Ceilidh

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

By S. SRINIVASAN
.c The Associated Press

BANGALORE, India (AP) - India said Friday it has developed a rocket engine that uses supercooled liquid fuel, a technology that would allow it to launch high-altitude satellites, send a man to the moon - or build intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The engine proved its endurance by firing for nearly 17 minutes on the ground, the Indian Space Research Organization said in a statement.

In a typical flight, the engine would need to burn only for about 12 minutes.

Such engines, known as ``cryogenic'' engines, are fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Rockets using these materials are primarily used to launch 2.5-ton communications satellites to orbits 22,000 miles above the earth. At that altitude, they match the speed of the rotating Earth and therefore stay fixed at one point above the ground.

Only a few countries - including the United States, Russia and France - can build cryogenic engines.

``It is a great milestone. I was never in doubt it would happen and I am happy it has happened now,'' said Rakesh Sharma, who traveled on a Russian spacecraft in 1984, becoming India's first man in space.

Sharma said the technology was ``crucial to the ultimate moon shot,'' alluding to India's plan to send a manned mission to the moon before 2015.

The advance could also give India the ability to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. India has nuclear weapons and tested them in 1974 and 1998.

A cryogenic missile cannot be fired at a moment's notice. The fuel cannot be stored in a rocket indefinitely because it is highly explosive, so a missile would have to be fueled before launching.

India's bid to develop its own cryogenic engines suffered several setbacks. In 1992, Russia agreed to give India the technology but reversed the decision after Moscow signed the Missile Technology Control Regime with the United States. Washington objected to giving India the technology because of its potential use for nuclear missiles.

Russia later agreed to sell fully built engines, without passing on the technology, to India.

India developed a rudimentary form of its cryogenic technology in 2001 and several tests were held after that to fine-tune it.

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12/05/03 16:09 EST
   

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