The Hindu : Front Page : Reusable launch vehicle (TD) lift-off in 2008

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 25, 2005

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Reusable launch vehicle (TD) lift-off in 2008

T.S. Subramanian

To be the forerunner of the Indian version of a space shuttle; a marriage of aircraft and rocket technologies

CHENNAI: A technology demonstrator (TD) of a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) — a forerunner of the Indian version of a space shuttle — will take off in 2008.

Unmanned, it will blast off like a rocket from the Sriharikota spaceport, come back like an aircraft, drop into the sea to the east of Sriharikota and be recovered from the sea, initially. Work on the RLV-TD project is on at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram. The shuttle part of the RLV will ultimately help in reducing the cost of launches.

As a precursor to the RLV-TD, a recoverable satellite, weighing 600 kg, will be launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in 2006. It will fall into the sea after being in orbit for a few days and be recovered by a ship. It is called the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment.

Demonstration units, simulating a satellite, were dropped into the Pulicat lake, off the Sriharikota island, and also into the Bay of Bengal and they were recovered.

Dr. B.N. Suresh, Director, VSSC, said, "The RLV-TD will be a marriage of technologies of a rocket and an aircraft. Our first RLV-TD will fly in 2008. That is what we are working on."

The cost of putting a satellite in orbit today, using expendable launch vehicles, was between $15,000 and $20,000 a kg. Expendable rockets included India's PSLV, Russia's Molniya or Arianespace's Ariane. About 70 per cent of this cost went towards building the rocket stages that fell into the sea and could not be recovered. There was a felt-need to reduce this launch cost to $1,000 a kg. "Launch of heavy payloads will become viable only when the cost of launch vehicles is brought down," Dr. Suresh said.

The first stage of ISRO's Satellite Launch Vehicle-3, called S-9, will form the booster for the RLV-TD. The Technology Demonstrator (the shuttle) will be mounted on S-9. After the blast off and reaching six times the speed of sound, the S-9 will separate and fall into the sea. After this, the TD will have a hypersonic flight and drop into the sea to the east of Sriharikota.

The project entailed mastering of a number of technologies. "We will go step by step," the VSSC Director said. The RLVs operated at high Mach numbers (several times the speed of sound) and the game of hypersonic aerodynamics ruled here, Dr. Suresh said.

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