A promising Indian launch startup nears its first orbital test flight
A promising Indian launch startup nears its first orbital test flight
一家充满希望的印度航天初创公司即将迎来首次轨道飞行测试
After decades of controlling all aspects of spaceflight, the Indian government decided in 2020 to open things up to private industry. Essentially, the government said, companies could build their own rockets, obtain permission to launch them, and even use state-operated facilities. The government and the country’s space agency, ISRO, instituted this change in response to the rise of commercial space industries in the United States, and later China, that were playing an increasingly important role in global spaceflight. 在垄断航天领域数十年后，印度政府于2020年决定向私营企业开放市场。从本质上讲，政府允许企业自行制造火箭、申请发射许可，甚至使用国家运营的设施。印度政府及其航天机构——印度空间研究组织（ISRO）做出这一改变，是为了应对美国及随后中国商业航天产业的崛起，这些国家的商业航天在国际航天领域正发挥着日益重要的作用。
Now, six years later, this structural shift is beginning to bear some fruit. The most promising Indian launch company, Skyroot Aerospace, is nearing the pad with its first orbital rocket. The Vikram-1 launch vehicle could take flight within the next couple of months, its cofounder and chief executive officer, Pawan Kumar Chandana, told Ars in an interview. And with a recent $60 million fundraising round valuing the firm at $1.1 billion, the company is poised to accelerate its commercial launch efforts. 六年后的今天，这一结构性转变已初见成效。印度最有前途的航天发射公司 Skyroot Aerospace 即将迎来其首枚轨道火箭的发射。公司联合创始人兼首席执行官 Pawan Kumar Chandana 在接受 Ars 采访时表示，Vikram-1 运载火箭可能会在未来几个月内升空。随着近期 6000 万美元融资的完成，公司估值已达 11 亿美元，这使其有能力加速推进商业发射计划。
The origins of Skyroot
Skyroot 的起源
Chandana graduated with an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2012, and like almost anyone in India interested in space at the time, he went to work for the Indian Space Agency. But six years later, he could see the coming disruption to the space industry and believed that India would soon follow suit. “Going back to my school days, I always had the ambition to be an entrepreneur,” he said. “I was super inspired by what SpaceX was doing. Rocket Lab was also building up. The world definitely needed more access to space.” Chandana 于 2012 年从印度理工学院获得工程学位，和当时印度几乎所有对航天感兴趣的人一样，他进入了印度空间研究组织工作。但六年之后，他预见到航天工业即将迎来颠覆性变革，并相信印度很快也会跟进。“回想学生时代，我一直有创业的抱负，”他说，“我深受 SpaceX 所作所为的启发。Rocket Lab 当时也在崛起。世界确实需要更多的太空准入机会。”
Although India lacked a purely commercial space industry, Chandana believed that the rising country had the right ingredients in place. The country had great engineers, a supplier base, government spaceports, and an advantageous location near the equator. Still, leaving ISRO was a major risk. Chandana had no guarantees that India would open up its launch industry to the private sector or even allow government payloads to fly on private rockets. But he believed that if he didn’t start working on a private launch company now, competitors in the United States, China, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere would pull even further ahead. So he and another ISRO scientist, Naga Bharath Daka, took the leap and founded Skyroot in June 2018 in Hyderabad. Failure, he realized, was the most likely outcome. 尽管印度当时缺乏纯粹的商业航天产业，但 Chandana 认为这个新兴国家已经具备了必要的条件。印度拥有优秀的工程师、供应商基础、政府航天发射场，以及靠近赤道的地理优势。尽管如此，离开 ISRO 仍是一个巨大的风险。Chandana 无法保证印度会向私营部门开放发射产业，甚至无法确定政府是否会允许将载荷交给私营火箭发射。但他认为，如果现在不着手创办一家私营发射公司，美国、中国、欧洲、日本等地的竞争对手将会进一步拉开差距。于是，他和另一位 ISRO 科学家 Naga Bharath Daka 毅然决定创业，于 2018 年 6 月在海得拉巴成立了 Skyroot。他意识到，失败很可能是最终的结果。
Solids, first
先从固体燃料起步
For the first couple of years, a small team worked on concepts and designs. Early on, they decided to start with a solid-fuel design for the first stage because they understood it best and believed it offered the straightest path to the launch pad. “We wanted to get to an orbital launch vehicle in a few years,” Chandana said of the choice to use solid-rocket fuel. “India has a really strong ecosystem there. And we believe that, with small launchers, they will be expendable. And the whole architecture has to scale to mass produce them at scale. So we optimized for the lowest development time and the lowest cost per launch.” 在最初的几年里，一个小团队致力于概念和设计工作。他们很早就决定第一级采用固体燃料设计，因为他们对此最了解，并认为这是通往发射台最直接的路径。“我们希望在几年内实现轨道运载火箭的发射，”Chandana 在谈到选择固体火箭燃料时说，“印度在这方面拥有非常强大的生态系统。我们认为，小型运载火箭将是消耗性的。整个架构必须能够实现大规模量产。因此，我们优化了开发时间，力求实现最低的单次发射成本。”
