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  #11  
Old 08-15-2022, 01:41 PM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Originally Posted by frognbuff
Supposedly, some of the Indian designers had access to the Scout design. The motors were 100% "home grown," but they definitely had Scout in mind.
Yes--it was rather like the case with motor "types" such as the Altair and Sergeant. Motors made by other manufacturers (such as United Technologies Chemical Systems Division's FW-4, their "Altair" [Hercules made the Altair; here are some other such "motor matches": https://space.skyrocket.de/directories/engines_usa.htm ]), and the Pollux and Castor (Thiokol's improved variants of the Sergeant motor) have/had the same or very similar motor case sizes, and:

ISRO's SLV-3 motors were/are (the SLV-3's first stage--their "Algol"--still serves as the PSLV's strap-on boosters, including in a "stretched-case" form) also very close dimensional matches to the Scout's motors (the slight differences are due to the SLV-3's motors being sized in millimeters rather than inches). The SLV-3's motors also had/have somewhat different propellant formulations and grain void shapes (so that the then-embryonic Indian large solid motor manufacturing base could make them in-country); for example, the SLV-3's "Antares" and "Altair" third and fourth stage motors had different proportions than the Scout's (the "Photo Gallery" *here* [see: http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_1...ption/Frame.htm ] shows all four stages, and the ASLV [Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle, a "triple-barreled" SLV-3 like a small Titan IIIC).
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Originally Posted by frognbuff
SLV3 is also the first significant example of an SLV being turned into a ballistic missile (instead of the other way around, which is quite common). Variants of the first stage of the SLV3 went into the Agni 1 and Agni II missiles.
Indeed--and India's military even, for a while, considered an ICBM version of the ASLV (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augme..._Launch_Vehicle ), which would have been based in 3:1 size "oblong slot" underground silos, made wide enough to accommodate the twin S1 motor first stage (a drawing of the proposed oblong silo appeared in an issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. The ASLV's poor reliability--the first two failed, round 3 put its satellite into a lower-than-planned orbit, with only the fourth and final ASLV being entirely successful--was probably at least part of why the Indian military decided not to adopt the ASLV as an ICBM.
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  #12  
Old 08-15-2022, 06:53 PM
frognbuff frognbuff is offline
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Not seeing the "ASLV as an ICBM" info...
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  #13  
Old 08-16-2022, 07:43 PM
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Originally Posted by frognbuff
Not seeing the "ASLV as an ICBM" info...
It's been a while; unfortunately, I can't remember exactly when (a *lot* of family [including a brother's near-fatal alcoholism], health, work, and school matters "juggling"--most of which were very unpleasant--were affecting my family and I at the time). If memory serves, it was back in the 1989 - 1993 period, when I was attending FIU (Florida International University, in Miami), after graduating in 1989 from Miami-Dade Community College (and the four ASLV [see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augme..._Launch_Vehicle ] launches occurred between March 1987 and May 1994 [and *here* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni_(missile) is a Wikipedia article--containing plenty of links--about the Agni ballistic missiles, some of which use SLV-3 rocket motors]). Also:

The FIU library carried Aviation Week & Space Technology, and one day, while compiling a list of SLV-3 and ASLV articles in various AW&ST issues, I came across a short (just two or three pages) article about India's use of SLV-3 hardware in Agni missiles. It included a drawing (a "provisional drawing" [based on known physical parameters, not actual construction drawings]) of a suspected ASLV ICBM-"sized and shaped" silo, as it would look from directly above, and:

The silo "shaft" in the drawing had a nearly-square rectangular cross-section, with semicircular "ends" (to accommodate the ASLV's "Stage 0" strap-on solid motors [as in the Titan IIIC/D/E/34D, and the Titan IV] that were the first stage) on the short sides of the center rectangular hole. The oblong ASLV silo in the drawing was about 3 times as wide--across its longest dimension, from one semicircular end to the other--as the silo's "short axis" (which was wide enough to accommodate the 1-meter diameter Stage 0 and Stage 1 motors, with some extra "fold-down work platform" space on all sides).
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  #14  
Old 08-17-2022, 05:13 PM
PeterAlway PeterAlway is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by frognbuff
Supposedly, some of the Indian designers had access to the Scout design. The motors were 100% "home grown," but they definitely had Scout in mind.


India picked up the art of modern solid propellant rocketry from the French. Essentially they started with licenced copies of some of the Sud Aviation sounding rockets (I don't recall exactly which, but things like the Bellier and Dragon). But by the 1970's, Inia was putting an emphasis on being as independent of Western technology as possible. This became essential, rather than just a preference, when the US started imposing technology export restrictions.

