Martin FL - 2/11/2006 11:18 AMI 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 PMIs 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 AMI 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.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 AMIndia 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 PMBut 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 PMChina has its share of poverty, and it hasn't stopped them from putting together a manned space program.
MartianBaseIndia was something of a rival during the Coldwar
publiusr - 3/11/2006 5:56 PMThe new GSLV III concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSLV_III
hektor - 7/11/2006 1:35 AMThey 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 AMFrench 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..."