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Episode 91 – ISRO and the Spy who was not

By Gurbir Dated: November 15, 2019 Leave a Comment

One of the most fascinating and colourful characters associated with the Indian Space Programme is Narayan Nambi.

In 1994, Nambi Narayanan an ISRO aerospace engineer was falsely arrested by the Investigation Beuro on charges of espionage. He was accused of passing on confidential launch vehicle flight test data to foreign nationals. In 1996 he was cleared by the Central Investigations Bureau and India’s Supreme Court found him not guilty in 1998. In 2019 he was presented with India’s third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan.

In 1966 he joined ISRO or INCOSPAR as it was known at that time. With the guidance and support of Vikram Sarabhai, he went to study liquid and cryogenic engine technology at Princeton in 1969. He worked on the early stages of the development of the Vikas liquid engine which now powers two of the four stages of the PSLV.

Some of the topics we discussed include:

During the 1960s he visited the Spadadam site near Carlisle. Today it is a Royal Airforce Station but in the 1960s it was the site used by the British Government test rocket engines and to develop Blue Streak – an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile.
In 1974 ISRO concluded a barter arrangement – no money changed hands. India would provide 100 man-years trained engineers. 75% of this time would towards supporting France developing their (then new) Ariane 1 launcher and 25% would be used by India to develop the Vikas Engine with the technology transfer from France. Indian engineers would also build, test and qualify 100,000 pressure transducers for France.
He claims to be the architect of this unique barter arrangement. In addition to being the father and architect of the PSLV.
He suspects that the intelligence Beuro picked on him to slow down the Cryogenic engine development and remove him as project director.
Speculating on the why the Vikram lander failed to make a soft landing he thinks it may have been related to the automatic landing sequence (software) or an issue with the braking thrusters.
He is an advocate of an Asian Space Agency lead by India.
He believes China space programme is not ahead of India’s because India has succeeded with the Mars Orbiter Mission.
He would like India and China to increase collaboration in space.
In 2017, he published a book on his experiences and a film based on the book will be released in late 2019.

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IAC2019 Heads of Space Agency – Press Conference

By Gurbir Dated: October 27, 2019 Leave a Comment

This audio recording captures most of the Q&A that took place on Monday 21st October.

Heads of Space Agency Press Conference.
21 October Washington DC

The agencies represented included

S. Somanath, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India
Jim Bridenstine, Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States
Hiroshi Yamakawa, President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
Sergey Krikalev, Executive Director for Piloted Spaceflights, State Space Corporation ROSCOSMOS, Russian Federation
Johann-Dietrich Woerner, Director General, European Space Agency (ESA)

The audio quality is poor in a few brief instances.

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IAC 2019 Washington DC

By Gurbir Dated: October 27, 2019 Leave a Comment

This year’s IAC conference attracted nearly 7000 visitors, exceeding the 6500 in Bremen last years. Two record-breaking years for the IAC in consecutive years. Many astronauts (including Mae Jamison, Charles Bolden, Sergei Krikalev, Oleg Kotov, Sandy Magnus, Jean-François Clervoy, André Kuipers, Buzz Aldrin) were present to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Apollo.

A couple of the themes that caught my eye included

Space Situational Awareness (SSA) – The precision (and thus the ability to detect potential collisions) of what is up there and where it exactly is, remains a concern. This will be exasperated with more space assets from emerging nations and the private sector in the coming decade. The mega-constellations will significantly add to the congestion.
Satelite Service and refuelling – Lots of new players are developing the early stages of solutions that will prolong the operational lifetime of the spacecraft by providing servicing and refuelling. The use of additive manufacture (3-D printing), automation based on Machine learning and neural networks are already being developed on earth and demonstrated in space.

A bit about the International Astronautical Congress. It was established in 1950 and its governing body, the International Astronautical Federation, in 1951. An annual international congress is held in a different country each year in October. Last year, IAC was held in Germany, next year it will be in Dubai, Paris in 2021 and Baku in Azerbaijan was announced as the host city for 2022. India, Brazil and Singapore had put in a submission for 2022.

The current IAF president Jean-Yves Le Gall has come to the end of his term and is handing over to Pascale Ehrenfreund. The IAF has several vice presidents including ISRO’s S. Somanath since 2018. His welcome address for 2019 is below.

China and Russia had a minimal representation at IAC2019. The programme and the exhibition list entities from China but were absent. It appears that the Chinese delegations were denied US visa at very short notice.

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.