ISRO to test rocket that takes its fuel from air

ISRO to test rocket that takes its fuel from air
This technology aims to take oxygen from the atmosphere instead of carrying it all the way.”

After successfully testing a technology demonstrator of a reusable launch vehicle, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to test an air-breathing propulsion system, which aims to capitalise on the oxygen in the atmosphere instead of liquefied oxygen while in flight.

“The mission to test the technology would be launched either in the last week of June or early July from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The mission would be on a sounding rocket,” K. Sivan, Director of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre told The Hindu.

Generally, vehicles used to launch satellites into space use combustion of propellants with oxidiser and fuel. Air breathing propulsion system aims at use oxygen present in the atmosphere up to 50 km from the earth’s surface to burn the fuel stored in the rocket.

Lower lift-off mass
“This system, when implemented, would help in reducing the lift-off mass of the vehicle since liquefied oxygen need not be carried on board the vehicle. This would also help increasing the efficiency of the rocket and also make it cost-effective,” Mr. Sivan said.

The new propulsion system, once mastered, would complement ISRO’s aim to develop a reusable launch vehicle, which would have longer flight duration. The system, involving the scramjet engine, would become crucial while sending up the spacecraft.

“This is like satellites making use of solar power. Likewise, this technology aims to take oxygen from the atmosphere instead of carrying it all the way,” he explained.

According to ISRO, the Dual Mode Ramjet (DMRJ), the ramjet-scramjet combination, “is currently under development, which will operate during the crucial Mach 3 to Mach 9 ascend flight of the launch vehicle.”

ISRO is now evolving and testing various technologies to bring down the cost of launch vehicles. The national space agency had earlier developed rockets that can send multiple satellites in a single mission.

Raising the stakes with Chabahar

Raising the stakes with Chabahar

A trilateral transport corridor project, inked in Tehran this week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the leaders of Iran and Afghanistan, has the potential to alter the geopolitical map of South and Central Asia. Mr. Modi’s visit also put an end to years of ambivalence on the development of Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, the focal point of the corridor project. New Delhi and Tehran had agreed in 2003 to develop the port, near theIran-Pakistan border. But the project did not take off, mainly owing to international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, but also on account of inertia in Delhi. The removal of sanctions after Iran’s nuclear deal has provided New Delhi an opportunity to revitalise bilateral ties. The road, rail and port development projects, once implemented, will change the way India, Afghanistan and Iran do business. For India, the projects have specific economic and strategic significance. India and Afghanistan have failed to realise the full economic potential of their friendship owing to connectivity problems. The Pakistan link between India and landlocked Afghanistan has been an obstacle, given Islamabad’s tense diplomatic ties with both New Delhi and Kabul, and sometimes with Tehran too. Once the Chabahar port is developed, Indian ships will get direct access to the Iranian coast; a rail line to the Afghan border town of Zaranj will allow India a route around Pakistan. This will surely boost trade with Iran and Afghanistan. Besides, the proposed free trade zone in the Chabahar area offers Indian companies a new investment destination at a well-connected port city. India has already said its companies will set up “plants in sectors such as fertilizers, petrochemicals and metallurgy” in the zone. It will also supply $400 million worth of steel rails to Tehran to build the railway link.

From a strategic point of view, Chabahar is situated just 100 km from Pakistan’s Gwadar port, the centrepiece of a $46 billion economic corridor that China is building. Though the Indian investment in Chabahar, at $500 million, does not match the scale of the Chinese project, the Chabahar port will act as a gateway for India to Central Asia bypassing the China-Pakistan arc. The long-term potential of this connectivity is immense. The real challenge lies in execution. India’s record in finishing big-ticket projects abroad is far from consistent. Also, with Tehran becoming the new destination of global powers, India needs to energise its diplomacy to keep engagement with Iran on an even keel, irrespective of outside pressure. With the Chabahar project, India has raised the stakes in Tehran substantially, and also raised the bar on its own regional ambitions. It cannot afford to let bilateral ties drift again, as it happened over the past decade.

