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India wants to join a select band of nations that
have a space shuttle programme. The country’s space agency wants to launch a
reusable spacecraft, potentially slashing the cost of space travel.
The plans are very much in their infancy, but the
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has big plans. It wants to tap into
the lucrative market of reusable space travel by building its very own fleet of
spacecraft.
The first step in the ambitious plans is to send
a test vehicle into space. The craft, roughly the size of a sports utility
vehicle (SUV), is being given a final look through before it is expected to
blast off on its mission. This test vehicle is roughly one-sixth the size of
the final version.
The test craft will not have an undercarriage,
but point of the experiment is to see if it will be able to navigate at a
velocity five times the speed of sound, onto a virtual runway in the Bay of
Bengal, around 500 kilometers from the coast.
"These are just the first baby steps towards
the big Hanuman leap,” said K Sivan, the director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space
Center, situated on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, told the Press Trust of
India. Hanuman is a Hindu god.
However, it is going to be some time until the
final version could be seen blasting off from its launch site on the east coast
of India. It is expected that it will take at least 10-15 years for the
prototype to be converted into the real thing.
The spacecraft, known as the RLV-TD (Reusable
Launch Vehicle -Technology Demonstrator) will eventually be around 6.5 meters
in length and will weigh 1.75 tons. It will enter the earth’s atmosphere via a
special booster.
The vehicle will descend back to Earth, which
will essentially see it glide back, with small thrusters helping to move it to
its exact landing point. The ISRO will have to invest in a runway, though, as
there is no landing strip in the country that is over 5 kilometers in
length.
The ISRO says that if the project is a success,
it could revolutionize space travel, by reducing costs by as much as 10 times
through the use of reusable technology. This could see the cost of transporting
materials into space cut to around US$2,000 per kilogram.
The Indian programme has received help from the
government, which has invested around US$15 million in the project, which has
been running for the last five years.
If the technology proves to be successful, even
at its prototype stage, it could be a further blow to the US private space
programme, which is already crying foul that Indian booster rockets produced by
the ISRO are being used to send American-made satellites into space.
"In this case, India, [is seeking] to
compete with US companies. Such a policy runs counter to many national
priorities and undermines the work and investment that has been made by the
government and industry to ensure the health of the US commercial space launch industrial
base," said Elliot Holokauahi Pulham, CEO of Space Foundation, according
to The Times of India.
Following the grounding of the US space shuttle
programme in 2011, the US has been reliant on Russia and the private enterprise
Space-X to get its hardware into orbit or to dock with the International Space
Station.
In comments to RT, Sreeram Chaulia, professor at
the Jindal School of International Affairs, said the Indian space industry has
been enjoying a great period recently thanks to government funding, while also
having cheap labor and production costs at its disposal.
“In the last three years we’ve been in a sweet
spot: we’ve launched 28 satellites of nine countries – all at economical costs
and with a high success rate,” he said.
He also played down US fears of the Indian
government subsidizing the ISRO’s space program, saying that if America is so
worried, Congress should get involved.
“If the American companies are unable to compete
that’s how they cry out… we are subsidizing, that Congress should get in. So, I
think unfortunately they are playing with the protectionist instincts of some
politicians in Congress. And I hope that they will not go down the line trying
to [ban] it because at the end of the day American companies that want their
satellites launched benefit from Indian facilities,” he said.
Originally published in RT News
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