India’s space agency wants to build a space station
The decline begins: The head of India’s space agency ISRO yesterday advocated that his country build its own space station.
The spacesuit is ready. A survival capsule is on the way. ISRO has everything to send astronauts into space and develop a space station, all that’s left is for the government to give the money and policy clearance, said ISRO chief AS Kiran Kumar here on Monday. “We have the capability to create a space station, but you (government) have to give us the money and time to make this happen,” Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of 34th foundation day celebration of the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT). “If the government and country decides… we are ready. You need to provide us funding, policy clearance,” he said, adding that space mission is low priority for the government “because one doesn’t see any immediate use of this in country’s development and growth”.
Kumar’s comments came in the backdrop of Chinese media reacting to ISRO’s recent record launch of 104 satellites at one go. An editorial in a Chinese newspaper pointed out that “there is no Indian astronaut in space and the country’s plan to establish a space station has not started”. [emphasis mine]
Rather than focus on development that could increase India’s competitiveness in the profitable launch market, such as improving its rockets either by making them reusable or able to launch more frequently, Kumar instead wants to spend his government’s money and build a space station. He doesn’t really outline what he intends to accomplish with this station, other than demonstrate that India can match China. His focus instead is creating an infrastructure for pork and jobs for ISRO. The station will not bring in profits, which would be more useful to the country and its nascent private space industry.
This is what government agencies routinely do. They might start out functioning like an innovative private company trying to attract customers, but the lure of coerced government money always takes precedence in the end, and the agency shifts its focus to building pork-laden empires funded by tax dollars.
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 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
The decline begins: The head of India’s space agency ISRO yesterday advocated that his country build its own space station.
The spacesuit is ready. A survival capsule is on the way. ISRO has everything to send astronauts into space and develop a space station, all that’s left is for the government to give the money and policy clearance, said ISRO chief AS Kiran Kumar here on Monday. “We have the capability to create a space station, but you (government) have to give us the money and time to make this happen,” Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of 34th foundation day celebration of the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT). “If the government and country decides… we are ready. You need to provide us funding, policy clearance,” he said, adding that space mission is low priority for the government “because one doesn’t see any immediate use of this in country’s development and growth”.
Kumar’s comments came in the backdrop of Chinese media reacting to ISRO’s recent record launch of 104 satellites at one go. An editorial in a Chinese newspaper pointed out that “there is no Indian astronaut in space and the country’s plan to establish a space station has not started”. [emphasis mine]
Rather than focus on development that could increase India’s competitiveness in the profitable launch market, such as improving its rockets either by making them reusable or able to launch more frequently, Kumar instead wants to spend his government’s money and build a space station. He doesn’t really outline what he intends to accomplish with this station, other than demonstrate that India can match China. His focus instead is creating an infrastructure for pork and jobs for ISRO. The station will not bring in profits, which would be more useful to the country and its nascent private space industry.
This is what government agencies routinely do. They might start out functioning like an innovative private company trying to attract customers, but the lure of coerced government money always takes precedence in the end, and the agency shifts its focus to building pork-laden empires funded by tax dollars.
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 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
I’m less concerned that this is a waste, as long as they think that they are improving on the space station concept as currently built, but it they are just reinventing the wheel, then they would be better off buying a Bigelow habitat or an Orbital ATK Cygnus habitat version (proposed: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/03-Walz_Cygnus_Beyond_Low-Earth_Orbit.pdf page 12+ ) in order to save development costs. To this enclosure, they can add the interior and science at significantly lower cost than designing their own enclosure.
From the article: “they are also working on RLV-TD (reusable space launch vehicle or space shuttle) and air breathing propulsion.”
These seem to be worthwhile innovations for them to work on. An air breathing, reusable first stage could make launch to orbit much less expensive than even the Falcon series, keeping India on the forefront of the competition.
It would be even better if India’s industry were to work on these in a free market environment. However, their industry may have the same problem that US industry has/had: competition with their own government’s space agency.
Begs the question of whether the ISS has a legitimate purpose either.
D.K. Williams,
I think that the purpose of the ISS is legitimate, but the cost is higher than I think was necessary.
We have learned and are learning many lessons in the construction and operation of space stations, and we are learning a lot from the experiments that are performed on orbit. However, if we amortize the costs of just the experiments alone over the cost of construction and operation (excluding the value of the lessons learned of the station itself), each experiment performed to date has cost tens of millions of dollars.
I believe that had the construction cost of the ISS been as low as a Bigelow or Orbital habitat, the same experiments could each have been performed for a cost in the million-dollar range. I do not think that the other lessons learned are worth the additional cost.
I think that NASA went overboard with the notion of “me too” when they decided to build a space station that was larger than the Soviets’ MIR. Then things just got out of control when presidents and Congress decided to spread the cost around by inviting other countries to make an “international” space station. That resulted in more cost, not less, to the US.
Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men look like they were made by the mice.