ISRO’s new frontiers

ISRO’s new frontiers
With the successful launch on Monday of the first technology demonstrator of the indigenously made Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has taken a baby step in building a vehicle that can be reused multiple times to launch satellites into orbit. The hypersonic flight, that lasted about 770 seconds from lift-off to splashdown in the Bay of Bengal, reached an altitude of about 65 km before re-entering the atmosphere at nearly five times the speed of sound. Many more such successful launches have to be undertaken before the RLV becomes a reusable launch system to put satellites into orbit. Some of the objectives of this week’s launch were to test the aero-thermodynamic characterisation of the vehicle with wings when it re-enters the atmosphere at hypersonic speed; the control and guidance system; the control system to land the vehicle at a specific location; and the hot structure, the basic body-carrying part of the vehicle with heat protecting tiles. The ultimate objective is to test the vehicle’s performance when it travels at a speed of Mach 25 using air-breathing propulsion. It will take 10 to 15 years, and several more launches, before ISRO readies a reusable launch vehicle for commercial use.

Building a fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle will play a pivotal role in cutting down by as much as 80 per cent the cost of launching satellites into orbit. In fact, ISRO is already well-known for launching satellites at a far cheaper cost than other space agencies. Currently, the bulk of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which can be used just once, as the rockets get burnt on re-entry into the atmosphere. No other space agency has reusable launch vehicles in operation, and ISRO has taken a lead in developing one. Learning from the mistakes of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in its space shuttle programme, ISRO will not use the same reusable vehicle to launch satellites and carry astronauts as it drastically reduces the payload capacity and thereby increases the cost per kg. ISRO will also use cutting-edge technology to shield the launch vehicle from intense heat to reduce, if not completely eliminate, refurbishment expenses. Getting this right would enable the vehicle to be reused within a very short span of time. If all works as per plan, ISRO should be able to break even after 25 to 50 launches, bringing down the cost of further launches on the same vehicle


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MoU between Indian Space Research Organisation and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi was apprised of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) for cooperation in the exploration and user of outer space for peaceful purposes. 

The MoU would result in setting up a Joint Working Group with members from ISRO and UAESA, which will further work out the plan of action including the time-frame and the means of implementing this MoU.

Background: 

Promoting space cooperation between India and UAE was highlighted during the visit of Prime Minister of India to UAE in August 2015 and also at the 11th meeting of India-UAE Joint Commission for Economic and Technical Cooperation held at New Delhi in September 2015. Subsequently, a delegation from UAESA visited ISRO technical facilities on September 16, 2015 and discussed on the avenues of building space cooperation including signing of a MoU. Accordingly, ISRO and UAESA, considering their mutual interest in expanding the applications of space technology for peaceful purposes signed a MoU in New Delhi on February 11, 2016. 

Moving towards a water pricing regime It is the only solution to promote efficient and equitable usage of water

Moving towards a water pricing regime

It is the only solution to promote efficient and equitable usage of water

A Hindi proverb, paisa paani ki tarah bahaana, warns against wasteful expenditure of money on the scale of water. Local adages are useful not just in enriching the popular discourse but also contain valuable information about the people and society. That India—a country ranking high on water scarcity—spends water so profligately is not just proverbial, but has now also been driven home with two consecutive years of drought. What is the solution? The proverb comes with a solution: tie the usage of paani(water) to payment of paisa (money).

Water pricing is the only long-term, sustainable solution to promote efficient and equitable use of this precious natural resource. But moving towards an elaborate water pricing regime is easier said than done. The first challenge will be to make a case for water pricing at a time when the most vulnerable to water shortage are already reeling under severe economic hardship. But without a price on water usage, it is they who will suffer the worst consequences of a drought.

A 2015 study by the International Monetary Fund concluded that water subsidies provided through public utilities amounted to 0.6% of global gross domestic product in 2012 and are “also inequitable, disproportionately benefiting upper-income groups”. The inequitable consumption also operates along other dimensions. With 18% of the world population, India has only 4% of the world’s renewable water resources. Moreover, the distribution is geographically skewed and the majority of rainfall occurs over just a few months, leading to reckless consumption in well-endowed geographies and during those months.

A data story by Roshan Kishore in Mint showed that inefficient agricultural usage of water and exports of water-intensive crops make India a large virtual exporter of water —not a proud performance for a water-stressed country. Especially not when the domestic scarcity of water has not been priced into the exports. A counter-argument will be that water pricing may erode India’s export advantage. But this argument ignores how the status quo continues to erode the competitiveness of farmers living in water-deficient parts of India—also some of the same regions where the incidence of farmer suicides is high.

The second challenge to introducing water pricing is the entrenched political economy in different parts of India. The severe water crisis in Latur was in stark contrast to flourishing fields of sugarcane, a water-guzzling crop, sustained with the patronage of politicians in the state of Maharashtra. Then the public procurement policies also promote cultivation of water-intensive crops, sometimes in those very states where the usage is most inefficient.

