8 ms·

India’s Reusable Launch Vehicle Demonstrator Successfully Flight Tested

237 points by sriharis 10y ago

vmarsy 10y ago
Very impressive, but It's not a fully reusable rocket (in the SpaceX sense), but it looks more like a reusable ship, like the columbia space shuttle. > May 23, 2016 ISRO successfully flight tested India’s first winged body aerospace vehicle operating in hypersonic flight regime. > In this experimental mission, the HS9 solid rocket booster carrying RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota at 07:00hr IST. After a successful flight of 91.1second, HS9 burn out occurred, following which both HS9 and RLV-TD mounted on its top coasted to a height of about 56 km. At that height, RLV-TD separated from HS9 booster and further ascended to a height of about 65km So the solid rocket booster, HS9, wasn't reusable. What looks more interesting to me is: > The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent Was it unmanned? On Autopilot? Pictures and details: http://www.isro.gov.in/launchers/rlv-td http://www.isro.gov.in/launchers/rlv-td EDIT: according to Wikipedia, the ultimate goal seems to be a fully reusable setup: > The demonstration trials will pave the way for a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) fully re-usable launch vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Flight_Experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Flight_Experiment
- nathancahill 10y ago
  Yes, title should be: "India's first winged body aerospace vehicle successfully flight tested"
- frandroid 10y ago
  So this is like the space shuttle in concept, right?
  - creshal 10y ago
    Right now it's more comparable to the X-37B. It's not quite clear what the further steps are going to be, India has floated a lot of concepts and seems to be still figuring out which can be pursued further.
  - swatkat 10y ago
    As per current plans, this winged body will be the first stage of a future TSTO (two stage to orbit) launch vehicle. This winged body first stage will have cryo/kerolox engines for vertical takeoff, and scramjet engine for gliding down and landing on an airstrip after stage separation. This prototype was intended to test aerodynamics of winged body at Mach 5+ speeds and to evaluate flight control and navigation systems.
- the8472 10y ago
  Also this was a sub-orbital flight, aiui that places far less stress on a vehicle since they don't have to shed orbital kinetic energy.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > Was it unmanned? On Autopilot? Note that the US Air Force has a re-usable winged unmanned spacecraft that plays a somewhat analogous role to the now-defunct Space Shuttle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-14/a-supersecret-spacecraft-comes-back-to-earth-after-two-years http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-14/a-supersec...
  - avar 10y ago
    The X-37 is launched by a conventional rocket as payload and just lands like a normal aircraft. It's more analogous to a reusable space capsule than it is to the space shuttle which mostly launched itself.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      "Mostly" is quite a stretch, since the shuttle is completely dependent not only only the fuel in the external tank, but also on the solid rocket boosters. Indeed, the solid boosters composed the majority of the launch weight and provided the majority of the thrust. For the first couple of minutes, the shuttle was mostly just along for the ride (just as the X-37 is completely along for the ride on the Atlas). The key analogous role I'm referring to is the ability to deploy, capture, and return payloads to Earth, which is shared by the X-37 and the shuttle. It's not a coincidence that the Air Force developed the X-37 when the shuttle retired.
      - ballooney 10y ago
        A very HN correction here but 'space shuttle' refers to the whole stack (orbiter and fel tank and SRBs) and what you seem to be referring to as the 'space shuttle' is actually called the orbiter, a component of the space shuttle. But everyone gets it wrong. Mobile makes it difficult to add links but its explained on the wikipedia article for the space shuttle orbiter, a distinct article from the space shuttle.
        10y ago
- hiou 10y ago
  > The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent Fortunately, that isn't directly applicable to ballistic missiles and certainly couldn't have anything to do with this project. /s
  - swatkat 10y ago
    India's defense R&D unit, DRDO, already has a couple of hypersonic vehicle and missile projects[0][1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Technology_Demonstrator_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Technology_Demonstr... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos-II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos-II
creshal 10y ago
No, they demonstrated the capability of developing one at some point in the future. The test article isn't even capable of reaching orbit, or returning from orbit, or landing yet. This is the easy step – comparable to the American X-15, X-23, ASSET, and SpaceShipOne projects, the Russian BOR-1 to -6 or ESA's IXV demonstrator –, turning this into a Space Shuttle / Buran / X-37b style actual space plane will be a long, expensive undertaking. And, as the Space Shuttle demonstrated, "recoverable" and "reusable" are two different beasts: The Shuttle's engines returned to Earth, but were so burned out from each launch that they required a refurbishment 80% as expensive as a whole new engine, and only managed an average of 5 launches even with that – planned were 55 flights without major refurbishments. It's also different from reusable boosters as developed by SpaceX, in case anyone is wondering: This is the upper stage