Comment by vmarsy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vmarsy | Hacker News Reader

Very impressive, but It's not a fully reusable rocket (in the SpaceX sense), but it looks more like a reusable ship, like the columbia space shuttle.

> May 23, 2016 ISRO successfully flight tested India’s first winged body aerospace vehicle operating in hypersonic flight regime.

> In this experimental mission, the HS9 solid rocket booster carrying RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota at 07:00hr IST. After a successful flight of 91.1second, HS9 burn out occurred, following which both HS9 and RLV-TD mounted on its top coasted to a height of about 56 km. At that height, RLV-TD separated from HS9 booster and further ascended to a height of about 65km

So the solid rocket booster, HS9, wasn't reusable.

What looks more interesting to me is:

> The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent

Was it unmanned? On Autopilot?

Pictures and details: http://www.isro.gov.in/launchers/rlv-td

EDIT: according to Wikipedia, the ultimate goal seems to be a fully reusable setup:

> The demonstration trials will pave the way for a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) fully re-usable launch vehicle

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Flight_Experiment

> Was it unmanned? On Autopilot?

Note that the US Air Force has a re-usable winged unmanned spacecraft that plays a somewhat analogous role to the now-defunct Space Shuttle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-14/a-supersec...

The X-37 is launched by a conventional rocket as payload and just lands like a normal aircraft.

It's more analogous to a reusable space capsule than it is to the space shuttle which mostly launched itself.

"Mostly" is quite a stretch, since the shuttle is completely dependent not only only the fuel in the external tank, but also on the solid rocket boosters. Indeed, the solid boosters composed the majority of the launch weight and provided the majority of the thrust. For the first couple of minutes, the shuttle was mostly just along for the ride (just as the X-37 is completely along for the ride on the Atlas).

The key analogous role I'm referring to is the ability to deploy, capture, and return payloads to Earth, which is shared by the X-37 and the shuttle. It's not a coincidence that the Air Force developed the X-37 when the shuttle retired.

A very HN correction here but 'space shuttle' refers to the whole stack (orbiter and fel tank and SRBs) and what you seem to be referring to as the 'space shuttle' is actually called the orbiter, a component of the space shuttle. But everyone gets it wrong. Mobile makes it difficult to add links but its explained on the wikipedia article for the space shuttle orbiter, a distinct article from the space shuttle.

Agreed

Could you elaborate on what you think the current deployment of the X-37 has to do timeline wise with the cancellation of the shuttle program?

After Challenger the Air Force cancelled its plan to use the shuttle for satellites and opted instead for more conventional boosters.

I can't remember whether it was after Challenger or Columbia but didn't NASA also stop returning payloads from orbit from safety reasons after one of those disasters?

I'm sure the Air Force is using the X-37 for something, although they're not saying what, but I don't see how whatever it is has to do with the timeline of the cancellation of the shuttle program.

I know that the Air Force began publicly working on the predecessor (X-40) in 1998 (between the Challenger '86 and Columbia '03 disasters). Presumably they were working secretly even earlier. Also, the X-37's first orbital flight was in 2010 and the shuttle's retirement was in 2011. But that's all I know, and mine is uninformed speculation. Apologies if I expressed too much confidence.

In fact, on July 19, 1963, Joseph Albert Walker flew an X-15 rocket plane to an altitude of 105,900m, or more than 100km, past the Kárman line, i.e. into outer space. Compare that to the Indian flight mentioned in this article, which reached an altitude of 65km. In other words, the US had a reuseable space-capable launch vehicle 50 years ago.

Yeah, but India as a nation was formed and became independent only in 1947.

Yes, title should be: "India's first winged body aerospace vehicle successfully flight tested"

Also this was a sub-orbital flight, aiui that places far less stress on a vehicle since they don't have to shed orbital kinetic energy.

> The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent

Fortunately, that isn't directly applicable to ballistic missiles and certainly couldn't have anything to do with this project. /s

India's defense R&D unit, DRDO, already has a couple of hypersonic vehicle and missile projects[0][1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Technology_Demonstr...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos-II

So this is like the space shuttle in concept, right?

Right now it's more comparable to the X-37B. It's not quite clear what the further steps are going to be, India has floated a lot of concepts and seems to be still figuring out which can be pursued further.

As per current plans, this winged body will be the first stage of a future TSTO (two stage to orbit) launch vehicle. This winged body first stage will have cryo/kerolox engines for vertical takeoff, and scramjet engine for gliding down and landing on an airstrip after stage separation. This prototype was intended to test aerodynamics of winged body at Mach 5+ speeds and to evaluate flight control and navigation systems.

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