Will India develop an air-launched space launch vehicle?

[Vahe231991]

The US is the only country that has developed air-launch-to-orbit space launch vehicles, which are carried by the L-1011 and 747, but no other nation has built and launched an air-launched SLV. However, Air India recently retired its 747-400s from service, so it's possible that India's space agency could retrieve one of the retired Air India 747-400s from storage and modify it for use as launch platform for a space rocket similar to size to the LauncherOne. In this way, India could become the first former European colony in the developing world to launch an air-launched SLV.

[SweetWater]

There's no reason India - or another country or a private aerospace company - *couldn't* develop an air-launched orbital launch vehicle. Whether they will or not depends on whether they believe the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

The advantages of air launch IMO are principally being able to fly to any inclination and having the potential to fly around bad weather. You can also use an engine nozzle more optimized for higher altitude for the first rocket stage.

Drawbacks are that your rocket is limited in size and mass to what the aircraft can carry, therefore payload is similarly limited. If you are using a commercially available aircraft you are constrained to launching relatively small satellites like the ones lofted by Pegasus and LauncherOne. There's no reason larger payloads would be impossible, however that would require large bespoke aircraft (like Stratolaunch's Roc) which are extremely expensive.

The fact that only two companies have developed air-launched orbital launch vehicles (and Pegasus, AFAIK, is effectively if not officially retired and has no future launches openly on the books) suggests there is a limited market for this type of service, and with small launch already (IMO) oversaturated, there probably isn't enough market share for another provider of this type in the near term.

About half of Virgin Orbit's launches have been for the a US military or national security entity; the unique advantages of air launch are probably attractive enough to those customers for them to kick Virgin a launch or two a year. If similar institutional customers were to have interest in India, it would make India developing this capability more likely.