

4. **Policy** : First of all, India does not have an integrated national space policy yet. It has a SatCom policy and a Remote Sensing data use policy document (both 2-pages), which haven't been updated for more than a decade and a half now. ISRO has in past tried to invite a consortium approach from the Indian industry to outsource the PSLV operations, but the companies were not ready to bear the huge risks involved in the satellite launching business. As far as the satellite making business goes, no private company in India is into it because there is no market for them. Apart from ISRO, there would be no other customer, and due to India's policy on export of items that have dual-use utilities like most satellite payloads, these companies won't be able to access the market abroad too. So it does not make sense for anyone to get into the business as of now.

5. **Foreign Brain** : A huge part of the success of SpaceX goes to USA’s immigration policy. Elon Musk himself is a South African, he knew he wouldn’t have got this success, had it not been america. Was he not creative in SA? Then why didn’t he create SpaceX in SA instead of US? Because having idea is one thing and working on it is a whole different thing. A huge workforce of both SpaceX and Nasa comes from different countries. ISRO lag this benefit of selecting the best skilled people from all over the countries.

Sir, i could go on and on and on, but that’s not the point. The point is ISRO is trying what any company with a limited budget will try, building and improving that part of the company that is generating revenue. And its not like ISRO isn’t focusing on other things, Chandrayaan, MOM, IRNSS, Aditya, and more to come in future are the examples of successful priorities.

 

[911]

ISRO to test multiple burn fuel stage/engine on December 16
Published December 16, 2015
SOURCE : IANS

The Indian space agency on Wednesday will be testing its ability to restart the fourth-stage engine of its rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on shutting it down after putting into orbit six Singaporean satellites.
Technically speaking, India will be testing its multiple burn fuel stage/rocket engine for the first time.

“The restart and shut off of the fourth stage engine is done as a first step towards launching multiple satellites but in different orbits,” a senior official of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), speaking on the condition of anonymity, told IANS.

Launching of multiple satellites with a single rocket is nothing new for ISRO and it has been doing that for several years. The challenge is however to launch several satellites at different orbits with one rocket and this is what ISRO will be testing out after PSLV ejects out six Singaporean satellites on Wednesday.

The PSLV rocket is a four stage/engine rocket powered by solid and liquid fuel alternatively.

“Restarting a rocket engine soon after it is shut off is a critical technology that has to be mastered. Once a rocket engine is activated, then the heat generated is very high. The trick is to cool it down in the space and to restart it at a short gap,” an industry expert told IANS.

“This is entirely different from switching on and off the communication satellite’s engines in the space. The interval between two restarts of a communication satellite engine will be in days. But in the case of restarting a rocket engine, the time gap will be in hours,” the expert added.

“By that time the rocket’s engine has to be cooled down. This part of the experiment is very critical,” he explained.

On Wednesday, ISRO’s PSLV rocket will blast off from the first launch pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, around 80 km from here, with the six Singaporean satellites. All the satellites will be put into orbit around 21 minutes into the flight at an altitude of 550 km.

After that the rocket’s fourth stage will be shut down.

“It will be coasting after that,” an ISRO official told IANS.

Around 46 minutes after the launch of the sixth satellite, the fourth stage will be restarted when it is in a lower altitude of 523.9 km.

The engine will be in operational for four seconds and would go up to an altitude of 524 km before the stage is cut-off.

Meanwhile ISRO officials told the countdown for the December 16 evening launch of PSLV rocket is progressing smoothly.

On December 16, ISRO will be flying the ‘core alone’ variant of the PSLV rocket. The rocket will not have the strap on boosters, its standard feature

The successful launch of the six Singaporean satellites will take ISRO’s total flights of foreign satellites to 57.

Out of the six satellites, the 400 kg earth observation satellite called TeLEOS-1 is the main passenger for the PSLV rocket and hence the mission is called TeLEOS mission by ISRO.

TeLEOS-1 is Singapore’s first commercial earth observation satellite designed and developed by ST Electronics.

The other five co-passenger satellites are VELOX-C1 (123 kg), VELOX-II (13 kg), Kent Ridge-1 (78 kg), Galassia (3.4 kg) and Athenoxat-1.

The December 16 mission will be the last rocket launch mission for ISRO in 2015.

So far in 2015, ISRO has launched 14 satellites (three Indian and 11 foreign) from its rocket port in Sriharikota. Thirteen satellites were launched with PSLV rocket and one communication satellite – GSAT-6-with geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV).

