Why Doesn’t ISRO Develop Reusable Rockets, like SpaceX
It’s much harder than said.
So, first a little backstory…
This is from a interview at TED talks[1] with SpaceX’s President — Gwynne Shotwell
CA: I mean, SpaceX has made the regular re usability of rockets seem almost routine, which means you’ve done something that no national space program, for example, has been able to achieve. How was that possible?
Gwynne Shotwell: I think there’s a couple of things — there’s a million things, actually — that have allowed SpaceX to be successful. The first is that we’re kind of standing on the shoulders of giants. Right? We got to look at the rocket industry and the developments to date, and we got to pick the best ideas, leverage them. We also didn’t have technology that we had to include in our vehicle systems. So we didn’t have to design around legacy components that maybe weren’t the most reliable or were particularly expensive, so we really were able to let physics drive the design of these systems.
So, at the end, it all boils down to priorities. When ISRO was found their mission statement was and still is as of today.
Harness space technology for national development, while pursuing space science research and planetary exploration.
SpaceX on the other hand had the neat opportunity of standing on the shoulders of giants like NASA, ESA,etc. So, they started from a clean sheet and with new priorities on mind. They were at the liberty to choose ideas, which took decades to convert them to reality.
That’s the key part why SpaceX was able to achieve the feat!
How can ISRO do it?
Actually, ISRO already has a reusable spacecraft in development phase.
RLV — (Reusable Launch Vehicle)
The biggest hurdle any space agency would face, is that these rockets are legacy. These things aren’t developed in days, they takes years and years testing and experimenting, with lots of money. So, in order to build a system similar to SpaceX, ISRO will have ditch the current hardware and start all over from scratch, which requires lots of budget!
Reusable Rockets aren’t easy to build!
Fun Facts:
- SpaceX was not the first company to land a rocket. It was actually Jeff Bezoz’s Blue Origin.
- But later SpaceX became the first company to land a Orbital-ClassBooster back to earth.
More to read on -
Why was NASA not able to build reusable rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX?
What SpaceX’s Successful Reusable Rocket Launch Means For the Space Industry
SpaceX’s self-landing rocket is a flying robot that’s great at math
The big challenge: Making reusable rockets for cheap space travel
Why Doesn’t NASA Develop Reusable Rockets?
Footnotes
Originally published at nikhilmishra.quora.com.
