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India prioritizes Mars over human spaceflight

For several years Indian officials have talked up the development of an indigenous human spaceflight capability that could be ready by the middle of this decade, with some even suggesting a human mission to the Moon by 2020. While the latter goal has generally been treated with a heavy dose of skepticism, India’s plans for at least putting people into orbit have come in space policy discussions here in the US, as evidence that other nations were moving ahead in human spaceflight while America’s ambitions seemed stalled.

The new Indian budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, released late last week, paints a different picture. The budget for India’s Department of Space, which is primarily the Indian space agency ISRO, includes about 600 million rupees (US$12 million) for its “Manned Mission Initiatives/Human Space Flight Programme”. That’s significantly more than the 132 million rupees ($2.6 million) the program got in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, although the original request was far higher: nearly 1 billion rupees ($20 million). The program description in the budget documents offers only a few details, with no timetable for such a mission. “The programme envisages development of a fully autonomous orbital vehicle carrying two or three crew-members to about 275 km low earth orbit and their safe return,” it states. “Currently, the critical technologies required for human spaceflight pragramme [sic] are being developed as pre-project activities.”

By comparison, India is accelerating its plans for launching its first Mars orbiter. The budget includes 1.25 billion rupees ($25 million) for the Mars Orbiter Mission, compared to 100 million rupees ($2 million) in 2011-2012, the first year the project received funding. The program would permit the launch of at least a small orbiter perhaps as soon as November 2013, the next launch window in the 26-month phasing of launch opportunities. The spacecraft would go into a highly elliptical orbit with “nearly 25 kg” available for scientific instruments.

The overall ISRO budget seeks 67.2 billion rupees ($1.34 billion) for 2012-2013, up from the 44.3 billion rupees ($890 million) from its revised 2011-2012 budget, but about the same as its original request for that year.

13 comments to India prioritizes Mars over human spaceflight

  • Robert G. Oler

    The rumor is that India is working with an American company to buy seats from a private concern…RGO

  • MrEarl

    “The rumor is that India is working with an American company to buy seats from a private concern…RGO”

    Seems to me India should also bare some of the development costs, especialy if this “private concern” is taking CCDev funding.

  • Actually, India announced a major slip in its human missions back and that it was not allowing foreign involvement back in December:

    http://www.parabolicarc.com/2012/01/02/indias-human-space-missions-slip-into-2020s-foreign-involvement-nixed/

    The Indian Air Force, not ISRO, made the announcement that it would handle crew selection for the missions. The process wouldn’t even start until 2020 or later. And foreign participation had been nixed. They’re going to spend the next decade re-inventing something they could probably buy from Boeing or SpaceX.

    I’m not surprised that everyone missed it. The Air Force announced it on Friday, Dec. 30, on the eve of New Year’s weekend, a time that guaranteed that virtually no one would be paying attention. They also focused on the agreement and made no mention of a slip.

    It was a clever way to announce a delay without ISRO or the Department of Space having to explain why. And, as usual, I can’t find any evidence that anyone in the Indian English language press even asked about the delay (or even knew about it.)

    It’s totally different from the way that NASA and almost every other space agency operates. NASA is very public and has a sense of accountability to the taxpayers who support it. ISRO seems to operate on a “we’ll tell what you need to know whenever we decide to do so, which is typically next to nothing and never.”

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    I have to agree with MrEarl on that – If India (ISRO) wants seats on a US commericial spacecraft, a few rupees towards the development would be a nice way of ensuring that they do get the crewed spaceflight capability they want.

    That aside, it probably says quite a bit about the cost of HSF that robotic Mars missions are considered cheaper than crewed LEO!

  • The only reason that an Indian Mars mission is relatively cheap is that it’s going to be pretty small and it will be launched by the only reliable rocket that India has, the small solid-fuel PSLV. Their larger GSLV, designed to put comsats into orbit, is wildly unreliable. And they haven’t mastered the cryogenic engines they need for upper stages after nearly 20 years of trying.

    Given how actually unimpressive Chandrayaan-1 was (thermal problems, multiple systems failures, needing to double the orbit before investigations were complete (see systems failure, above), and an early death 9 months into a 2-year mission), I’m surprised they’re trying anything as ambitious as a Mars mission. But, maybe it will work.

    I haven’t delved into the ISRO budget stories, but does anyone know the status of the Chandrayaan-II lunar orbiter/lander/rover mission? Last I heard it was being delayed due and maybe even redesigned to fly on a PSLV because of problems with the GSLV development.

  • Googaw

    “If India (ISRO) wants seats on a US commericial spacecraft, a few rupees towards the development…”

    Highly unlikely, and a poor outcome for the goal of cost reduction even if it did happen. The main reason governments get involved in the bizarre astronaut cult in the first place is national prestige — showing off national technological capabilities. They don’t get that from paying people in other countries to do the work for them. D. Messier informs us that India here is a great example of this — “foreign participation had been nixed.” Completely irrational from the normal market economy viewpoint of wanting to reduce costs and increase capabilities by increasing the division of labor and taking advantage of products and services already developed in other nations. But completely rational given the actual political motive.