Last month India also launched its communication satellite GSAT-15 using the Ariane rocket of the European space agency which takes the total number of satellite launches in 2015 to 21 (17 foreign, four Indian).

Thats what you call 1 teer se do nishane.

you are incorrect to quote 30 billion dollars in context of spacex and "blue origin" and it is a very wrong perception in india that just throwing huge money and thousands of college degrees will bring technological achievements and social development... the difference between isro and spacex/blue-origin is simply the degree of capability.

1. "blue origin", established in year 2000, has only 350 employees and as for investment[1]...

and this cost not only developed the recently tested reusable rocket but also the six-astronaut capsule.

for more[2].

2. spacex, established in year 2002, has presently employees... the launch cost of the spacex falcon v1.1 rocket is 61 million dollars ( the lowest in the commercial launcher market ) and for developing its predecessor, the very successful falcon 9, the cost has been[3]...



as for the dragon space capsule, the current version called dragon v2 is derived from the original dragon development which began in 2004, only two years after spacex's establishment ( compare with isro ) and as for funding of its development[4]...



continual development of the dragon raised the cost but not greatly[5]...



the dragon v2 would have of course incurred some extra development costs because it has a powered descent system and some improvements, and the costs are[6]...



though certainly, like any space agency, spacex too ( as would be "blue origin" ) benefited from previous developments by others[6] but much of their development has been in-house...



3. isro, established in year 1962, has 15809 employees assigned into 17 departments[7] and its budget only for 2015-2016 is 1.2 billion dollars[8] which means that isro has been given huge amounts of government money for 53 years, at least 15 billion dollars, and this is unlike jeff bezos who put his own relatively very less money into "blue origin" or elon musk who put just 100 million of his own money into starting spacex and this was out of the 180 million dollars he received as his cut from the sale of paypal to ebay.



i agree to your first statement that one should generally find a independent path and that is what spacex and "blue origin" have done... sadly, isro is not a space agency that be credited with the words "creative" and "ambitious", which is why it remains a glorified satellite maker and launcher while the two smaller and private companies mentioned above have achieved human-crew capabilities within 12 years and 15 years of establishment respectively.

a little example of spacex's deviation from traditional approach[5]...




isro can keep launching satellites but a call must be given out to private individuals/groups willing to create a private space agency that will find or adopt innovative ways of achieving a human space program which works on a pan-south-asia basis.

isro has benefited so much from developments by others in the world but remained a boring and useless agency that followed obsolete text book approach even when many such approaches were discarded by others... the few things it said it is innovating, example the reusable launcher, have not moved beyond cad/cam drawings in years... it is one thing to claim its mars mission was developed at a cost less than the hollywood film "gravity", it's another thing to actually see that this particular mission compares nothing to nasa's "curiosity" mission which landed a 900 kg rover of that name on mars two years earlier ( 2011 ) and it's yet another thing to know that two private american space agencies have achieved human space launch and tourism capabilities at lot lot lesser cost than isro.

the failure of isro is really because of the anti-innovation anti-ambition environment in india... just some months ago, n.r. narayanamurthy said that india hasn't contributed technologically to humanity in 68 years[9].



that cannot be used to excuse away the incapability of isro... as i showed above, money wasn't a problem for isro compared to spacex and "blue origin"... as for building of knowledge, isro has benefited from nasa, esa and ussr/russia for five decades.

what about the "35 percent indian scientists at nasa" without whom nasa would collapse??

can't they, if they exist at all, reshape isro into something respectable??

----

[1] Blue Origin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Blue Origin | Our Approach to Technology

[3] NASA Analysis: Falcon 9 Much Cheaper Than Traditional Approach at Parabolic Arc

[4] Statement: Elon Musk, SpaceX: NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program: Accomplishments & Challenges

[5] Dragon (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] The Space Review: The future and the past: comparing Dragon and Orion

[7] http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/article-files/right-to-information/HumanResources.pdf

[8] India Allocates $1.2 Billion for ISRO Space Activities

[9] no invention from India in 60 years: n. r. narayana murthy

These things go hand in hand with the economy of the country. They launch satellites for proffit. Moreover every inovation is done step by step. We can't suddenly jump to step 20 , specially when people like you keep criticizing on every step we move. Think logicaly.