Soon, India to have its own space shuttle

An engineering model of what scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) call the re-usable launch vehicle, is currently housed at a secure and secret facility in Kerala. Covered with special heat resistant tiles, soon it will roar skywards. "We are dreaming about a fully re-usable vehicle, there are several elements we need to understand as of now we have a technology demonstrator," said Dr K Radhakrishnan, Chairman, ISRO.

Looks like the TD is still unmanned but guessing that it should be manned in future flights. This is good news. Till now only the US had this tech.



News articles-

LINK 1

LINK 2

Its good to see India has solved its extreme poverty situation and does not require any monetory aid from the rest of the world as it can afford these types of ventures.

Way to go India

reply to post by EnigmaAgent


Afterall they are the fourth largest economy and 4th strongest military. I believe the poverty is artificial and they choose to live in poverty rather than advance.

reply to post by asen_y2k


Choose to live in poverty? Generalising much? That's like saying Americans 'choose' to have a corrupt government that is destroying their own country.

Or is that what you are saying?

Originally posted by EnigmaAgent
Its good to see India has solved its extreme poverty situation and does not require any monetory aid from the rest of the world as it can afford these types of ventures.

Way to go India

I totally 2nd that!!! Now we know where that billionaire ancient treasure found in some Shiva's temple, is going. One thing is for sure: Not for the Indian sheeple.

Originally posted by asen_y2k
reply to post by EnigmaAgent

 

Afterall they are the fourth largest economy and 4th strongest military. I believe the poverty is artificial and they choose to live in poverty rather than advance.

No the poverty is not artificial. An empty belly hurts, for you to call it fake is very callous.

Is that how you excuse the behavior of spending billions on a space shuttle when hundreds of millions of decent people starve and children die of malnutrition?

'Oh those poor people choose to die of hunger and curable diseases.'
Whatever helps you sleep at night...I guess.

But really India shouldn't waste all this money on their ego and instead should maybe fill their belly and buy some medicine? That's what I think America should do too.

This is what government always does though, doesn't matter where you are globally, they put corporate and nationalist interests ahead of the citizens welfare every time.

Sure I am all for space exploration and development, but at what cost? When do we decide we should step back a bit and fix our own problems here at home with those funds instead?

reply to post by asen_y2k


I doubt the people living 15 to a room with a stream of piss and # flowing past their front door choose it. They don't have a choice in the matter.

India is in a lot of ways like Victorian Britain. It was also a superpower with people at the bottom of the social pyramid left to rot in disease and filth.

Its not right and their society will evolve past it on its own. We should not be providing aid as they are long past the point of needing it.

I think the aid is provided with the knowledge that we in the first world are yesterdays news and in a few years will have our own begging bowl out. Its a doomed and rather pathetic attempt to cozy up to the new boys.

reply to post by asen_y2k


Hey, India!

Wanna buy a few used space shuttles? They are in pretty good shape. Yeah, they are 30 years old and yesterday's technology, and have about a one-in-65 chance for failure, but we don't need 'em anymore. We got a new process, you see, but we are quite willing to help you in your attempt to better the Chinese, Japanese, Iran and any other country that stupid enough to be follishly be spending GNP on items that help not at all the man on the street.

Of course, we know that this jumping into space for you and similar emerging countries is nothing but a space race to get boosters that will also carry ballistic warheads across continents. --Hey, that is part of the game! So that is why buying up our used shuttles makes perfect sense--and we need the cash!. Fasten those suckers on to your brand of boosters and you have a simple fix that will save you billions of your currency in fake development costs in your space race. Heck. that is exactly what we did for about forty years. But now we are slowly letting the super technology of the triangles slip out and are abandoning rockets altogether. --You guys do know that don't you? Anyway, good luck with your rockets.