The company named its initial line of vehicles “Vikram” in honor of the Indian physicist Vikram Sarabhai, who is considered the father of the Indian Space Program. As a testbed for its technology, Skyroot worked on a suborbital version of its rocket, Vikram-S, from 2020 to 2022 and launched the 6-meter rocket in November of that year. The sounding rocket’s flight was a major success, reaching an altitude of 90km and validating a lot of what Skyroot had planned for its larger orbital vehicle, Vikram-1. It accomplished this with minimal funding, only raising $15 million in the weeks before Vikram-S took flight. 公司将其首个系列运载火箭命名为“Vikram”，以纪念被誉为印度航天计划之父的物理学家 Vikram Sarabhai。作为技术的试验台，Skyroot 在 2020 年至 2022 年间研发了亚轨道火箭 Vikram-S，并于 2022 年 11 月成功发射了这枚 6 米高的火箭。这次探空火箭的飞行取得了巨大成功，达到了 90 公里的高度，验证了 Skyroot 为其更大的轨道运载火箭 Vikram-1 所做的许多规划。他们以极少的资金完成了这一壮举，在 Vikram-S 发射前的几周内仅筹集了 1500 万美元。
Vikram-1 nears readiness
Vikram-1 即将就绪
The Vikram-1 vehicle stands more than three times taller than the Vikram-S vehicle and is composed of three solid rocket fuel stages. It’s intended to put nearly half a metric ton of payload into low-Earth orbit. The structure is largely manufactured from carbon composites. Each stage is powered by the Kalam-series of engines, with a single Kalam-1200 engine being used on the first stage. “A single engine simplifies it so much compared to a traditional architecture of having multiple engines in the first stage with liquid fuel,” Chandana said. “It simplifies manufacturing and it simplifies testing. So it was an ideal fit, and it’s the reason for our speed.” Vikram-1 火箭的高度是 Vikram-S 的三倍多，由三级固体火箭燃料级组成。它的目标是将近半吨的载荷送入近地轨道。其结构主要由碳复合材料制造。每一级都由 Kalam 系列发动机提供动力，第一级使用单台 Kalam-1200 发动机。“与第一级使用多台液体燃料发动机的传统架构相比，单台发动机大大简化了设计，”Chandana 说，“它简化了制造和测试流程。因此，这是一个理想的选择，也是我们能够保持快速研发的原因。”
Chandana said building the individual components of the rocket, such as the engines, avionics, and separation systems, has been a fairly straightforward process. But integrating these into a single vehicle and testing the whole system has been “very, very challenging.” Still, the company is now in the final stretches of testing, and a launch could come this summer. “It’s a test launch,” he said. ” Statistically, the first launch from a private company almost always fails. It’s very difficult to succeed with all new systems. But I think we have done everything we can do to ensure the first launch goes well.” Chandana 表示，制造火箭的各个组件（如发动机、航空电子设备和分离系统）是一个相当直接的过程。但将这些组件集成到单一运载工具中并测试整个系统则“非常、非常有挑战性”。尽管如此，公司目前已进入测试的最后阶段，发射可能会在今年夏天进行。“这是一次测试发射，”他说，“从统计学上讲，私营公司的首次发射几乎总是失败的。在所有系统都是全新的情况下取得成功非常困难。但我认为我们已经尽了一切努力来确保首次发射顺利进行。”
Big ambitions
宏伟的抱负
The risk Chandana took in founding Skyroot before India opened up its space industry has paid off. The company appears to have a lead over its other competitors in the Indian launch startup ecosystem, such as Agnikul Cosmos. And the Indian government is now really leaning into the commercial space industry. Jitendra Singh, India’s minister of state for science and technology, has said he wants the country to grow its share of the global space economy from 2 percent to 10 percent by 2030. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told the industry to increase its annual launch total from about five launches annually to 50 before the end of the decade. For this to happen, Skyroot and other Indian companies will need to step up. Chandana said the recent funding will enable the company to continue working on the line of Vikram rockets, eventually building larger vehicles. Chandana 在印度航天产业开放前创办 Skyroot 所冒的风险已经得到了回报。该公司在印度航天初创企业生态系统中似乎领先于 Agnikul Cosmos 等其他竞争对手。目前，印度政府正大力支持商业航天产业。印度科学技术部国务部长 Jitendra Singh 表示，希望到 2030 年将印度在全球航天经济中的份额从 2% 提高到 10%。印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪也要求航天工业在十年内将年度发射总数从目前的每年约 5 次增加到 50 次。要实现这一目标，Skyroot 和其他印度公司需要加倍努力。Chandana 表示，最近的融资将使公司能够继续研发 Vikram 系列火箭，并最终制造出更大的运载工具。