
India’s Reusable Launch Vehicle Demonstrator Successfully Flight Tested - sriharis
http://www.isro.gov.in/update/23-may-2016/india%E2%80%99s-reusable-launch-vehicle-technology-demonstrator-rlv-td-successfully
======
vmarsy
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)

~~~
jessriedel
> 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-supersec...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-14/a-supersecret-
spacecraft-comes-back-to-earth-after-two-years)

~~~
adriand
In fact, on July 19, 1963, Joseph Albert Walker flew an X-15 rocket plane to
an altitude of 105,900m, or more than 100km, past the Kárman line, i.e. into
outer space. Compare that to the Indian flight mentioned in this article,
which reached an altitude of 65km. In other words, the US had a reuseable
space-capable launch vehicle 50 years ago.

~~~
sjs7007
Yeah, but India as a nation was formed and became independent only in 1947.

------
swatkat
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)

------
creshal
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.

~~~
coredog64
> And even for manned programs, space planes don't necessarily lead to cost
> savings

Mitchell Burnside Clapp had a somewhat innovative idea in that rather than
deal with all those expensive expendable boosters you could add a little more
mass to the actual launch vehicle and then use high altitude in-flight
refueling.

[http://www.risacher.org/bh/bh-paper1.html](http://www.risacher.org/bh/bh-
paper1.html)

~~~
ansible
I'm not keen on any sort of space plane or similar idea.

The main issue is the forces acting on the vehicle along multiple axes.

For a VTVL rocket like the Falcon 9, there is just one main axis along which
acceleration and load-bearing is going through: straight up and down.

For a space plane, you have at least two. One along the thrust line, and
another when it is supporting itself on the ground and in flight. So now you
have to reinforce the structure more, which adds a lot of weight.

And that's disregarding the thermal protection system which is more
complicated too.

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

~~~
kartD
Dunno, the previous post didn't have a discussion though:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757324)

------
iamcreasy
It looks very similar to European Mini-Space Shuttle program.

Source : [http://www.space.com/28520-europe-launches-mini-shuttle-
ixv....](http://www.space.com/28520-europe-launches-mini-shuttle-ixv.html)

------
ittekimasu
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

~~~
ittekimasu
Okay folk. I understand HN crowd (and apparently the Indian subset too) don't
like hearing ill of the British empire. I concede that everything was/is well
and that English is the only "rational" choice for every affair in India.
Naipaul was right after all; I didn't think this nostalgia was this great,
though.

The spiritual center of my culture is apparently long dead; I don't really
care about what they do over there anymore.

Spare a poor soul some up votes.

~~~
ittekimasu
Okay. I can't spend so much time explaining the virtues of "freedom". I also
can't spend time trying to reason with "rational" people who like all the
post-modernists basically believe in narratives, and not truth
(philosophically speaking).

\- My contention is not about speaking English, "rational" people (I speak
English!). It is about how economically dominant a language is; in East
Asia/Europe getting a good job without knowing the local language is
extraordinarily difficult. Speaking English (without other awesome skills)
often lands one a position teaching high schoolers.

\- This power/economic structure is inverted in formerly colonized African
nations as noted by the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He was kicked out for
raising such questions (so much for Kenyan Independence).

\- It's very apparent that this is the case in India too.

Why?

\- It doesn't look like one can get a Tech job at ISRO (imaginably also
Flipkart) having a Engineering degree in one of the native languages. What
appears to be Hindi is barely to be found on the menus on its front page.

A "lingua franca" is one to which everyone makes a translation from the
original, for the world to read. It appears that the original itself is in
English, here!

\- This being the case, I'm not even sure if you can get a degree in anything
useful in any of the native languages.

\- Punching in "India English" threw up the following in the first few
results, [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-
english...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english-
ruined-indian-literature.html?_r=0)

\- There seems to be lots of chatter in the search results on an as yet
unnamed invisible hand disenfranchising people linguistically (people are
taught in English ??!).

\- According to Wiki, only 10% of India speaks English.

This is the classic workings of a feudal - ironically a pre-enlightenment -
state, if not one practicing outright apartheid.

