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India hires private companies to build satellite

The competition heats up: For the first time India’s space agency ISRO has signed a deal with a private consortium of private companies to have them build satellites.

The contract signed on Friday includes assembly, integration and testing (AIT) of two spare navigation satellites consecutively in around 18 months. It was signed between M. Annadurai, Director of ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), and the consortium lead, Alpha Design Technologies P Ltd. ISAC assembles the country’s satellites for communication, remote sensing and navigation.

From the third year, Indian industry could expect competitive bids for a new lot of spacecraft of 300-500-kg class, perhaps five a year, for both ISRO and for export, Col. H.S. Shankar (retd), CMD of Alpha Design, told The Hindu. This is the first time that ISRO has outsourced an entire satellite to industry, said Col. Shankar .

The Modi government appears to be trying here to emulate NASA in putting private companies in charge of construction, rather than having things designed and built in-house by ISRO. This is a very good sign. If they do it now, in the early days of their space effort, they can reduce ISRO’s ability to grow into a large bureaucracy with its own vested interests.

Genesis cover

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

One comment

  • LocalFluff

    Isn’t it Modi who is personally interested in space flight and personally ordered that the MOM spacecraft would carry a methane detector? The one that malfunctioned by design.

    India’s sudden money reform, where all high denomination bills are declared not to be money any more and only can be exchanged into lower denominations if one can prove that they have been honestly earned and taxed. Many millions of Indians were ruined over night. The crash in public demand for goods have forced manufacturing companies to mass layoffs and production stops. People are afraid that other paper bills also will be declared worthless. Total financial meltdown. And the purpose is to get rid of the huge black sector. But that represent a very large share of all value creation in India. Without it they’ll have the deepest depression ever. That single political decision can very well cause a global financial crisis and recession, and in any case the severest of depressions in India, just over night, by the governments conscious decision. Modi has proven that he is totally stupid, one of the stupidest political leaders in world history. He’s probably considering starting a surprise nuclear war on the US too now, also that without any reason or thought to it. Any good decision he makes is pure luck.

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