India to test reusable launch vehicle

I saw the following article a little while ago on RLV news. I really had no idea that they were in the race.

India to test reusable launch vehicle
Chidambaram, Jan 4: India will test a hypersonic reusable launch vehicle, the first step towards building a space shuttle, later this year.

The Wednesday launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), carrying a Space Recovery Capsule (SRE) will help the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) gather data to develop a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) that will return to earth after placing a satellite in orbit.

"We aim to marry a Supersonic Combustion RAMJET (or SCRAMJET) engine, an advanced jet engine, with a reusable launch vehicle (RLV). Such a vehicle will take off by the year-end," B N Suresh, director of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) said at a theme session on 'Space Applications for Planet Earth' at the ongoing 94th Indian Science Congress here.

A RLV Technology Demonstrator, scheduled to be launched by the year-end using SCRAMJET and weighing 1.5 tonnes, would have aerothermodynamic characteristics with a speed exceeding Mach 6 or six times the speed of sound.

"Reusable launch vehicles reduce launch cost by one order and would be operated reliably like an aircraft with in-built abort and emergency landing capabilities," Suresh said.

An aircraft having SCRAMJET engines could dramatically reduce travel time and put any place on earth within a 90-minute flight.

SCRAMJET is an advanced jet with air-breathing engine that uses atmospheric oxygen to burn fuel unlike conventional rockets which carry oxygen along with fuel.

"Most critical to SCRAMJET propulsion is stable supersonic combustion, as at speeds greater than 1 km per second in combustion, it is like lighting a candle in a hurricane," he said. ISRO announced it had successfully carried out tests on the indigenously designed and developed SCRAMJET, a precursor to air-breathing rockets that would make space launches cheaper.

The space agency said through a series of ground tests, a stable supersonic combustion had been demonstrated for nearly seven seconds with an inlet Mach number of six.

The PSLV-C7 will carry into space India's Cartosat-2, a 680-kg mapping satellite, and the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE, 550 kg), Indonesia's Lapan-Tubsat satellite (56 kg) and Pehuensat of Argentina (6 kg). (Agencies)

Now Mach six is not the same as Mach 22, or whatever it is that you need for orbital velocity, so they're not there yet. As I understand it, the trick is to have one engine that can operate at subsonic all the way up to Mach 22, and this isn't straight forward, but India has certainly come a long way in a short time. It would be a wonderful irony if they were the first to be able to build an authentic Reusable Launch Vehicle