India sets June 5 as the day it will join the heavy-lift rocket club The Indian Space Research Organisation has set June 5 as the next milestone in the country's ambitions to build a heavy-lift rocket. That's when ISRO's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark III is due to hoist a 3,136 kg GSAT-19 satellite to a geosynchronous transfer orbit, the first time a launcher in the GSLV …
You haven't seen the expected price tag on an SLS launch then? More than $2bn per launch (20 launches are expected to cost NASA $60bn). Even the Falcon Heavy is thought to cost around $160 million per launch.
$160m for nearly 70 tonnes isn't too bad when the normal Falcon is supposedly about $60m to get 22 tonnes up. It's basically a slight volume discount.
Both those figures are also going to drop if/when SpaceX can get their recycled rockets working regularly.
Obviously though the best way to get decent tonnage into LEO is Project Orion. Admittedly the launch costs are going to be very large indeed, and you're going to struggle to find anywhere willing to let you use them as a launch site. Well I say that, but in reality someone in posession of a few hundred small nuclear devices shouldn't have trouble persuading people to do pretty much anything they tell them to...
I'm assuming it's listed like this to avoid confusion. If they said it had a lunch capability of say 4 tonnes, someone would come on board and say, thats nothing blah blah rocket can lift 5 tonnes. Even though that would be 5 tonnes to LEO and it cant get to GEO.
If you list everything to LEO, everyone can compare.
And none of the launchers go to GEO anyway, they all go to a GTO and the payload burns some fuel to get into GEO.
So much of the GEO capability depends on the capability of the specific payload - some are happy to spend more fuel, or have more efficient engines.
All the launchers could put an inert lump of cheese into LEO, so it's genuinely comparable.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have two launcher families, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). Both launcher types can deliver payloads into LEO and GEO. The new Mk3 GSLV will be the most capable of all its launchers assuming it works but it is still well behind the Ariane V and the Falcon 9 in mass-to-orbit.
ISRO have shown they can put satellites into all of the usual orbital slots -- LEO, GEO, polar, sun-synchronous and they have even successfully launched Lunar and interplanetary probes but their existing launchers are unsophisticated designs -- the PSLV has four stages, for example.
They don't *need* to be sophisticated. They just need to be cheap and reliable. The payload to orbit may be lower than the current Ariane 5, but they *cost* per kg-to-orbit is going to be a very competitive proposition they'll offer. What's more, the LVM3 will scale up to 6+ tons to GTO once they swap the lower Vikas engines with their new LOX/RP1 one.
ISRO today has a roughly $1 billion budget. It used to be about half that, or less. Their design sophistication is imposed by costs - they simply reused a set of basic competencies built up from prior designs. Once they have their new LOX/RP1 engine running, they'll entirely ditch hypergolic fuels and switch to a TSTO approach using LOX/RP1 plus SRB lower stage with either of their two new LOX/LH2 engines for the upper stage.
The majority of satellites launched and in orbit are by Ariane. Yet no mention, despite listing systems that have never flown? A very anti-European article.
On 4 May 2017, Ariane 5 performed its 78th consecutive successful mission since 2003
Carries 6.9KT to 20KT depending on orbit.
Current Falcon 9
As of 15 May 2017 the Falcon 9 Full Thrust version has flown 14 missions, all successful. The first stage was recovered in 10 of them. One Falcon 9 Full Thrust was destroyed during pre-launch tests and is not counted as one of the flown missions. Similar or maybe 10% more capacity to Ariane. US subsidised.
Bit of a cheat not counting failed launches. How many were commercial?
> The majority of satellites launched and in orbit are by Ariane.
That is unlikely
> Falcon 9 ... US subsidised.
Are you implying that Ariane is NOT subsidized?
The correct comparison is with .... hmmm... Delta IV Heavy?
Check it out.
Arianespace is a multinational company with headquarters in France. It was the first commercial firm to offer launch services, founded 1980. Its current launch vehicles are the heavy-launch Ariane 5, the medium-launch Soyuz-2, and the light-launch Vega. A new heavy launcher, Ariane 6, is under development and expected to start operations around 2020.
As of early 2017, the company has sent more than 550 satellites in space.
The European space port in French Guyana was started in the 1960s and now has a launch pad for the Russians.
They do have some subsidies, to compete with USA subsidies of Boeing, NASA, ULA and Space X.