The third challenge is the inherent design problems associated with water pricing. This is because the government does not—as also pointed by Alok Sheel inMint—exercise control over the sources of water as it does over other natural resources . It is important to target irrigation water for pricing purposes because it alone comprises—according to ministry of water resources data—more than 78% of the total water usage in India. Also, irrigation consumption is an area where the scope for increase in efficiency is very high.

Sixty-one per cent of the irrigation uses surface water which will require metering and appropriate pricing. Groundwater has to be priced through proxies—electricity or diesel—used by farmers to pump the water. The strategy for pricing should be such that the cost of migration from one method of irrigation to another—or from electricity to diesel—offsets the difference in cost between the two.

An important part of this effort will also involve the separation of electric feeders for agricultural and non-agricultural purposes—already a focus of the government under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana.

Additionally, there will be questions regarding whether the pricing should also take into account income distribution of water users and hence be accommodative towards poorer farmers or households.

A relevant research paper by Yacov Tsur, Ariel Dinar, Rachid M. Doukkali and Terry L. Roe concludes that “water prices have rather negligible effects on income distribution within the farming sector” and hence “water pricing should be designed in order to promote efficiency, leaving equity consideration to other policy tools”.

Several countries including rich ones such as Singapore and poor ones such as Burkina Faso have, within their own constraints, benefited from tying paani to paisa. India needs to do the same.

Will Indian farmers benefit from pricing irrigation water? 

#ias #upsc #ukpsc #iasmains #waterpricing

What’s next for Isro’s space shuttle

Monday’s test is one of the many tests that Isro will carry out towards the making of the space shuttle, which is at least a decade away

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Monday successfully carried out a technology demonstration of its reusable space launch vehicle, which will help the space agency cut costs for future space missions.

Monday’s test is one of the many tests that Isro will carry out towards the making of the vehicle, which is at least a decade away. Countries such as the US, Russia and Japan have developed their own reusable rocket technology.

What is Isro’s Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstration Programme?

Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstration Programme (RLV-TD) is a series of technology demonstration missions towards realizing a Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO) fully reusable vehicle. For the purpose of experiments, Isro scientists have developed a scaled model of the Winged Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) which is one fifth the size of the fully reusable vehicle. This model will be used to test various technologies, including hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, powered cruise flight and hypersonic flight using air-breathing propulsion.

What happened during this technology demonstration?

RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, at 7am with the help of the HS9 solid rocket booster. After a successful flight of 91.1 second, HS9 burn out occurred, following which both HS9 and RLV-TD mounted on its top coasted to a height of 56km. Then RLV-TD separated from HS9 booster and further climbed to a height of about 65km.

RLV-TD began its descent followed by atmospheric re-entry at around Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound) and then moved smoothly down to the landing spot over Bay of Bengal, a 450km away from Sriharikota. The flight duration from launch to landing lasted for about 770 seconds.

What’s next?

This test was the first in the series of experimental flights called the hypersonic flight experiment (HEX). This will be followed by the landing experiment (LEX), then the return flight experiment (REX) and scramjet propulsion experiment (SPEX). The big test will be the Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator Hypersonic Experiment (RLV-TD HEX1) which will test the re-entry of the vehicle and also test the capability to autonomously land at a specific location.

Why are reusable launch vehicles important?

A reusable launch vehicle will be capable of taking satellites and other payloads to space and then landing back on earth so that it can be used more than once and is expected to drastically reduce the cost of space missions in the future. Isro scientists say their reusable launch vehicle could reduce the cost of space missions to a tenth of what they are today.

Elon Musk who is the chief executive officer of SpaceX, which is also developing reusable launch vehicles last year said, “If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.” In the past year Elon Musk’s Space X and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have made major strides in testing their reusable launch vehicles.

Why was the US Space Shuttle retired?

The US space agency National Aeronautical and Space Administration had a space shuttle programme from 1981 to 2011. The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low-earth orbit spacecraft. From 1981 to 2011, a total of 135 missions were flown.

But in 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board which was formed after the Columbia shuttle accident, called for a re-certification of the shuttle by 2010, leading to its eventual retirement

The problem of jobless growth

The one issue that 25 years of economic reforms have been unable to address is adequate job creati

Few can dispute the fact that the first decade of this millennium saw the fastest rate of growth ever for the Indian economy. Even fewer would question the fact that this was also the period that witnessed an abnormally low rate of growth in job creation. Take the two together and what have you: jobless growth.