It's almost as if India stepped into medieval Europe's shoes where the rich
sent their kids to Latin grammar schools; or Tsarist Russia where French was
the langue de l'élite (atleast Tolstoy wrote in Russian as noted by the NyT
article!).

If you want to invalidate my understanding, either show one of the above to
false, or show why it's alright by making statements about their benignity
(vis a vis a linguistically diverse EU, for instance). Otherwise, please spare
me the downvotes and the verbiage.

I don't think such political HN threads help anyone (although, they do reveal
colors).

~~~
kartD
Local language is required for government jobs (IAS, engineering in PSU etc.).
In engineering companies such as Flipkart, inMobi etc. you will end up
speaking local languages when you form your friend circle and if your team
speaks a common language. Even if the job doesn't ask for it, you're going to
have a tough time fitting in if you don't speak the common language (Hindi,
Tamil, Kannada etc).

And be logical, English will always be needed. Which company in the world
would be able to deal with 28 official languages internally? Also, there are
start-ups moving to address the local market (e-commerce in Tamil, Hindi etc.

All of what you've said btw is mere opinion. None of what you say us objective
fact. Speaking the language of your former colonizer doesn't mean the people
lack self-respect nor does it have anything to do with any of the "virtues of
freedom" as you've pointed out.

~~~
ittekimasu
Uhh. I wish you could atleast understand this lingua franca you constantly
speak of (see disclaimer above). If not please don't bring this moralizing
non-sense. Narratives don't make for either logic or reason.

I'm not even sure you understand philosophy or the epistemological meanings of
the words you are so desperate to bolster these stupid narratives.

See, the thing is, you don't invalidate any of what I said.

\- 90% of India's population does not speak English. This is not "mere
opinion".

\- EU uses 24 official languages; companies work in the language of the state.
East-Asian companies work and do engineering in their respective languages.
Unless you claim Indian languages are somehow intrinsically "useless", your
narrative is full of BS.

\- It's not about "speaking" as was mentioned earlier. It was obvious I was
talking about technical/commercial usage. I'm glad it's required in the Govt;
it appears this is only the case for low-level jobs. It looks like the
country's laws etc. (apparently even the courts ?) function in English.
Countries in East-Asia do engineering/business etc. in their own respective
languages, some borrowing terms from English, and others (like CN) going out
of their way to avoid them.

I don't mean language usage in the Kitchen; I'm not even sure how this can be
"economically useful".

\- You invalidate nothing written in the NyT article.

Your "argument" is essentially one saying, "ah it's too much work to keep our
own identities, so let's just adopt one of the old colonizer". What a pathetic
country, and what a fall.

Noam Chomsky notes somewhere the corruption these idiots in post-modernism
have on the third world, where intellectuals are desperately needed. I can see
what he meant.

~~~
kartD
You haven't answered my question, which is which company/country deals with 28
languages ? The EU isn't a country. Maybe you don't understand English.

And which company works in multiple languages within it's own home country?

Your wiki source relies on 2001 data (and only considers English speakers [0]
and you used as logic that 90% of India doesn't speak English, so it is in
fact, mere opinion - yours). When counting both users and speakers, the value
was 350M which is ~30% of the population.

It is about speaking. On a single team does it make sense that one does the
docs in Hindi, and the non-Hindi speakers do what exactly with this doc? Or
does he/she do one in each language? Will every college teach subjects in 28
different languages? Does any European university teach each subject in 28
languages? Do any of the countries in East Asia?

Your NYT article is an opinion piece, it's not admissible or inadmissible. If
you're relying on opinion pieces, your logic is already flawed.

Most of what you say is a misrepresentation of facts.

[0]- "Wikipedia's old estimate of 350 million includes two categories –
"English Speakers" and "English Users". The distinction between the Speakers
and Users is that Users only know how to read English words while Speakers
know how to read English, understand spoken English as well as form their own
sentences to converse in English.

~~~
ittekimasu
There is nothing new that you say other than,

\- some unqualified pedantry about the data being from 2001. "Oh yeah, we used
to oppress people for eons; they've adapted in the past decade."

\- The number of fluent English speakers is apparently in the low single
digits. Fairly obvious there is a nauseous class system in India, from the NyT
article (speaking English gets you a good job ? What kind of society is that ?
India is Anglo-Saxon ?).

