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- Hacker News
- The first, second and third stages all being solid rockets also means India now has a global-range ICBM, with only a little bit of modification needed to make it storable in a silo. Privately developed, but I would be astonished if the Indian military isn't well aware of this new capability.by walrus01
- India has developed ASAT, which is arguably more complicated that ICBM, agni series, they developed. India routinely understates ranges and appear non threatening. Agni5 and 6 are genuine ICBM, and with little tuning could reach anywhere in the world. India's bureaucracy and MEA is beset with gandhian mindset who try to avoid confrontations and minimise belligerence, opposite of PRC wolf warriors I guess.by mayama
- India has had ICBMs for decades now.[1]
- I think it has had latent ICBM capability for over a decade now but the government hasn't allowed one to be created. Their pacing threat is China and to a lesser extent Pakistan, those are adequately covered by their current inventory.by seatac76
- The mil have had solid propulsion for a while https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni-VIby ghm2199
- India has had the ability to reach LEO and beyond for a while now. So bringing down a nuke anywhere on the planet wouldn't be that difficult for them. That goes for any country that has LEO launch capabilities. Of course miniaturization of the nuclear payload is another matter.by nirav72
- 4 stages feels like a lot of added complexity for your first launch. I assume it gives you more performance margin to drop weight/stages more often?by ambicapter
- A partially empty stage wastes mass on propellant tanks sized for the full load. The mathematical ideal would be an infinite number of infinitesimally small stages.by wat10000
- It's three solid rocket boosters stacked on top of each other and a very tiny liquid fueled engine on the 4th stage. I would be interested in what the delta/v stats/capability of the 4th stage booster are with 350 kg payload.by walrus01
- 4 stages is certainly a lot more than most rockets, but most rockets don’t use solid rocket stages. Solid rocket motors are generally much more reliable/ simpler than liquid fueled stages, but they can’t be throttled or turned off early which makes it hard to achieve precise orbits. My guess is the extra stages allow for better control by carefully choosing when to light the next stage. The scout family of rockets are also 4 stage solid rockets and probably a good comparison.
- India's space work often went under the radar. Im glad they're getting the success and attention they deserve.by vjsrinivas
- Does anyone know what they're using for telemetry? Over the launch pad you have a UHF link, but that offers infrequent availability after launch.
If I were launching my first orbital vehicle and I didn't have a hyper developed space program already, I would want to equip it with something like Starlink so I would be able to communicate with it even when it wasn't in range of my ground station(s).
by elevation - That's pretty cool. The phrase "3D-printed engine" stuck out to me as neat, too.by bovermyer
- Rocket Lab has been printing engines for some time nowby echoangle
- Extremely strong performance from India’s Skyroot with their Vikram-1 rocket. I can say that many in the space industry are looking for new launch capacity to LEO.by jdiez17
- A small but bright light in an economy where manufacturing jobs are hard to come by (https://archive.ph/Haj8n).by ghm2199
- Yeah obviously a negative news link from a place where you don't reside.by notLAYZ38
- It’s a strange place. They’re building out expressways and railways at a breathtaking pace (something like an entire Switzerland’s worth of new track every year), are simultaneously building out multiple nuclear reactors, exports and manufacturing are shooting up, but the cities still look like shit.by dyauspitr
- For those interested, just read a great book on this topic: When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62050244-when-the-heaven...
It profiles: Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab
by josefresco - this is Skyroot Aerospaceby 1e1a
- Only the third country to achieve this. Kudos.
There's another startup trying reusable rockets.
by sidcool - > Only the third country to achieve this.
What do you mean by this?
by rrr_oh_man - And with $160MM in funding at a $1.1B valuation? I don't know about their debt, but to get to LEO in 8 years on that little money is extremely impressive.by zbentley
- Other than whats publicly available, an interesting thought about this is how they were able to launch and create something within the highly corrupted political system. Every launch, stage and approval probably required sometype of bribe (even with the current governments focus on deep tech and scientific development)by Abh1Works
- you can imagine if they bother cracking landing back to re-use, it's KO for spacexby villgax
- Not too surprising; after all, companies have been outsourcing to India for the past few... decades.by userbinator
- I think that's about the ballpark of what is required for a rocket of this size. SpaceX and RocketLab raised similar amounts prior to their first successful launches.
- If you do all the work in India, you have low materials costs and low labour costs.
- I wonder what their cost-per-launch will end up being?
Can they compete with reusable American rockets for $/kg by just building disposable but very cheap rockets?
After all, plenty of other disposable things have outcompeted non disposable versions... Diapers... Pens... Lighters... Vapes...
- > And with $160MM in funding at a $1.1B valuation? I don't know about their debt, but to get to LEO in 8 years on that little money is extremely impressive.
Interestingly that's $5 million less than the the movie Interstellar cost to make.