This piquant economic reality has been, by far, the one issue that 25 years of economic reforms has been unable to address. And as the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) learnt the hard way, it can also hurt politically; jobless growth and allegations of corruption in public office were the two key factors exploited by the opposition to unseat the UPA in the 2014 general election.

It was during UPA’s tenure that the first serious debate on jobless growth came to a head. The trigger was the release of the 66th round of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data on employment in 2011. It showed that between 2004-05 and 2009-10, only 1 million jobs were added per year; in a period when the economy averaged a record 8.43% growth annually.

In this period, 55 million people joined the labour force. So, another way of looking at it is that a staggering 50 million failed to find employment—a vexing political challenge indeed.

Worse, from the UPA’s point of view, the previous tenure of its principal political rival, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, saw a substantially higher number of additions to the workforce. The NSSO data for that period, 1999-2000 to 2004-05, showed that the economy generated 62 million jobs.

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C. Rangarajan, the then chairman of the Economic Advisory Council advising the prime minister, very candidly admitted as much. “The 66th round results do leave us with an unanswered question: How do we explain a decline in the labour force in a period where both population and GDP (gross domestic product) were growing strongly,” he wrote in a piece published by the Economic and Political Weekly.

Tempting as it may be to dump everything at the UPA’s door, the reality of lack of employment generation and its effects is far more complex than what is made out to be in the rhetorical exchanges following the disclosures. In fact, it is this penchant for pat solutions that has led to public policy failing to approach the problem of job creation holistically.

For one, more than the quantity, we should worry about the quality of employment being created. Even the big spurt in employment generated during the tenure of the NDA were low-end jobs concentrated in sectors such as construction—caused by the big boom in housing triggered by Yashwant Sinha’s budget incentive for home loans as well as the spurt in construction of roads (specifically the golden quadrilateral).

Second, the nature of Indian manufacturing (which is being bandied about as the one-stop solution to the jobs crisis) is not employment-friendly. Most of them are automated and any employment is highly skilled. Yes, they will contribute to growth, but not necessarily to employment.

Third, the education system needs to be revamped to create the desired skill-sets. At present, the education system is failing miserably in delivering even whatever it is designed to. An Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published by the non-profit Pratham Education Foundation in 2014 revealed the following:

* Nationally, the proportion of students in Class III able to read at least a paragraph of a Class I textbook is still abysmally low. In 2013, only two out of five children could achieve this standard.

* Similarly, the proportion of children in Class V at the all-India level who could read a Class II textbook remained unchanged at the level of 47%.

* Nationally, only one in four children in Class V could solve a three-digit by one-digit division problem.

Fourth, Indians are generally risk-averse and hence not inclined to encourage entrepreneurship, often a more workable alternative to a salaried job. As an investment banker observed, at every stage of life—from school to college and finally in employment (ideally on a salary and, of course, guaranteed tenure)—the inherent objective of an average Indian, especially among the middle class, is to eliminate or at the least mitigate risk.

Clearly, there are structural fixes needed to address job creation in the Indian economy. But the challenge is what to do in the intervening period—given that 12 million join the labour force every year. The NDA may have hit on a stop-gap solution by pulling out all the stops with its focus on encouraging small enterprise—specifically targeting Dalits and women through the Stand Up India programme—by facilitating loans (lack of credit has been one of the biggest impediments facing potential entrepreneurs). The NDA is acutely aware of the risk of failure of its strategy.

With job creation likely to be a key issue in the next general election, especially in an aspirational India, politicians on both sides of the aisle are on notice.

#ias #upsc #upscmains #ukpsc

Potentially cancer-causing chemicals found in bread variants: CSE study

The study found various samples of packaged bread, white bread, pav, buns, breads used in pizzas and burgers to contain the chemicals

A new study released by activist group Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Monday claimed that many brands of packaged bread, and the bread used in ready to eat burgers and pizzas contain toxic chemicals which could probably cause cancer.

Union health minister J.P. Nadda has asked India’s food regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), to look into CSE’s claims. He asked people not to panic.

CSE said its Pollution Monitoring Laboratory (PML) tested 38 commonly available branded varieties of pre-packaged bread, pav and buns, and the bread used in burgers and pizzas at popular fast food outlets in Delhi.

“We found 84% samples positive with potassium bromate/iodate. We re-confirmed the presence of potassium bromate/iodate in a few samples through an external third-party laboratory. We checked labels and talked to industry and scientists. Our study confirms the widespread use of potassium bromate/iodate as well as presence of bromate/iodate residues in the final product,” said Chandra Bhushan, CSE’s deputy director general and head of the CSE lab.

