India Aims at Capturing Piece of Space Tourism Market

GSLV Mark III engine test (Photo: ISRO)

An article in The Economic Times looks at India’s ambitious space agenda, which include powerful cryogenic engines, lunar and martian colonization, and grabbing a piece of the space tourism market:

“Space tourism is something where India can play a niche role with its affordable solutions. However, this will take some time,” says Ajey Lele from the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).

But the fact that this is an achievable challenge was evident when he said: “India’s Chandrayaan programme was less costly than the private jet gifted by Mukesh Ambani to his wife.”

The previous experiments were achieved with a shoestring budget, which is just 3% of Nasa’s expenditure on space programmes,” said [ISRO Chairman K] Radhakrishnan.

Isro is now developing a heavier cryogenic engine, almost three times powerful than the home-grown cryogenic engine used in GSAT-4, which is going to be launched in April 2010. [Editor’s note: That mission failed on April 15.] Dr Radhakrishnan said that if they have to put a payload in the orbit now, they have to pay $20,000 per kg using PSLV and GSLV launch vehicles but using GSLV Mark 3, this can significantly be pulled at least by half.

“We also need to use innovative methods such as semi-cryogenic engine developed, in which we replace the liquid hydrogen by purified kerosene. The price comes down drastically,” said Dr Radhakrishnan. “If we have re-usability, we can improve the cost of putting the satellite in the orbit. We have a system of reusable launch vehicle technology demonstrator, using a small solid rocket. We are putting a winged body to an altitude that can fly at hyper sonic speeds and looking at reentry.”

If you notice a theme here, it’s that India has a significant cost advantage vis-a-vis more developed economies because of its low wages and costs. This is true and explains why so many jobs have been off-shored to the subcontinent. The country is using this to its advantage in space. How long it will last as India develops is an interesting question.

ISRO received a major budget boost this year to $1.27 billion US. Although relatively low by the standards of the U.S. and Europe, it’s actually higher than it seems because of the low cost structures. How this exactly compares in real terms to say, what ESA or JAXA are spending, is difficult to estimate precisely. But, it’s clear that India is becoming a major player among space nations.

The other theme running through this is that Chandrayaan-1 seems to have greatly boosted India’s confidence in its space program. Orbiting the moon on its first effort and helping to find water on the surface were certainly significant achievement. Yet, the mission had significant technical shortcomings, failing only 10 months into a planned two-year mission. ISRO was not very forthcoming about these problems, and the Indian media seem to have a short memory about them.)

If this were a NASA mission, there would be a lot of questions raised about mission success, quality control, and whether more money should have been spent on it. Although they cost more, NASA’s planetary spacecraft tend to be extremely robust, work as advertised, and last much longer than their baseline missions. NASA, of course, has a lot more experience in these things, and has learned from its own bitter failures.

ISRO will undoubtedly learn the same hard lessons. There are many pitfalls ahead that will prove humbling, as the recent failed launch of a new cryogenic engine proved.