smoke or fire...
Cryogenics, the science of extreme low temperatures, has been a
tricky one for rocket scientists across the world.
"At stake was a 300 billon dollar space research and applications industry which was in the hands of five nations — the US, France, China, Russia, and Japan. Almost every major country wanted to put its own satellites in the orbit and they could do it only with the help of these five nations,'' says J Rajashekaran Nair, who authored Spies from Space: The ISRO Frame-up .
In 1992, India signed an agreement with
Russia for transfer of technology to develop cryogenic-based fuels. The agreement was signed for Rs 235 crore, when the US and France were offering the same technology for Rs 950 crore and Rs 650 crore respectively. "Documents show that US president George
Bush (Sr) wrote to Russia, raising objections against this agreement and even threatening to blacklist the country from the select-five club,'' Rajashekaran says.
Russia, under Boris Yelstin, succumbed to the pressure and denied cryogenic technology to India. To bypass this monopoly, India signed a new agreement with Russia to fabricate four cryogenic engines after floating a global tender without a formal transfer of technology.'
Isro had already reached a consensus with Kerala High Tech Industries Limited (Keltch) which would have provided the cheapest tender for fabricating engines .
And some more bits...
ecember 27, 2010 | Arun Ram , TNN
CHENNAI: Isro is staring at a crisis: it is left with just one Russia-made cryogenic engine and its indigenous version is far from ready. The launch of communication satellites weighing more than 2 tonnes into a geosynchronous transfer orbit, besides India's ambitious space programmes such as Chandrayaan-2 and the manned mission, need Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicles ( GSLV ) powered partly by cryogenic engines. The cryogenic engine that went up in flames with GSLV-F06 on Saturday was the sixth of the seven such engines the country had procured from Russia.