Food regulator FSSAI said it has decided to remove potassium bromate from the list of permitted additives while it is examining evidence against potassium iodate before restricting its use.

The study said 19 of 24 samples of packaged bread, all samples of white bread, pav, buns and the bread used in pizzas and three out of four samples of the bread used in burgers had the chemicals.

“High levels of potassium bromate/iodate were found in sandwich bread, pav, bun and white bread. Products of Perfect Bread, Harvest Gold and Britannia were those with higher levels,” the CSE report said.

It added that no residues were found in all four tested products of Defence Bakery (Whole Wheat Bread, Jumbo Slices Brown, Brown Bread, Multigrain), one out of four samples of English Oven (Sandwich Bread) and one out of two samples of Nirula’s (burger bread of Chatpata Aloo Burger),” the .

On labelling of these products, CSE in an official statement said only one brand—Perfect Bread—labels use of potassium bromate and no maker (among those tested) labels potassium iodate.

“Only Britannia denied use of potassium bromate or iodate,” it added.

The report also revealed that products of all five popular multinational fast food outlets—KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Subway and McDonald’s—selling pizzas and burgers had potassium bromate/iodate.

Samples of two other fast food outlets—Nirula’s and Slice of Italy—also tested positive for the two chemicals. Slice of Italy denied use of the chemicals to CSE.

Indian bread manufacturers use potassium bromate and potassium iodate for treating flour. In 1999, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified potassium bromate as possibly carcinogenic (cancer causing) to humans. It is banned in many countries but not in India or the US.

“Globally, potassium bromate was allowed to be used on the assumption that the bromate residues would not be present in the end product. This assumption failed across the world. Residues were being detected even after reducing the allowed limits of use and therefore, countries started banning it. Our study confirms that residues of potassium bromate are present in bread sold in India,” CSE’s Bhushan added.

When CSE contacted the companies whose products were found to contain potassium bromate or potassium iodate, six out of 12 denied use of these chemicals. CSE recommended that FSSAI ban the use of potassium bromate in making bread with immediate effect.

In their response to Mint, many companies said that they do not use the chemicals

“At Jubilant FoodWorks Limited, we believe in, and adhere to, the highest quality standards and Indian food laws. We follow all process to maintain the highest level of food safety across all our restaurants. We only use additive/ingredients duly approved under Food Safety and Standards Authority of India Act (FSSAI) in all our preparations (across all our restaurants). The flour used by us is not treated with Potassium Bromate / Potassium Iodate. We do undertake certificate of analysis/undertaking from our flour suppliers on no usage of Potassium Bromate/Potassium Iodate in our flour supplies. We also carry out regular assessments of the flour to ensure compliance in this regard,” a Domino’s spokesperson said.

The promoters of HT Media Ltd, which publishes Mint, and Jubilant FoodWorks are closely related. There are, however, no promoter cross-holdings.

McDonald’s too denied CSE’s claim. “McDonald’s India strongly denies the claim and accusation made in the CSE report. McDonald’s India does not use potassium bromate or potassium iodate in the flour and all other ingredients that goes into our buns. The claims made by CSE in its press release and report are completely baseless. At McDonald’s India, we serve our customers with the highest quality products across all our restaurants,” said Vikram Ogale, director, National Supply Chain and Quality Assurance.

Manpreet Gulri, country head at Subway Systems India Pvt. Ltd, said his firm wouldn’t respond without going through CSE’s report.

Britannia said it does not use potassium bromate or iodate as an ingredient in any of its bread recipes.

“All Britannia Breads products are in 100% compliance to the existing food safety Regulations as stipulated by FSSAI. It must be noted that FSSAI stipulates usage of all Food Additives in Food Products within permissible limits. For potassium Bromate/Iodate, FSSAI stipulates the permissible limit as 50 ppm max (On flour mass basis). Britannia has studied the test reports released by CSE a couple of hours ago. The CSE report clearly states that the third part lab report did not find Potassium Bromate or Iodate in Britannia Bread samples,” said an official statement from Britannia.

A KFC spokesperson said, “Our suppliers have confirmed that they do not use flour treated with Potassium Bromate or Potassium Iodate to manufacture our products”.

“The safety and health of our customers is our top most priority and we are committed to following the best international standards and serving the highest quality products to customers. We have stringent processes in place to ensure that the food we serve complies with requirements laid down by FSSAI and is absolutely safe for consumption,” the KFC spokesperson added.