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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (9932)	12/6/1999 8:34:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12475

India to test own cryogenic engine Sanu George December 6, 1999, 16:00 Hrs (IST) Mahendragiri: This sleepy little town, 20 km off Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari district, will take its place in the record books later this month when the indigenously built Cryogenic Upper Stage Engine (CUSP) blasts off for its maiden test. The CUSP, designed to power India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), has been developed by the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Its successful test will put India in the select company of only five other countries - the United States, Russia, France, Japan and China - that have achieved this feat in the field of space research. The country's first GSLV, to be launched in the first half of 2000, will be powered by a Russian cryogenic engine. The CUSP is expected to be ready for GSLV's third launch some time in June 2001. Although the exact date for the test firing is yet to be announced, present indications are that the CUSP would be up and away in the third week of December. "This is what we have been working for the last eight years," V Gnana Gandhi, project director of the Rs three billion endeavour, informed a group of visiting reporters pointing to a cone like structure about 5 feet tall and three feet in circumference. "It took other countries more than 12 years to develop this," he added. The test site is located on one of the many hills of the 6,700-acre campus that is bustling with activity. The CUSP would be placed on one of the two 24-metre tall test stands weighing 350 tonnes. For the final countdown, the control will be handed over to computers 10 minutes before actual firing. The computer system is capable of monitoring about 800 parameters and would control 450 valves using almost the same number of commands. According to S Vasantha, director of LPSC, "our engine would weigh 200 kg less than the Russian one, making the lift-off that much easier." "For the last one year our engineers have been working round-the-clock to vacuum the pipelines that carry the fuel (liquid hydrogen at minus 253 degree celsius and liquid oxygen) to the engine. A trace of air in any of the pipelines would lead to solidification of the fuel and could lead to problems for the firing," said D Sarverson, in charge of the test site. The command and control room, situated nearly 500 metres from the test site, is a bunker-like concrete structure with no windows. "The test director could intervene and abort the test if the computer system fails to rectify any mistake," said S Murugesan, head of the computer centre. According to Gandhi, this is the best cryogenic engine in the world in terms of thrust. "This would deliver a specific impulse of 461 seconds, which is the time taken for burning of the unit weight of propellant at a given thrust. The cryogenic engines developed by other countries could deliver an impulse of 445 seconds only," said Gandhi. Set up in 1982, this centre has also been involved in making the liquid stages for the earlier Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) which was first launched in 1991. India Abroad News Service