1st suborbital launch by Indian private company
Skyroot, a commercial rocket startup in Indian, yesterday became the first Indian company to complete a rocket launch, sending its Vikram-S suborbital rocket on a short flight.
I have embedded the launch below, cued to just before lift-off. The launch itself, which lasted only about six minutes, reached a elevation of just under 56 miles, tested of the rocket’s first stage, as well as a number of other systems.
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Skyroot, a commercial rocket startup in Indian, yesterday became the first Indian company to complete a rocket launch, sending its Vikram-S suborbital rocket on a short flight.
I have embedded the launch below, cued to just before lift-off. The launch itself, which lasted only about six minutes, reached a elevation of just under 56 miles, tested of the rocket’s first stage, as well as a number of other systems.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Well, congratulations to them. But to put it in perspective, this was state of the art in sounding rockets 70 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobee#Development and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(rocket)
The announcer, at the 38:29 mark, said that the rocket reached 89.5 km and that 80 km “is commonly defined as the start of space.” This is similar to the U.S. 50 mile definition of space, but a majority of the world considers 100 km as the edge of space, the Karman line. Because the atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with altitude with no altitude becoming an absolute vacuum, the definition of space is arbitrary.
The Karman line is named after aeronautical engineer Theodore von Kármán. He postulated that at an altitude of around 57 miles, the atmosphere is so thin that an airplane would be flying so fast in order for the wings to generate lift that half the effect for staying aloft would be the orbital inertia and the other half the lift of the wings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line#Kármán's_comments
I am not sure which airfoil, sweep and other wing shapes, or angle of attack this definition assumes, so different assumptions could give somewhat different altitudes. It seems reasonable to round out to a better number, such as 100 km, 80 km, or 50 miles.
However, there could have been any of a number of other bases for defining space. Perhaps the altitude at with a person can no longer breathe, or the altitude at which his blood boils. The highest altitude at which an airplane has flown (although this could change over time), or the highest altitude at which a balloon can fly (unladen, of course). Perhaps the altitude that a hollow aluminum sphere with the density of water could make an entire orbit of the Earth without burning up on that orbit, or maybe ten complete orbits. It is all arbitrary.
Reaching space may not be necessary for any particular mission. The mission may only require a certain time in freefall or a certain atmospheric density. I once worked in a solar astrophysics lab that had launched X-ray telescopes from White Sands, New Mexico, to photograph the sun. X-rays don’t penetrate the thicker part of the atmosphere, so the sounding rocket only had to get above a certain amount of the atmosphere and stay above the corresponding altitude long enough to get a good photograph. (There are now satellites with solar telescopes, so these particular sounding rocket missions have become obsolete.)
Edward-
good stuff.
“It is very cold, in Space”
https://youtu.be/5vwHLMs04XA?t=12