Two Indian Rocket Failures

Technocrat

Two Indian Rocket Failures

zogger

Mon Jul 10 16:05:55 -0700 2006

Space+Flight.

manage

What with North Korea's latest failure with a long range rocket, this isn't the week for asian missile launches. India lost back to back critical missiles, one in a test launch of an ICBM, another with a satellite launch.

"The Insat-4C satellite weighed more than 2,000kg and was expected to significantly enhance India's telephone and business communications.

It came a day after a test-fire of India's longest-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile ended in failure."....less bang for the buck there

Two Indian Rocket Failures

AB3A

Mon Jul 10 17:53:17 -0700 2006
manage

Gosh, all rockets have this possibility of failure. The Ariane had a particularly dismal beginning, though certainly not any worse than the Delta launchers. There is a learning curve where everyone figures out where the real flaws in each launcher platform are.

This is the nature of the Aerospace industry. It's expensive as hell to test these things, so we simulate as much as we can, and then we find out how good our simulations were. Each of these tools has limits. And even after many successful flights we still may find a few bugs to trip up the unwary.

I wish the Indian Government perseverence. It's hard to accept the failed launch, but as long as they learn from the failure, they'll be able to build their rockets better than before.