I poked around a bit but I'm finding very little data on the craft, payload, and such. I also like how it is explained to me by the reporters; "very soon". One has to appreciate just how much data NASA releases about their every space mission, but abroad we get, "very soon".

this is what gets me, can afford to go into space but still want hand outs from the west

my days we are all fools

reply to post by muzzleflash


Death due to hunger is RARE in India, there are many gov subsidies and you can see 'ration shops' everywhere. Basically its gov grocery store where everything is cheap but need a card to buy there.

India has a large pharmacy industry and make and sells many costly modern drugs for a cheap price.

What I am talking about is the visual poverty which they choose to live in. Dirty streets, shanties. Beleive me none of the children on the street has to go by without food. They choose to live dirty, thats what I meant. If they wanted to they could clean things up and remove the visual poverty. Look at China, look at their big cities, they did that already. Most of their big cities look like new york.

Originally posted by gremlin2011
this is what gets me, can afford to go into space but still want hand outs from the west

my days we are all fools

I am not really sure, but India does not take handouts anymore. After the tsunami they did not accept a single cent for aid, they cleaned up the mess quickly and efficiently by their own. And after the green revolution I keep hearing stories of how the granaries overflow with food.

reply to post by asen_y2k


they dont except handouts???

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Originally posted by gremlin2011
reply to post by asen_y2k

 

they dont except handouts???

www.dailymail.co.uk...

I mentioned I was not sure, thanks for the link and reading it, its not correct, no country should be giving aid to India.

reply to post by asen_y2k


i agree no one should be giving them shiz, if only their own billionairs gave a damm they could sort out the poverty between them how many there is

en.wikipedia.org...

Here is the wiki page for the Indian scramjet spacecraft called Avatar. No mention if the craft mentioned in the news article and the Avatar are the same but they have many similarities.

Link to Wiki page

I'm just wondering where they are going to open a corner shop up there????

I made a concept picture of the new indian shuttle you mentioned in your post.

I think it will look pretty close to this concept when up and running. Good luck India and well done.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/794cc7e1702f.jpg[/atsimg]

Originally posted by EnigmaAgent
Its good to see India has solved its extreme poverty situation and does not require any monetory aid from the rest of the world as it can afford these types of ventures.

Way to go India

ummmm....Did you fail to notice Obama's express trip to India with 300 CEO's from America?

China's not our friend anymore so "things" will be provided to India if they help us out....like make you sneakers and tshirts.

reply to post by asen_y2k


The looks are similar but the AVATAR technology is closer to the SKYLON spaceplane, and early X series notablly the X-30. As the Wiki link states the scramjet is to take off like a conventional plane from a runway while the Indian shuttle is to take off vertically strapped on the top of a heavy lift rocket, like the Boeing X-37B in orbit now as we speak.

From the AVATAR Wiki link;

The idea is to develop a hyperplane vehicle that can take off from conventional airfields, collect air in the atmosphere on the way up, liquefy it, separate oxygen and store it on board for subsequent flight beyond the atmosphere. The AVATAR RLV was first announced in May 1998 at the Aero India 98 exhibition held at Bangalore. It is planned to be the size of a MiG-25 fighter

From the Hindu link on the Indian space shuttle;

The Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), as it is called, will be a combination rocket-aircraft: the aircraft with a winged body, which is the RLV, will sit vertically on the rocket.

The engineering model of the aircraft is ready at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram. The first stage of the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3, flown in the early 1980s, will form the booster rocket. Weighing nine tonnes, it is called S-9.

After it takes off like a rocket, the booster will release the unmanned aircraft, which will go into space. At the end of the mission, the aircraft will land in the sea.

Later tests will have the shuttle land on a runway like NASA's space shuttle.

I recall a lot of buzz back around 1993 on the X-30 as the next generation shuttle, but I don't recall what happened exactly. I believe the tests drops from a B-52 demonstrated the technology fell short of the proposed specifications, not sure if a full scale prototype was constructed or it was determined MACH 25 was not going to be achieved.