There was plenty of material on the Scout in the open literature, and when the Indian engineers started designing the SLV-3, they did indeed use the Scout as a model in terms of the scaling of the various stages. But the SLV-3 was more of an extrapolation from the licensed French sounding rockets with indigenous know-how.
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Old 08-18-2022, 01:51 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterAlway
India picked up the art of modern solid propellant rocketry from the French. Essentially they started with licenced copies of some of the Sud Aviation sounding rockets (I don't recall exactly which, but things like the Bellier and Dragon). But by the 1970's, Inia was putting an emphasis on being as independent of Western technology as possible. This became essential, rather than just a preference, when the US started imposing technology export restrictions.

There was plenty of material on the Scout in the open literature, and when the Indian engineers started designing the SLV-3, they did indeed use the Scout as a model in terms of the scaling of the various stages. But the SLV-3 was more of an extrapolation from the licensed French sounding rockets with indigenous know-how.
*Nods* I think their first license-built French sounding rockets were Centaure IIB vehicles (the Venus motor-boosted Belier [Ram]--here's a comparative Sud Aviation sounding rockets "line-up": https://www.pinterest.com/pin/missi...67404839548023/ ). They built and flew the licensed Centaure IIBs--their motor cases were produced by the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC: https://barc.gov.in/ [solid rocket motor cases and nuclear reactor pressure vessels share many of the same engineering parameters])--after flying a few indigenously-developed payloads on imported, Sud Aviation-built Centaure rockets. Also:

India's Rohini series of sounding rockets (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohini_(rocket_family) and https://www.isro.gov.in/launchers/sounding-rockets ), now also commercialized by the Antrix Corporation Ltd, ISRO's (see: https://www.isro.gov.in/ ) commercial arm (see: https://www.antrix.co.in/ ), are--especially the RH-300/RH-300 Mk-II and the two-stage RH-560/RH-560 Mk-II (for anyone unfamiliar with them, the number denotes the maximum diameter in millimeters)--patterned after the Sud Aviation sounding rockets (the Belier and Dragon, in the cases of the RH-300/Mk-II and the RH-560/Mk-II, respectively). During the development of the SLV-3, they used an RH-560 first stage fitted with jet vanes and an open-loop guidance system, to develop the SLV-3's guidance & control system and to gain experience with guided solid rockets in general. As well:

(The SLV-3's successor, the ASLV, was also a "lesson rocket"; the planned, larger PSLV [see: https://www.isro.gov.in/launchers/pslv ] would use secondary fluid injection thrust vector control [like the Titan III & IV Stage 0 dual-solid motors first stages], and the ASLV utilized this thrust vector control method on its dual-motor first stage [and possibly also on its first center, air-lit motor].) I read in an ISRO article that the ASLV was a much-needed "learning stepping-stone" to the PSLV, and that the PSLV's development would have been considerably harder without the experience--including the several entire and partial ASLV failures (only the fourth and final one worked perfectly)--that the ASLV, a "triple-barreled" SLV-3/close Scout 'sibling,' gave them. Plus:

Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, the Italian Space Agency (whose LICIACube [see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICIACube ] CubeProbe will, on September 26 or thereabouts--if all goes well--witness the impact of the ion drive-powered DART https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubl...edirection_Test spacecraft, on which it is currently riding, on Dimorphos, the smaller component of the binary asteroid Didymos, at 6.6 km/s [4.1 mi/s]!), was also an enthusiastic Scout user. They even converted three oil rigs off the coast of Kenya, on the equator (now collectively known as the Luigi Broglio Space Center), called San Marco, Santa Rita, and Santa Rita II (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broglio_Space_Center [they served as a Scout--and sounding rockets--launch platform, a launch control center, and a tracking radar platform, respectively]). Toward the end of the Scout's service life, ASI was testing a similar--to ISRO's ASLV--"triple-barreled" Scout 2 launch vehicle (also called "Advanced Scout," using two Ariane 4 solid boosters [called Ariane 3-0, similar in size to the air-lit Algol motor] as a dual-motor, Titan III/IV-type first stage, see: http://www.astronautix.com/s/scout.html [the Advanced Scout's sub-page is accessible from this first Astronautix.com Scout article link, slightly farther down its "screen-page," once opened], http://www.astronautix.com/a/advanc...ancedscout.html , https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/scout-2-tv.htm , https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/...ontext=smallsat , https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewco...ess-proceedings , and https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1.....167F/abstract ), but it was cancelled in 1993.
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Last edited by blackshire : 08-18-2022 at 02:16 AM.
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