    Now if these “commercial” (really government contract seeking) outfits spread their work around, building some visible parts of the launch rocket or spacecraft in say Bangalore, and then plastering Indian flags all over same, and if ITAR were revoked in the U.S. (giving up on the idea that our missile technologies are a security capability we want to discourage from spreading elsewhere), then it might be politically feasible. But then we’d have pork politics on an even grander scale, with these “commercial” government contractors spreading around their design, manufacturing, and operations work very inefficiently for political reasons, and subcontracting to foreign firms chosen by their government. These “commercial” firms would basically be transferring technology to their future competitors in order to stay in business today. But the even bigger problem is that the resulting corruption and waste would make even NASA and its contractors look efficient by comparison.

  • Robert G. Oler

    D. Messier wrote @ March 21st, 2012 at 3:30 pm
    “Given how actually unimpressive Chandrayaan-1 was (thermal problems, multiple systems failures, needing to double the orbit before investigations were complete (see systems failure, above), and an early death 9 months into a 2-year mission), I’m surprised they’re trying anything as ambitious as a Mars mission. But, maybe it will work.”

    to me it was not really that unimpressive particularly for a “first go” and in large measure dovetailed with where the Indian aerospace industry is evolving…nor really does the size of the Mars probe surprise me…indeed it seems like a good move.

    It takes more then just effort, it takes an aerospace industry and the Indians are growing one in a fairly methodical basis…RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ March 21st, 2012 at 2:14 pm

    “The rumor is that India is working with an American company to buy seats from a private concern…RGO”

    you replied:

    Seems to me India should also bare some of the development costs, especialy if this “private concern” is taking CCDev funding.>>

    why? the cost will be factored into the seat price…that is how it works in private industry.

    Companies that are taking CCDev funding are doing it primarily as a function of meeting NASA requirements that they are “paying” for…

    Robert

  • Frrank Glover

    @ Mr Earl:

    “Seems to me India should also bare some of the development costs, especialy if this “private concern” is taking CCDev funding.”

    If they ‘buy seats,’ where do you think the money will go? Somehow I doubt that this would this be the very first time a company plowed some of its profits back into its own R&D? Would we have to set up separate accounting to somehow insure that ‘all’ of it does?

    Let’s not make this more complicated than it has to be…

  • MrEarl

    Just looking for another funding stream. It would be nice if Bigalow coughed up some cash too.
    For the CCDev funds I hope NASA will be getting a deep discount on seats.

  • India and ISRO are almost always 20 years behind any goal they announce. You have to look at their budgets and determine what is logical.

    The only logical path is for ISRO to complete development of the new GSLV Mk III launcher that can lift over 10 tons to LEO and to complete their Semi-Cryogenic engine and Cryogenic engine programs before allocating serious budget to human spaceflight. They can’t afford any other path before 2020.

    Krunichev will probably help India build the LH2 upper stage for the GSLV III (as they have for the GSLV I) and India will probably also get Russian help on their 200-ton thrust Semi-Cryo LOX/Kerosene staged combustion engine. It may be a copy of the RD-191 or RD-120 engines. This will increase GSLV III performance to 15-tons to LEO which is what India needs to launch a respectable 6-person space capsule.

    The Indians would logically copy or partner with the Russians to build a 6 person spacecraft similiar to the Russian PTK NP some time well after 2020 when the Indians and Russian can afford it. Right now, India must focus their limited resources on the GSLV III and basic rocket engine technology development.

    Don’t believe press releases from ISRO, because they are often silly and wrong.

  • Frank Glover

    “Just looking for another funding stream. It would be nice if Bigalow coughed up some cash too.”

    Why? They would already be providing a *market* to the transportation providers beyond ISS. And higher launch rates benefit all users.

    “For the CCDev funds I hope NASA will be getting a deep discount on seats.”

    That, however, just might be reasonable…

  • Robert:

    Chandrayaan-I wasn’t a bad mission for a first attempt. That’s true.

    It was the way these guys sold it the Indian public. ISRO downplayed the problems and portrayed the mission as going much better than it did. And the agency outright lied at times. After a systems failure they had to doubled the orbit to control the vehicle. Suddenly, the scientists involved (including the ones in the U.S.) were trying to figure out why all their data were suddenly decayed. What’s going on here? ISRO said they were done collecting data at the lower altitude (after five or six months!). Absolutely not true.

    After the mission failed after 9 months, the ISRO chairman was running around saying the spacecraft had returned 110 percent of the planned data (or something along those lines). Not even close. The confirmation of water on the moon really saved that agency from a much more rigorous, public examination of how well that mission went.

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