portion that goes into orbit, and needs a booster to get into (or close to) orbit first. Those can be more expensive than the actual plane, depending on the design: • The X-37b launches atop an Atlas rocket, and its expensive stages are completely lost. • ESA's Hermes was supposed to launch on the similarly fully expendable Ariane 5. For regular satellite launches, you don't save much money with these designs – since you don't need to return the orbital part anyway, you can just launch the Atlas/Ariane without the expensive plane on top and still come out cheaper. It's mainly relevant for manned programmes, which is why the Hermes was cancelled (since ESA's manned programme never got the necessary funding) and Ariane 5 just launched without, and why the X-37b is restricted to classified launches that probably involve returning things back to Earth (which is where space planes really shine!). And even for manned programs, space planes don't necessarily lead to cost savings: • The Space Shuttle put all expensive parts – engines, avionics, and so on – into the orbiter, and only the big external tank burned up. The solid boosters were also recovered, but since they were just steel tubes, they didn't require much refurbishment (unlike the main engines). If the engines and heat shield hadn't been such massive failures, it might have worked out to be reasonably cheap in the long run. Alas. The way it turned out, it was a ridiculous money sink. • The Russians, as always, decided to out-crazy everyone and put engines on the Buran orbiter, even more and even bigger engines on the external tank, oh and let's use four boosters instead of two. And make those liquid-fueled, so that each side booster is as complex as a smaller rocket on its own (and can be used as such). To everyone's surprise, this bankrupted the Buran program. There were plans to put foldable wings on the side boosters and orbiter-style delta wings and heat shields on the external tanks and turn everything into UAVs that automatically land on runways after detaching, but the Soviet Union preferred dissolution over funding any of that.
swatkat 10y ago
This test is a part of ISRO's next gen "two stage to orbit" (TSTO) launch vehicle. First stage of TSTO will have delta wings and scramjet engine for landing. Second stage will have parachutes for landing[0]. The winged body that was tested two months ago will be the first stage of TSTO. In this experiment, ISRO tested aerodynamics and flight control systems of this delta-winged body at hypersonic speeds. In the next experiment (scheduled on July), ISRO will be testing the scramjet engine. [0] http://i.imgur.com/p2CUxE1.png http://i.imgur.com/p2CUxE1.png
murukesh_s 10y ago
Why is it trending now? It happened almost two months back, if i remember..
- hughes 10y ago
  The date on the article is May 23, 2016
- kartD 10y ago
  Dunno, the previous post didn't have a discussion though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757324
ittekimasu 10y ago
Has anyone noticed how everything of value out of India is only in English (the other lang link is blank) ? This sort of thing would be anathema in China; what with all the 'millenium of humiliation' and things. Odd, considering the general indignance showed towards @pmarca (from @a16z) some months back. Edit: @a16z -> @pmarca
- sremani 10y ago
  Dear Sir, English is an Indian language :) Honestly, its the consensus language, since its already is the commercial language of the world. Knowledge and fluency in English is the basic for cultural and professional sophistication (in India). India during the moguls had similar thing with farsi. BJP(current ruling party) want to impose Hindi, but primarily South and East peripheries have strong linguistic identities usually are not comfortable, so English is the happy compromise.
  - ittekimasu 10y ago
    Interesting. I noticed that ISRO is actually in the south; it'd appear that neither the north nor the south have any linguistic identity. (To wit, the French speak English to get on with fellow Europeans but everything important out of France is usually in French. Ditto in Japan.) I've noticed this in Kenya (and Africa in general) as well. People say they're against European imperialism, but really they're not, considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. Paulson from yesterday should be glad to hear of this heretic analysis :) Edit: Change @a16z to @pmarca
    - vineet7kumar 10y ago
      > considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. If I understand your logic correctly, it seems that you are suggesting that a country or a community should either reinvent every useful thing that was introduced by colonialists or should not take a stand against the ideas of colonialism, racism and discrimination! It's a fact that Britishers introduced a lot of technology in this world and helped bring it to many countries but I feel that it would have been much better if they would have tried to integrate with these countries rather than trying to follow a master-slave approach. Anyways, what's done is done but we can certainly hope that going forward the world can be a more equal place.
iamcreasy 10y ago
It looks very similar to European Mini-Space Shuttle program. Source : http://www.space.com/28520-europe-launches-mini-shuttle-ixv.html http://www.space.com/28520-europe-launches-mini-shuttle-ixv....
the100rabh 10y ago
I kind of appreciate the fact that ISRO did a small experiment of sorts before building an actual mega failure. Its more like a Lean Startup experiment where they are testing what they build is going to work in reallife or not with an MVP. Note that the test vehicle was scaled down model of the real thing. I guess they will know if their tech is worth being reusable before they actually build one.

