The test flight is a validation of policy changes made in the past two years that have stoked the ambitions of India’s private sector. It is also a validation of ISRO’s working process – the space agency draws up design specifications, issues tenders for projects, and shares infrastructure and intellectual property – and shows India’s space programme, the foundation of which was laid by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, is maturing well.
Agnikul Cosmos, the company that designed Agnibaan, is one of ISRO’s “babies” – several hundred startups that have entered the aerospace sector on the back of the aerospace policy. As a result of ISRO’s generosity and policy changes freeing the sector, India’s aerospace ecosystem now boasts a wide range of skills that it can deploy without regulatory constraints.
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Agnikul Cosmos has just demonstrated that it is no longer a matter of playing catch-up as the Agnibaan launch vehicle is cutting-edge in terms of technology. The engine is semi-cryogenic, meaning it uses a mixture of extremely cold fuel (liquid oxygen) and normal-temperature fuel (kerosene or aviation turbine fuel).
Semi-cryogenic rocket engines are even trickier than fully cryogenic ones, which use a mix of very cold fuels. It took decades for ISRO to independently develop a cryogenic engine as the US blocked technology transfers. The temperature differentials in semi-cryogenic engines require extremely specialised skills in material science and software to manage properly, apart from excellent design to ensure perfect functionality. Very few countries possess stable semi-cryogenic technology.
3D-printed launch vehicle
Just as impressively, the fabrication is done through single-shell 3D printing – a global first. 3D printing works by extruding material from the printer to create a three-dimensional object, just like a normal printer extrudes ink to create an image or a text document. It can be used to make guns, cars and houses and, as Agnibaan has just demonstrated, space launch vehicles.
One big advantage of 3D printing is that new units can be produced very quickly once the design is set. Agnikul claims it can produce a new launch vehicle to customer specifications within two weeks. That’s incredible, asit it takes more than six months (often over a year) to make a launch vehicle by conventional means.
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The 3D-printed design also offers flexibility, which the company is touting as a unique selling point. By switching scales (printing larger or smaller) and changing the number of engines, the design can be used to put a tiny payload (30 kg) or a large one (300 kg) into space cost-effectively.
The company also says it can offer multiple engine configurations (anywhere from 1 to 7 engines) and multiple launch ports (up to 10 different payloads can be put into orbit by a single vehicle from 10 different launchports). This, too, is possible because of the flexibility of 3D printing.
Adding to the flexibility of the overall system, the 14,000-kg Agnibaan vehicle is launched from Dhanush, a mobile launch pedestal designed by Agnikul that can be moved anywhere easily.
The future’s bright for Indian aerospace
Right now, this is a tech demonstration and the company will have to prove it can successfully go commercial. In future it will surely look at larger configurations, higher payloads, and so on, and could become a player in the global aerospace market alongside other Indian aerospace companies and general engineering firms such as Larsen & Toubro, Bharat Forge and Bharat Electronics.
Elon Musk is reported to be in talks with several Indian outfits as SpaceX looks to plug gaps and reduce costs in its value chain. India is also a signatory to the Artemis Accords, which means it is in a cooperative relationship with NASA. That in turn means Indian companies could be eligible to bid for some NASA tenders, and to receive intellectual property from the US space agency.
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Aerospace and its close relative, defence, are large and growing industries. Global communications flow through satellites, and ISRO itself provides a range of services such as weather monitoring, crop sciences and road-alignment mapping. Even Zomato and Uber depend on satellites for accurate location information.
Technologies developed for space have been deployed in areas as diverse as robotics, solar power, water and sewage recycling, electronics, medical science, fashion and gyms (most modern gym equipment was developed for astronauts).
India has a big advantage because of its large technical workforce. ISRO is famously the world’s most cost-effective space agency as smart Indian engineers cost less than their counterparts in developed countries. If the aerospace sector can leverage this advantage like IT-services and pharma companies have done, it could deliver a big boost to exports and India’s own aerospace industry.
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