Martin FL - 2/11/2006 11:18 AM
I think we need to hear more of this sort of thing from China and give the US a motive to push on ourselves.
hoorenz - 1/11/2006 10:40 PM
"A training centre — with a zero gravity chamber- too has to be constructed".
Wow....
Super George - 1/11/2006 10:57 PM
Is this overly hopeful, or could India do this? Will they need NASA help and could NASA make a load of cash from that?
MartianBase - 2/11/2006 1:17 AMAgreed, if it was a major national objective like Apollo was for the US, there isn't any reason to think they couldn't do it. However, given the much more pressing issues facing India at the moment, it's very hard to see that level of commitment.
I won't say its impossible for India to land a man on the Moon by 2020, but they don't even have a man-rated rocket and they'd want to get their program up to speed quick if they want to play with the big boys in Russia or the USA.
A formal project report will be submitted to the government before the end of the year and trials will start in early 2007.Does this mean they have designed the initial capsule and are looking for final go-ahead to fly it ? Unless they have actually started bending metal, the timeline seems pretty optimistic. There also doesn't seem to be any mention of this project on the ISRO site.
ISRO will conduct a space-capsule-recovery experiment. A 600-kg module, which will be hoisted by a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket, will orbit the earth for a week and splash down in the Bay of Bengal from where it will be retrieved. The experiment will be repeated in 2008.
MartianBase - 2/11/2006 4:17 AM
India has a wonderful culture, and great people but the government there is usually a mess, large scale poverty, child slavery, cast system....
Chris Bergin - 2/11/2006 9:59 PM
But India won't be seen as a "threat" - we need one of the bad boys to start pushing on this to give the US a reason to push themselves :)
vt_hokie - 2/11/2006 8:24 PMDevelopment wise, China is in a much better position. India is doing reasonably well, but it has nothing like the massive industrial base and huge trade surplus that China does. India is also a democracy, and so unlike China, would have to justify the expenditure to the people.
China has its share of poverty, and it hasn't stopped them from putting together a manned space program.
MartianBaseThe cold war is over :) and attitudes in Washington have obviously changed. In the 90s, we tried to block the transfer of cryogenic engine tech from Russia on the dubious grounds that it was missile proliferation (because as we all know LOX/LH2 makes great ICBMs...) Today, the administration is pushing for an agreement on selling civilian nuclear technology to them. Barring drastic changes, this pragmatic approach is likely to continue, as it is in our interest to promote the continued development of a reasonably stable secular democracy.
India was something of a rival during the Coldwar
publiusr - 3/11/2006 5:56 PM
The new GSLV III concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSLV_III
hektor - 7/11/2006 1:35 AMThis years budget was reported as $815 million here http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive06/Isro_030606.html so it would be more like a 50% increase. No completely implausible, but not exactly small change either. This years figure was reportedly a 35% increase from previous years, and includes GSLV 3 development.
They are announcing 150 billion rupees over 7 years (2007-14), i.e. 3 billion dollars for this spacecraft. Seems reasonable but would require an increase (100% ?) of the ISRO budget.
The article I read said that the manned/lunar effort would see a tripling of ISRO's budget. That's a major infusion of cash.
It'll take more than the GSLV3 to get them to the moon, 10-20 10t launches is unreasonable. They need a 20-30t launcher minimum. With 3x the budget though, the GSLV4 could begin development. Perhaps they could buy RD-171s or RD-180s and develop their own atlas/angara CBC.
hektor - 10/11/2006 5:54 AMSpace.com says that too: http://www.space.com/news/061110_india_mannedspace.html
French weekly Air & Cosmos says this week that the Indian capsule will be a two-seater. I wonder where they got that from.
Space.com - 11/11/2006
"While ISRO is just now revealing its plans, it has been quietly preparing for manned space missions ever since China put an astronaut in space in 2003. It has redesigned an existing satellite launcher – the GSLV — to carry a crew of two and has already built a space recovery capsule, said B.N. Suresh, director of the ISRO centre in Trivandrum..."