237 points by sriharis 10y ago

Very impressive, but It's not a fully reusable rocket (in the SpaceX sense), but it looks more like a reusable ship, like the columbia space shuttle. > May 23, 2016 ISRO successfully flight tested India’s first winged body aerospace vehicle operating in hypersonic flight regime. > In this experimental mission, the HS9 solid rocket booster carrying RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota at 07:00hr IST. After a successful flight of 91.1second, HS9 burn out occurred, following which both HS9 and RLV-TD mounted on its top coasted to a height of about 56 km. At that height, RLV-TD separated from HS9 booster and further ascended to a height of about 65km So the solid rocket booster, HS9, wasn't reusable. What looks more interesting to me is: > The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent Was it unmanned? On Autopilot? Pictures and details: http://www.isro.gov.in/launchers/rlv-td http://www.isro.gov.in/launchers/rlv-td EDIT: according to Wikipedia, the ultimate goal seems to be a fully reusable setup: > The demonstration trials will pave the way for a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) fully re-usable launch vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Flight_Experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Flight_Experiment

nathancahill 10y ago
Yes, title should be: "India's first winged body aerospace vehicle successfully flight tested"
frandroid 10y ago
So this is like the space shuttle in concept, right?
- creshal 10y ago
  Right now it's more comparable to the X-37B. It's not quite clear what the further steps are going to be, India has floated a lot of concepts and seems to be still figuring out which can be pursued further.
- swatkat 10y ago
  As per current plans, this winged body will be the first stage of a future TSTO (two stage to orbit) launch vehicle. This winged body first stage will have cryo/kerolox engines for vertical takeoff, and scramjet engine for gliding down and landing on an airstrip after stage separation. This prototype was intended to test aerodynamics of winged body at Mach 5+ speeds and to evaluate flight control and navigation systems.
the8472 10y ago
Also this was a sub-orbital flight, aiui that places far less stress on a vehicle since they don't have to shed orbital kinetic energy.
jessriedel 10y ago
> Was it unmanned? On Autopilot? Note that the US Air Force has a re-usable winged unmanned spacecraft that plays a somewhat analogous role to the now-defunct Space Shuttle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-14/a-supersecret-spacecraft-comes-back-to-earth-after-two-years http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-14/a-supersec...
- avar 10y ago
  The X-37 is launched by a conventional rocket as payload and just lands like a normal aircraft. It's more analogous to a reusable space capsule than it is to the space shuttle which mostly launched itself.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    "Mostly" is quite a stretch, since the shuttle is completely dependent not only only the fuel in the external tank, but also on the solid rocket boosters. Indeed, the solid boosters composed the majority of the launch weight and provided the majority of the thrust. For the first couple of minutes, the shuttle was mostly just along for the ride (just as the X-37 is completely along for the ride on the Atlas). The key analogous role I'm referring to is the ability to deploy, capture, and return payloads to Earth, which is shared by the X-37 and the shuttle. It's not a coincidence that the Air Force developed the X-37 when the shuttle retired.
    - ballooney 10y ago
      A very HN correction here but 'space shuttle' refers to the whole stack (orbiter and fel tank and SRBs) and what you seem to be referring to as the 'space shuttle' is actually called the orbiter, a component of the space shuttle. But everyone gets it wrong. Mobile makes it difficult to add links but its explained on the wikipedia article for the space shuttle orbiter, a distinct article from the space shuttle.
      - 10y ago
hiou 10y ago
> The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent Fortunately, that isn't directly applicable to ballistic missiles and certainly couldn't have anything to do with this project. /s
- swatkat 10y ago
  India's defense R&D unit, DRDO, already has a couple of hypersonic vehicle and missile projects[0][1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Technology_Demonstrator_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Technology_Demonstr... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos-II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos-II

