It was heart warming to hear of the successful launch of Ariane-5 and successful deployment of 2 satellites, in the background of the failure of our own GSLV, just a few days back.
Not that India was the lone player firing duds at the sky. We have such wonderful company as the failure of South Korean ‘Naro’ in June and the more spectacular Russian ‘Proton’ failure on 5th of December.
The South Koreans have reportedly gone sulking into a huddle over their drawing board and would probably start screaming at the word ‘rocket’; such are their tensions with their Northern brethren.
They in fact are engaged in firing drills of their own. This the 1st firing.
8-O
The French President is the one sitting pretty with all his rockets firing to which witness is Ariane launch and Ms. Bruni (pun intended). That Ariane 5 launch was the 2nd firing.
The Russians ordered an enquiry and found out that the rocket failure was due to overloading of fuel.
The Russian President lost his cool and fired two rocket scientists - he just went overboard. I mean, if a rocket fails and crashes satellites, do you fire your rocket scientists? Total madness, keeping in mind that the worthies had insured the whole thing for 5% of the value - proof that they weren’t totally delinquent. Any way, that is the 3rd firing.
If you are waiting for the 4th firing, a la the Russians - don’t be. We, the people of India are not such fools that we sack our scientists and other hard-working people for such indiscretions. We know their worth is much more than 5% of the insurance money and they are irreplaceable - any case we never insured the launch.
So what if a former chief of space programme calls the GSLV proven and reliable and calls the failure due to quality control problems. He is retired and gone and we will eventually get there - alongside the Ariane.
I wonder whether a variation of stuxnet is on the loose, causing these ‘over loading’ and ‘quality control’ problems and whether the committee probing the GSLV failure will consider this too. After all, most of Indian PC’s at home and at government facilities run on Windows OS and perhaps in space too!
;-P
Ever since we started talking about the still being built Nuke Sub Arihant and space age technologies being adopted therein, I have a niggling feeling that ISRO has been impregnated with ideas from Naval Architects. Otherwise why should ISRO’s launch vehicles love to take a dive to sea once released from SHAR? BTW the official SHAR home page still informs us that the GSLV flight is postponed !?!
My Wicked Half whispers, ‘Perhaps it was neither worms nor carelessness, but just bugs. Bugs! Bugs! Yikes! No wonder the rockets land up elsewhere!’
Not that India was the lone player firing duds at the sky. We have such wonderful company as the failure of South Korean ‘Naro’ in June and the more spectacular Russian ‘Proton’ failure on 5th of December.
The South Koreans have reportedly gone sulking into a huddle over their drawing board and would probably start screaming at the word ‘rocket’; such are their tensions with their Northern brethren.
They in fact are engaged in firing drills of their own. This the 1st firing.
8-O
The French President is the one sitting pretty with all his rockets firing to which witness is Ariane launch and Ms. Bruni (pun intended). That Ariane 5 launch was the 2nd firing.
The Russians ordered an enquiry and found out that the rocket failure was due to overloading of fuel.
The Russian President lost his cool and fired two rocket scientists - he just went overboard. I mean, if a rocket fails and crashes satellites, do you fire your rocket scientists? Total madness, keeping in mind that the worthies had insured the whole thing for 5% of the value - proof that they weren’t totally delinquent. Any way, that is the 3rd firing.
If you are waiting for the 4th firing, a la the Russians - don’t be. We, the people of India are not such fools that we sack our scientists and other hard-working people for such indiscretions. We know their worth is much more than 5% of the insurance money and they are irreplaceable - any case we never insured the launch.
So what if a former chief of space programme calls the GSLV proven and reliable and calls the failure due to quality control problems. He is retired and gone and we will eventually get there - alongside the Ariane.
I wonder whether a variation of stuxnet is on the loose, causing these ‘over loading’ and ‘quality control’ problems and whether the committee probing the GSLV failure will consider this too. After all, most of Indian PC’s at home and at government facilities run on Windows OS and perhaps in space too!
;-P
Ever since we started talking about the still being built Nuke Sub Arihant and space age technologies being adopted therein, I have a niggling feeling that ISRO has been impregnated with ideas from Naval Architects. Otherwise why should ISRO’s launch vehicles love to take a dive to sea once released from SHAR? BTW the official SHAR home page still informs us that the GSLV flight is postponed !?!
My Wicked Half whispers, ‘Perhaps it was neither worms nor carelessness, but just bugs. Bugs! Bugs! Yikes! No wonder the rockets land up elsewhere!’
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