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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. Or you can buy it directly from the author and get an autographed copy.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. Or you can buy it directly from the author and get an autographed copy.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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