Some major milestones in the 2000s include the last flight of Ariane 4 (2003), the launch of the Rosetta comet mission (2004), the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) launch to the International Space Station (2008) and the launch of the Herschel Space Telescope (2009).
Since 2010, Arianespace has launched spacecraft for Europe's Galileo satellite positioning system, debuted the Vega and Soyuz rockets, and completed the ATV launches to the space station. As of February 2017, Vega has flown nine times (all successfully) and Soyuz 42 times (with 41 successes.)
Space isn't just USA and Russia. China is catching up with USA. Japan and Israel are active. NZ has done a test. India is doing VERY well (see Mars). UK is the ONLY nation to achieve space capability and abandon it. Also only nation to achieve nuclear weapons and reactors and abandon both.
Over 50% of commercial satellites in operation have been launched by Arianespace.
http://www.arianespace.com/about-us/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianespace
It's separate to the amazing ESA. ESA is part funded by EU, but not all members are in EU, and not all EU members are members of ESA. Canada is an associate member of the ESA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency
CNES is the French equivalent to NASA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNES
It's a shame that an article about the wonderful achievements of India should give so much prominence to USA (who are BRILLIANT at PR) and no mention of Arianespace, the world's oldest and most successful commercial space launch company.
not necessarily anti European, but Pro Indian.
Europe owes India bigtime anyways. Allowing them a little flag waving after massive exploitation that barely ended a quarter century ago is the least we can do.
No need to crow if you've really got success, celebrate the newest addition to the Orbital High Club instead! the more the merrier.
the only way to have space without borders, is to have launchers everywhere.
"Europe owes India bigtime anyways. Allowing them a little flag waving after massive exploitation that barely ended a quarter century ago is the least we can do."
If anyone owes India, it would be just the UK. What massive exploitation of India ended in the 1990s?
Germany, France Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy had their own playgrounds where sins were committed. (did I miss any European players?)
Germany, France Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy had their own playgrounds where sins were committed. (did I miss any European players?)
Denmark. The US Virgin Islands used to be Danish. The Danes also owned Iceland and still own Greenland. Exactly why anyone would want Iceland or Greenland is left as an exercise for the student.
And, recall, Goa in India was Portuguese until about 1966, when the Indians marched in and dared the Portuguese to do something. Which they couldn't, as Egypt refused to let them pass through Suez, and they didn't have any ships with enough range to get there going past the Cape of Good Hope. In theory they could have stopped in Angola and Mozambique, but as a practical matter that wasn't on either, there being a bit of a revolution going on in both places. There would be a reason why there's an AK-47 on the Mozambican flag...
Heavy is defined as 20,000 - 50,000 kg to LEO. Medium is 2,000 - 20,000 kg, Super Heavy is over 50,000 kg. So the Indian rocket is a Medium, as is the Soyuz. The Falcon 9 FT is a Heavy and the Falcon Heavy is actually a Super Heavy (at least according to the NASA classification system).
There isn't a standard definition for what is heavy. The rule of thumb has been that anything over 20 tonnes to LEO was labelled heavy.
Recent developments are pushing the lower bound of what we call heavy though. F9 has been upgraded so much that it's payload capacity is less than 10% smaller than the original FH design. I expect by 2025 heavy lift will be changed to refer only to rockets above your 50 tonne number.
You're not wrong, just ahead of your time. More importantly, your point point that 8 tonnes to LEO isn't heavy lift, is correct. Not that it really matters. The key is cost per kg.
The problem at the moment is that NOBODY has 50T to LEO capability.
The last launcher capable of that was Saturn V (anything which didn't reach orbit doesn't count, so don't bring up Energia or N1)
The next rocket to beat that threshold will be Falcon Heavy and I'm sure that Elon named it so he can swear in public with a straight face.
"so don't bring up Energia"
Didn't Buran have a payload capacity of ~30T? And Energia put the orbiter up, so surely that would have to have (a) a payload significantly greater than 30T to LEO, and (b) actually have put it up there for Buran to have been whizzing about for hours.
That's my understanding, but I could be wrong. Anyone able to confirm?
"But how expensive to build one these days?"
That's an interesting question, of course, but one that doesn't lend itself to easy answers. But of course, my point is really that people who talk about going beyond the figures that *are* in the table need to remember that it has been done already. It isn't science fiction, and it isn't beyond the reach of our *current* level of technology. It's *history*.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
