
India's workhorse rocket fails for the first time in decades - unmole
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/31/16234434/india-isro-pslv-rocket-failure-payload-fairing-irnss-1h
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phaemon
There are a couple of dead comments that, essentially, made the same argument
that I've heard here in Scotland when there was talk of a Space Port being set
up: why are you wasting money on this when there are problems with poverty etc
right here at home.

The response to those arguments, at least here, is simple enough. There are
currently about 7000 jobs in the Scottish space industry and in the last two
years Glasgow has built more satellites than any other city in Europe. Yet, we
have to go to another country to get these satellites launched!

And I suppose the choice of phrase, "space industry", is what makes the
difference. It can seem reasonable to say, "this country shouldn't have a
space program" but it sounds far less defensible to argue, "this country
shouldn't have a space _industry_ ".

And so with India. This particular launch was for the Indian government, but
the article mentions the previous record-breaking launch of 104 satellites at
once. Of those, 88 were for a company called Planet, "a US private imaging
company". And the others were commercial launches for various other countries.

Since the space industry is rapidly growing with huge commercial potential, it
seems ludicrous to argue that you _shouldn 't_ be developing it. It would be
like someone 20 years ago arguing that you shouldn't be developing Internet
connections when you had poverty issues to deal with. How exactly will
avoiding hi-tech industry help that in any way?

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SAI_Peregrinus
Unless you're launching into high-inclination orbits you really don't want to
be launching out of Scotland. Anything going to GEO (quite a large percentage
of commercial satellites) needs to be launched from near the equator.

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mikeash
GEO launches are more efficient when launched from near the equator, but it's
far from "needs."

The Russians launch into GEO from Baikonur, for example, which requires at
least a 51.6 degree inclination. The latitude of a Scottish spaceport would be
a bit higher, but not enormously so.

For a less extreme example, there are lots of launches into GEO from Kennedy
Space Center, which is at a latitude of 28.5 degrees.

The same rocket will be able to put more payload into GEO if launched from a
lower latitude, but that doesn't make high latitudes impractical.

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blckmirror
41 launches with 2 failures seems pretty impressive to me. I think the current
Soyuz (Soyuz-2) is at nearly 70 launches with 3 or 4 failures (some partial)
and this is considered one of the most reliable systems made so far.
(Obviously not making an exact comparison - PSLV can only lift around half or
so as much to LEO as Soyuz).

Hopefully they will find the root cause and get it fixed before serious delays
to the Indus lunar rover launch are caused.

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rsynnott
Ariane V and current-Soyuz's predecessor would have better track records. But
yeah, 2 failures in 41 launches puts it fairly high in the league tables.

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TheAdamist
The faring failed to separate trapping the satellite which also may have
caused a lower orbit due to extra weight from the faring.

With the headline "rocket fails" i was expecting an exploding rocket.

~~~
jccooper
Payload shroud and other separation failures are actually one of the most
common failure modes in orbital launch once past the early space age. It's
easy to have problems with systems that you don't or cannot test before
deployment.

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templar_muse
I find it unconscionable that a country with nuclear weapons and a space
program still has a caste system, receives foreign aid in the 100s of millions
(£) and is 93rd on the social progress index (2017). Get it together India!

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navinsylvester
What is the relevance of this comment to the article?.

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statictype
There's a special version of Godwin's law. Any internet discussion involving
India mustn't fail to mention the caste system

~~~
navinsylvester
Yes. Next question would be - shouldn't India tackle poverty instead of space
program first.

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StavrosK
The standard response to that should be "shouldn't the US?".

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senatorobama
India had a good run. The technical deficiencies and unsophisticated working
environment would eventually result in failures such as these.

~~~
krapp
> India had a good run. The technical deficiencies and unsophisticated working
> environment would eventually result in failures such as these.

Odd. When SpaceX loses a rocket, do you write that off as American technical
deficiency as well?

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gaius
When things go wrong for Western companies people absolutely do blame it on
cultural factors, yes. Beancounters, pressure on quarterly earnings from Wall
St, to name a couple of examples. SpaceX through the sheer force of Elon's
will has kept some of this at bay, but he won't be able to forever, and the
cold winds are already blowing at Tesla.

~~~
QAPereo
"Through sheer force of Elon's will..." you don't really believe a word of
that, right?

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gaius
Why not? A charismatic CEO can get away with a lot, in terms of investors
giving them more leeway. Sometimes this is good, like Steve Jobs, sometimes it
is bad, like Elizabeth Holmes.

Eventually tho' SpaceX will be as constrained by demands for quarterly
earnings figures to start making bad, short-term decisions, just the same as
most Western corporations.

~~~
jccooper
Only if it's Musk demanding quarterly earnings figures. SpaceX is privately
held, with overwhelming control by Elon himself, and much of the rest by his
friends. While eventually he might be diluted out of control by (very large
amounts of) additional investment, that's not going to happen any time soon,
and is predicated on being significantly unprofitable for a long time.

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dsfyu404ed
Clearly someone didn't heed the reminder about ensuring the device is plugged
in and powered on. /s

~~~
samoright
Did you look at the address bar while posting this? It says,
"news.ycombinator.com", not "reddit.com"!

