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Episode 89 – Carbon Nanotubes

By Gurbir Dated: October 25, 2019 1 Comment

In his 1979 novel, Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C Clarke imagines a cable stretching from the Earth’s equator to Geosynchronous orbit. He called it a “space elevator” and imagined it would be constructed from continuous pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystals. Bangalore based NoPo Technologies is now commercially producing Carbon Nanotubes. Could this material, one day be used to construct Clarke’s space elevator?

Materials that offer high strength alongside low mass are highly sought after by the aerospace industry. In the past, it was aluminium, titanium and Carbon fibre. The new wave of materials consists of Graphene and Carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes like diamonds, soot and graphene are allotropes of Carbon. Same atomic structure but differ in physical construction.

NoPo Technologies was established in 2011 by the CEO Gadhadar Reddy and is already commercially supply Carbon Nanotubes to Japan and elsewhere.

Some of the themes we discussed include:

NoPo Technologies was incorporated in 2011 and is probably the only producer of Carbon Nanotubes in India at the present.
Carbon Nanotubes have desirable attributes of high thermal and electrical conductivity, tensile strength, resilience to radiation and are extremely lightweight.
Nopo Technologies commercially produce single-walled Carbon Nanotubes of about 8 nm diameter and 2000 nm long.
Use cases currently include lightning conductors on aircraft, insulators for cryogenic fuel tanks, black surfaces for star trackers on spacecraft and molecular scale filters that can be used for producing biological membranes or even water filters for desalination plants.

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NOPO Offices in Bangalore
Electron Microscope
Carbon Nanotubes
Anto assessing a new batch of Carbon Nanotubes
Manufacturing vessel
Raman Specrometer

Episode 88 – India’s Private Space Sector

By Gurbir Dated: October 11, 2019 Leave a Comment

No country has exploited space for social and economic benefits more than India. It has always been a government-run operation, until now.

As in other nations, the private space sector is emerging in India. One name that pops up when discussing private and commercial space in India is Narayanan Prasad. He has been instrumental in forging platforms where all stakeholders from the New Space Community can support each other and share views, opinions and news. The platforms include Whatsapp, Blog, Telegram and a New Space India Podcast.

In this episode, he recalls his journey so far and his part in his own start-up Satsearch.co as its COO. Here are some of the key takeaways from this interview

Most private sector players build products designed by ISRO under licence from ISRO. Private Space Sector in India is subject to excessive government bureaucracy preventing engagement from private investigators.
An independent regulator is needed. Independent regulator in telecommunication opened up the market for private telephone lines. An independent regulator for the private space sector is essential for this market to flourish.
NASA has created the Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) to engage the private space sector companies. India does not have anything equivalent.
This year ISRO established the New Space India Limited (NSIL). It was established to limit the potential impact of the Antrix/Devas case.
Policies exist in India for Communication and Remote Sensing but no overall policy for Space – yet. Although a draft Space bill was published in 2017 for comment. That bill drew a distinction between companies that work with ISRO and those outside ISRO.
Two of many space startups in India include
- Bellatrix Aerospace produces Ion engines for in-orbit spacecraft propulsion. Ion propulsion and reduce the spacecraft weight and extend the operational lifetime by about 60%
- NoPo technologies are the only producer of Carbon Nanotubes in India. Like Graphene, Carbon Nanotube is an allotrope of Carbon. The unique properties include high tensile strength, electric and thermal conductivities.
Satsearch.co – now 3.5 years old based in the Netherlands and managed by a distributed team based in Germany, Netherlands, Italy and England. Had it been based in India – it may have been subject to restrictions e.g queries coming in from Suparco in Pakistan.
As with any new emerging industry – most of the current space startups will cease to exist within 5-7 years from now.

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Episode 84: NASA after the Shuttle. SLS and The Gateway

By Gurbir Dated: April 5, 2019 Leave a Comment

David Baker has been involved with the USA since childhood. First attending a US school in England and then studying in the US under a scholarship program sponsored by Senator Clinton P Anderson. He returned to the USA and worked for NASA on various programs from Gemini to the SpaceShuttle. He was present in mission control in 1970 and witnessed the drama of Apollo 13 first hand.

He joined the British Interplanetary Society in 1965, published his first article in the society’s journal Spaceflight in 1969 and since 2011 has been the editor of that very journal -Spaceflight. To date, he has published a remarkable 110 books by the close of 2018 with a few more in the pipeline for 2019 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11.

(Note – following questions on the veracity of his Phd, David Baker resigned from the BIS as the editor of Spaceflight on 25th March 2021.)

In this episode, we talk about the current status of the space programme in the US and the changing role of NASA.

The USA has not been able to launch US astronauts from the USA since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. NASA found itself in a similar position between 1975 (Apollo Soyuz Test programme) and the first Space Shuttle in 1981.
Why NASA dropped the Ares programme and why its replacement, the Space Launch System (SLS) schedule remains unclear. The first SLS mission, uncrewed – Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) by 2020 and the second crewed mission, Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) by 2023.
The successor to the ISS, the “Gateway” is an international project for a space station in lunar orbit. Only about a third of the size of the ISS and it will have fewer international partners.
The gateway is seen by Russia as an American lead programme. Will Russia participate with the gateway or consider a joint Russia/China human spaceflight programme?
China/USA cooperation in space has been prohibited ny US law. What prospects that this will change?

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Episode 74: Space Debris and Sustainable use of Space

By Gurbir Dated: May 18, 2018 Leave a Comment

Space, as the author Douglas Adams said “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is”. After 6 decades of launching spacecraft, some orbits are now congested with space debris from collisions and poor end-of-life mission management. This has now become a serious hazard and even a danger to operational spacecraft. With plans to launch thousands of additional satellites, the Mega Constellations, in the coming decade, the need for some sort form of “traffic management” in orbit has never been greater.

The Secure World Foundation was established in 2002 by philanthropists Marcell Arsenault and his wife Cynda Collins Arsenault. It’s vision of “sustainable and peaceful uses of outer space contributing to global stability and benefits on Earth” is timely. In the last decade, the urgency to address the profound impact of climate change on Earth has finally been (almost) heeded, the next decade will focus on space. The SWF is informing and leading this debate.

Dr Brian Weeden is the Director of Program Planning for Secure World Foundation. In the past, his responsibilities included intercontinental ballistic missile(IBM) operations, worked at Cheyenne Mountain and Vandenberg Airforce Base and specialised in Space Situational Awareness in the US Air Force and Strategic Command’s Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). In this episode, he talks about the key issues of space debris, preventing, militarisation of space, raising awareness of cyber threats to spacecraft, developing resources for the many nations that are now developing a space programme, fostering standards and policies for commercial uses of space.