India completes third and last test launch of its SSLV rocket
India today successfully completed the third and last test launch of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), lifting off from its Sriharikota spaceport and carrying an experimental satellite designed to test a number of new technologies.
This launch is three-plus years late. It was originally to take place no later than 2021, but India’s space agency ISRO shut down entirely during the COVID panic, putting a halt on the rocket’s development. This delay also badly damaged ISRO’s attempt to grab the smallsat launch market. While it hid in basements in fear of a virus comparable to the flu, companies on the U.S. pushed to grab that market. Whether it can now grab its own market share is unclear, but the increased regulatory burdens that have appeared in the U.S. in the last three years gives it an opportunity.
This was India’s third launch in 2024, so the leader board in the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:
81 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 51, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 66.
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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.
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India today successfully completed the third and last test launch of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), lifting off from its Sriharikota spaceport and carrying an experimental satellite designed to test a number of new technologies.
This launch is three-plus years late. It was originally to take place no later than 2021, but India’s space agency ISRO shut down entirely during the COVID panic, putting a halt on the rocket’s development. This delay also badly damaged ISRO’s attempt to grab the smallsat launch market. While it hid in basements in fear of a virus comparable to the flu, companies on the U.S. pushed to grab that market. Whether it can now grab its own market share is unclear, but the increased regulatory burdens that have appeared in the U.S. in the last three years gives it an opportunity.
This was India’s third launch in 2024, so the leader board in the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:
81 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 51, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 66.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows 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. 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. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally 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.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
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.
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