Indian manned spaceflight

[MartG]

Head of the Indian space organisation ISRO has announced their intention to launch a manned flight in 2021

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-india-space-mission-...

Interestingly, though they only have a fraction of the budget NASA have spent on SLS, this flight would beat NASA's Orion planned manned flight into space by a year

[55palfers]

I think a lot of Indians would rather see the $1.4 billion spent on the relief of some of the grinding poverty in New Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, etc.

ETA

UK still giving India £98M in aid ?

https://news.sky.com/story/fury-over-uks-unjustifi...

Edited by 55palfers on Monday 14th January 10:49

[MartG]

55palfers said:

I think a lot of Indians would rather see the $1.4 billion spent on the relief of some of the grinding poverty in New Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, etc.

You do realise the money isn't just catapulted into space, never to be seen again ?

It is all spent here on Earth - probably most of it within India, supporting various industries employing thousands of people. In the case of the US it has been shown that money spent on spaceflight had a positive return on investment way out of proportion to the amount spent, and I suspect the same will be true of India.

[Vanya]

55palfers said:

I think a lot of Indians would rather see the $1.4 billion spent on the relief of some of the grinding poverty in New Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, etc.

ETA

UK still giving India £98M in aid ?

https://news.sky.com/story/fury-over-uks-unjustifi...

Edited by 55palfers on Monday 14th January 10:49

Where's the agreed or like buttons.

Start with reducing the aid and then consider maybe modernish sewerage systems (i.e. no more open sewerage) or housing the multitudes living on roundabouts.

Just some issues that could be prioritised before space exploration should be considered.

[anonymous-user]

MartG said:

55palfers said:

I think a lot of Indians would rather see the $1.4 billion spent on the relief of some of the grinding poverty in New Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, etc.

You do realise the money isn't just catapulted into space, never to be seen again ?

It is all spent here on Earth - probably most of it within India, supporting various industries employing thousands of people. In the case of the US it has been shown that money spent on spaceflight had a positive return on investment way out of proportion to the amount spent, and I suspect the same will be true of India.

So is that possible return on investment money being spent on the poverty?

Would spending 1.4 billion on education and housing for the poor not also lead to a positive return on investment?

I’m all for space flight but when there’s such poverty in your country, it’s hard to justify imho,

[super7]

If a country is capable of spending $1.4bn on space exploration then it should not be benefiting from any aid from any country.....

Why should the rest of the world support their poor and homeless whilst they piss money up the wall on space missions! In no way is that acceptable.

The likes of Wipro and Tata make billions in profit, tax them to help the poor rather than building technology parks overlooking the slums and receiving aid from other countries....

Unless they're planning on colonising the moon and sending all their poor and needy to colonise it......

[Eric Mc]

El stovey said:

So is that possible return on investment money being spent on the poverty?

Would spending 1.4 billion on education and housing for the poor not also lead to a positive return on investment?

I’m all for space flight but when there’s such poverty in your country, it’s hard to justify imho,

It can certainly alleviate some of the hardships and risks associated with poverty - such as saving lives from natural disasters. It can also help with communications when disasters do happen.
A couple of years ago it was reckoned the early warning of an approaching typhoon using satellites saved between 50,000 and 100,000 lives - most of those lives being fairly poor people living in low lying coastal areas.

[Eric Mc]

ash73 said:

Anything interesting about their space vehicle design, or their science objectives?

They have released images of prototype manned capsules over the years. They are essentially truncated cone designs, a bit like Apollo or Orion.

[superlightr]

Eric Mc said:

It can certainly alleviate some of the hardships and risks associated with poverty - such as saving lives from natural disasters. It can also help with communications when disasters do happen.
A couple of years ago it was reckoned the early warning of an approaching typhoon using satellites saved between 50,000 and 100,000 lives - most of those lives being fairly poor people living in low lying coastal areas.

has been argued that the world is over populated and in some locations cannot sustain the number that are present. Thus leading to a continued crisis and starvation situation.

As others have suggested education and development is the real way forward out of starvation/poverty. Also as people get more educated, better health they tend to have less children and it balances itself out better.

[Eric Mc]

And they end up going to the moon.

India is a democracy and is in charge of its own destiny. It's up to the people in a democracy to change the course of a government if they don't agree with that course.

[Beati Dogu]

Eric Mc said:

And they end up going to the moon.

India is a democracy and is in charge of its own destiny. It's up to the people in a democracy to change the course of a government if they don't agree with that course.

Which we will demonstrate here, if the politicians continue to fk us over independence.

[s1962a]

70 odd years after independence from the British - and they might be sending a person into space. Not bad going at all.

[Eric Mc]

ash73 said:

Could that capsule get them to lunar orbit, if they had a bigger rocket?

Simple answer is yes, although you need more than just a bigger booster to get to and, more importantly, out of lunar orbit.

If you look at the Apollo system, you will see that they needed the huge Saturn V to propel the 30 tonne mass of the Command/Service Module and Lunar Module to the speeds required to get to the moon. Part of that 30 tonne mass was the fuel in the Service Module which was needed to send the Command/Service Module out of lunar orbit and back towards earth.
Looking at the Indian designs, they would need a larger service module to carry that fuel plus the consumables and provisions needed to keep a crew alive out to the moon and back.

The Soviets thought they could send the much smaller Soyuz, with only one on board and minus the orbital module, on a looping flight around the moon using a Proton rocket. The Proton would not have been powerful enough to lift the combined weight of even a stripped down Soyuz to the moon and allow it to enter orbit as the extra fuel required for lunar orbit insertion and then trans earth insertion was too much for it . The best they could do was swing around the moon without slowing down and just come back to earth (a free return trajectory).

[Eric Mc]

This is what the "Lunar go-around" version of Soyuz looked like. As you can see, it lacks the spherical module that you normally see attached to the front of a Soyuz.

Lunar version -



Earth orbit version ca. 1970 -

[Einion Yrth]

Eric Mc said:

This is what the "Lunar go-around" version of Soyuz looked like. As you can see, it lacks the spherical module that you normally see attached to the front of a Soyuz.

Lunar version -



Earth orbit version ca. 1970 -

Without the orbital module, and even with only one crew member, that would have been a tad cramped for the week or so needed.

[speedtwelve]

I see your point. Pete Conrad and Gordo Cooper spent a week in orbit in the above Gemini; on the next mission Frank Bormann and Jim Lovell managed 2 weeks. Conrad wished he'd taken a book to read.