creshal 10y ago

No, they demonstrated the capability of developing one at some point in the future. The test article isn't even capable of reaching orbit, or returning from orbit, or landing yet. This is the easy step – comparable to the American X-15, X-23, ASSET, and SpaceShipOne projects, the Russian BOR-1 to -6 or ESA's IXV demonstrator –, turning this into a Space Shuttle / Buran / X-37b style actual space plane will be a long, expensive undertaking. And, as the Space Shuttle demonstrated, "recoverable" and "reusable" are two different beasts: The Shuttle's engines returned to Earth, but were so burned out from each launch that they required a refurbishment 80% as expensive as a whole new engine, and only managed an average of 5 launches even with that – planned were 55 flights without major refurbishments. It's also different from reusable boosters as developed by SpaceX, in case anyone is wondering: This is the upper stage portion that goes into orbit, and needs a booster to get into (or close to) orbit first. Those can be more expensive than the actual plane, depending on the design: • The X-37b launches atop an Atlas rocket, and its expensive stages are completely lost. • ESA's Hermes was supposed to launch on the similarly fully expendable Ariane 5. For regular satellite launches, you don't save much money with these designs – since you don't need to return the orbital part anyway, you can just launch the Atlas/Ariane without the expensive plane on top and still come out cheaper. It's mainly relevant for manned programmes, which is why the Hermes was cancelled (since ESA's manned programme never got the necessary funding) and Ariane 5 just launched without, and why the X-37b is restricted to classified launches that probably involve returning things back to Earth (which is where space planes really shine!). And even for manned programs, space planes don't necessarily lead to cost savings: • The Space Shuttle put all expensive parts – engines, avionics, and so on – into the orbiter, and only the big external tank burned up. The solid boosters were also recovered, but since they were just steel tubes, they didn't require much refurbishment (unlike the main engines). If the engines and heat shield hadn't been such massive failures, it might have worked out to be reasonably cheap in the long run. Alas. The way it turned out, it was a ridiculous money sink. • The Russians, as always, decided to out-crazy everyone and put engines on the Buran orbiter, even more and even bigger engines on the external tank, oh and let's use four boosters instead of two. And make those liquid-fueled, so that each side booster is as complex as a smaller rocket on its own (and can be used as such). To everyone's surprise, this bankrupted the Buran program. There were plans to put foldable wings on the side boosters and orbiter-style delta wings and heat shields on the external tanks and turn everything into UAVs that automatically land on runways after detaching, but the Soviet Union preferred dissolution over funding any of that.

swatkat 10y ago

This test is a part of ISRO's next gen "two stage to orbit" (TSTO) launch vehicle. First stage of TSTO will have delta wings and scramjet engine for landing. Second stage will have parachutes for landing[0]. The winged body that was tested two months ago will be the first stage of TSTO. In this experiment, ISRO tested aerodynamics and flight control systems of this delta-winged body at hypersonic speeds. In the next experiment (scheduled on July), ISRO will be testing the scramjet engine. [0] http://i.imgur.com/p2CUxE1.png http://i.imgur.com/p2CUxE1.png

murukesh_s 10y ago

Why is it trending now? It happened almost two months back, if i remember..

hughes 10y ago
The date on the article is May 23, 2016
kartD 10y ago
Dunno, the previous post didn't have a discussion though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757324

ittekimasu 10y ago

Has anyone noticed how everything of value out of India is only in English (the other lang link is blank) ? This sort of thing would be anathema in China; what with all the 'millenium of humiliation' and things. Odd, considering the general indignance showed towards @pmarca (from @a16z) some months back. Edit: @a16z -> @pmarca

sremani 10y ago
Dear Sir, English is an Indian language :) Honestly, its the consensus language, since its already is the commercial language of the world. Knowledge and fluency in English is the basic for cultural and professional sophistication (in India). India during the moguls had similar thing with farsi. BJP(current ruling party) want to impose Hindi, but primarily South and East peripheries have strong linguistic identities usually are not comfortable, so English is the happy compromise.
- ittekimasu 10y ago
  Interesting. I noticed that ISRO is actually in the south; it'd appear that neither the north nor the south have any linguistic identity. (To wit, the French speak English to get on with fellow Europeans but everything important out of France is usually in French. Ditto in Japan.) I've noticed this in Kenya (and Africa in general) as well. People say they're against European imperialism, but really they're not, considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. Paulson from yesterday should be glad to hear of this heretic analysis :) Edit: Change @a16z to @pmarca
  - vineet7kumar 10y ago
    > considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. If I understand your logic correctly, it seems that you are suggesting that a country or a community should either reinvent every useful thing that was introduced by colonialists or should not take a stand against the ideas of colonialism, racism and discrimination! It's a fact that Britishers introduced a lot of technology in this world and helped bring it to many countries but I feel that it would have been much better if they would have tried to integrate with these countries rather than trying to follow a master-slave approach. Anyways, what's done is done but we can certainly hope that going forward the world can be a more equal place.

iamcreasy 10y ago

It looks very similar to European Mini-Space Shuttle program. Source : http://www.space.com/28520-europe-launches-mini-shuttle-ixv.html http://www.space.com/28520-europe-launches-mini-shuttle-ixv....

the100rabh 10y ago

I kind of appreciate the fact that ISRO did a small experiment of sorts before building an actual mega failure. Its more like a Lean Startup experiment where they are testing what they build is going to work in reallife or not with an MVP. Note that the test vehicle was scaled down model of the real thing. I guess they will know if their tech is worth being reusable before they actually build one.