\- I don't think India is "country" in the same way as European states are. To
be fair to Europe, Belgium today does work today with both Dutch and French.
As a cohort of people, EU, is much closer to India, in terms of diversity etc
(yes, I looked up the demographics).

\- If you wish to use the epistemological grounding of a European, you're
essentially vindicating my position: you have no understanding of the
language/concepts you speak.

\- Finally, I really don't want to continue this exercise in shallowness (even
the narratives are so shallow!). Asking me to answer rhetorical questions
hardly amounts to reason.

Good luck being a (medieval) WASP clone, and trampling on people's tongues
(see, now, that is an interesting narrative).

~~~
kartD
You've answered nothing I've asked (350M speakers which is 30% of the pop,
Belgium uses 2 languages and somehow India isn't a country) and then end with
what is at best a racial insult. You're free to have your opinions, but I
don't see the point in arguing with you. You clearly can't or won't read or
nor argue coherently and hurl pathetic insults.

~~~
ittekimasu
For the sake of posterity, the parent here is not contending that exclusion
exists, but is claiming that it is "inevitable" like "manifest destiny".

More resources on this ghastly society,

\- A book which basically arrives at the same conclusion: India is a
linguistic apartheid state ,
[https://books.google.com/books?id=QJpjhC6BuM4C&pg=PA124&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=QJpjhC6BuM4C&pg=PA124&lpg=PA122&dq=india+linguistic+apartheid&source=bl&ots=cU2vNuorrW&sig=XfLzzwwIWKbx-
iXNTaFez6Dsp50&hl=kn&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3rPna_4LOAhVIyGMKHRrADZ8Q6AEIQjAG#v=onepage&q=india%20linguistic%20apartheid&f=false)

\- India ranks in the bottom 73-74 in PISA (while China/Japan/S.Korea are in
the top 10; Vietnam in the top-20s).

\- India's literacy is < 80%, probably because there's no real opportunity
even if you're educated (and have the misfortune of not speaking English).

\- [http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/why-india-must-move-beyond-
en...](http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/why-india-must-move-beyond-english/)

I'm surprised there hasn't been a rerun of French revolution by the
proletariat; or may be India just doesn't care - that'd explain the
colonization.

~~~
gammaray9
Nothing is manifest, things change, but what is the optimal strategy for the
present ?

A question - how many east asian programmers write C/C++/Java programs in
Korean, Japanese or Chinese ? And if they do, do they have resources such as
stackoverflow and forums in their languages ? What about Spanish, German and
French programmers ?

Another question - what percentage of a population in any country is engineers
? Is it closer to 90% or 10% in above countries ?

Your points about equal access to opportunity are valid, but the assumption
that this is responsible for the GDP being low is not in my opinion - there
more complex factors.

In any case since you are feel this is important (there are relatively few who
do), please try to improve the situation in some way, rather than just
complain. It is hard.

In the first link you sent, read a couple pages down and it explains why even
half knowledge of english is critical to capture opportunities as they exist
in the present.

~~~
ittekimasu
I have no stake in the matter; it's fairly obvious I'm speaking to people of
the parasitical colonial class (bourgeoisie ?).

Your argument is no different from that "rational" @kartD. It's fairly
obvious, you don't even know the definition of a "language" is. If you needed
an answer, a google search would have done you good ("yes"); asking me to
answer rhetorical devices like "ah, but oppression is our only way towards
progress!" is stupid. Somehow no Indian has the comprehension to understand
why.

Considering the same thing repeated ad nauseum, I also sense strong doses of
brainwashing, or the Indian state employing a 50-cent army like Mao's men. I
hope for India's sake that it is the latter.

~~~
gammaray9
Well, since answer to the first question I asked is 0% and the second is less
than 10%, your so called arguments stand on wafer thin ice, which explains the
resort to name calling and 'fairly obvious' arguments.

Instead of worrying about India, I suggest you take care of your own (serious
lack of) sanity. There is a hindi saying which comes to mind - adhajal gagri
chhalakat jaaye - or, empty vessels make the most noise, which based on your
"long dead spiritual center", applies to you.

