Indian Satellite Lost in Launch Explosion

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that the recent communications satellite launch in India has met with disaster. The satellite, designed to enhance India's telephone and communications network, was lost when the rocket carrying it veered off course and exploded. This is the second disappointment in recent launch attempts, coming just one day after the failed long-range ballistic missile test launch."

Re:Indian Astronauts

[linvir]

Are you kidding? If they had to resort to calling foreigners at random (India should be quite good at this) in search of volunteers, and happened upon me, I'd be up there in a shot. I'd sell the maximum removable quantity of my organs for a shot at standing on the moon, even if I had to take that shot on an overcrowded Indian vehicle that could explode unexpectedly at any moment.

You were talking like it was the end of the world

[Rheingold]

Anyone else reminded of "1999 was the year that the Indian nuclear satellite went out of control. [imdb.com]"?

Sure it's not trivial.

[jd]

The stresses involved are gigantic and the tolerences are therefore extremely narrow. That alone does not make rocketry a trivial task - assuming that you use a rocket for these sorts of things. (It's entirely possible to replace the first stage of any rocket with some sort of assisted ramjet. Ramjets aren't trivial either, but they allow much wider tolerences and use less fuel. All you have to do is get airflow to 400mph - a gas cannon or adding a high-speed fan to the ramjet is quite sufficient to do this.)

Assuming you do want to go 100% rocket, though, you'd obviously want to over-engineer the rocket as much as you can. Instead of building a rocket that can just handle what you'd expect, you want to build a rocket that has a wider margin of safety. You'd probably want to launch a whole bunch of rockets laced with sensors to figure out just how wide the margins need to be.

You'd also want to have something that self-corrects. Having rockets self-destruct on you is expensive. If a rocket flies off-course, then it would seem likely to be the guidance system or the rocket nozzle. Backup guidance systems would seem cheaper than new rockets, even allowing for the fact that the extra weight will require more fuel. (I'm sure plenty of top-of-the-line rockets do, in fact, have such backups - it's just not very likely that too many budget launchers do.) A backup nozzle would be tougher, but not impossible - it's just a question of symmetry. Even if you can't self-correct, having a means of ejecting the payload safely so you can recover it and try again is a damn-sight cheaper than rebuilding such modules from scratch.

Of course, rocket scientists aren't stupid. Often underfunded for what they try to do, yes, and in an economy that emphasises cheapness over quality, shortcuts are inevitable. The Russians seem to prefer recycled ICBMs over their Soyuz systems, even though the Soyuz seems to be a lot better built, can certainly carry more, are probably newer, and probably carry fuel that is fresher. Why? Because the missiles are cheap and they've got plenty they can waste. They're not being used for anything else and they're already built, so there's almost no cost in refurnishing them.

India really doesn't have many half-decayed rockets, but the problems come from the same cause - very little money being spent to complete a very difficult task, in the knowledge that this is money they'd need to burn on rocket R&D anyway, if their nukes are to be useful. They're getting paid to do the stuff they'd have to do anyway. The telecos can't really afford to go elsewhere, so they've a captive market that has no practical alternative but to buy their products. They have every reason to experiment, play with ideas, try things out, and none at all to build something that's reliable out of the box.

(Experimentation is great, when it comes to new tech, but it should be done honestly and not at the expense of customers. And in this case, where pure rocket solutions are not regarded as particularly a good way to do things, it's experimentation in technology that has no value. We're at the point where newcomers to space rocketry using rockets for the first stage are being as sensible as corporations hacking the CERN webserver to run on CP/M, and getting CP/M to run on a PDP-8. Neat, sort-of, but utterly pointless and far from the neatest thing you could do with the same amount of effort.)

Re:Maybe NASA should outsource...

[ThreeE]

No manned launch vehicle is more reliable than the shuttle. 114 out of 115 successful launches. 113 out of 114 successful re-entries.

Most people in the industry consider the shuttle the most advanced manned vehicle ever. It certainly has capabilities unavailable in any other vehicle.

Re:Mumbai

[dvNull]

Thanks.

As an Indian living in the US, it was quite a morning for me as I tried to get in touch with relatives in Mumbai to make sure that they are all right.

Kind of scary too, as when I am in Mumbai I almost always take the trains there.

Re:Indian Astronauts

[Danga]

There is nothing much up there? And you know this how?

Maybe the vast, barren, unihabitable, crater filled surface that is the moon from EVERY picture of it? Compare that to all of the wonderful, life filled, comfortable places on Earth you can visit instead and it's not hard to wonder why someone would rather travel the world and live rather risk travelling to the moon with a much higher chance of not making it back.

I do think it would be cool to travel to the moon, but I do see the point that travelling the Earth would be more enjoyable overall not to mention having much less chance of dying.