Space

A Reusable Indian Rocket?

5 Comments

I don’t expect to see this thing fly into space any time soon. They don’t seem to be serious about it, as indicated by this:

“The RLV-TD will act as a flying test bed to evaluate various technologies like hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, powered cruise flight and hypersonic flight using air breathing propulsion. First in the series of demonstration trials is the hypersonic flight experiment (HEX),” it said.

“Powered cruise flight”? Of what value is that to getting into space (other than giving you azimuth and longitude flexibility)? Unless you can refuel it in flight, it will kill your performance.

I’ll repeat the three rules of aerospace vehicle design:

1) If you want to cruise, use an airbreather.

2) If you want to turn, use a wing.

3) If you want to accelerate, use a rocket.

In order to get to orbit, you have to accelerate.

[Update a few minutes later]

You’ll know that the Indians are serious about building reusable orbital vehicles when they start working on reusable suborbital vehicles.

5 thoughts on “A Reusable Indian Rocket?”

  2. Unless I’m very much mistaken, this is a joint effort with Boeing, which had been quietly announced a few years ago. Notice the similarity to the X-34B?

    I think they’re shooting for a VTHL system, both stages winged for landing. Like a zillion of the shuttle concepts studied during the ’70s.

  3. I think that the Indians stated the weight as 3-tons.

    This matches the 3-ton weight of the Indian/Russian BrahMos-II hypersonic missile which they claim will be tested and ready for combat after 2012.

    I think that ISRO abd DRDO within India have some overlapping development programs. This gives their small team of hypersonic researchers something to work on in the open while they develop Mach-6 air-breathing missiles for the Indian and Russian Military.

  4. India has develop the most advanced deeply cooled pre-cooler system in the world. My guess is if this is an airbreather demo it will be a deeply cooled rocket not a SCRAM. Similar to the SARBE. They will later employee the deeply cooled rocket on the first stage LH2 fly-back booster to drastically reduce the over-all mass. So unlike a pure SCRAM this is a rocket based accelerator airbreather combined cycle. Second stage most likely would be all rocket.

  5. Doug: why go to all that trouble when a LOX-hydrocarbon pure rocket first stage would be smaller, simpler and cheaper?

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