By IANS
Hyderabad : President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Friday called for taking up a global partnership development mission for the next two decades to design and develop a hypersonic, re-usable space vehicle with higher payload efficiency and lower cost.
He urged international experts to develop a system with a take-off weight of 275 tonnes for 25 to 35 tonnes payload optimised for launching multi-purpose mission including new orbiting space stations, space habitat and space solar power station.
The eminent scientist and father of India's missile programme inaugurated a two-day international conference on 'high speed trans-atmospheric air and space transportation' here Friday.
More than 60 experts from India, Japan, Australia, Russia, South Africa and Israel are attending the conference, which aims to share and consolidate knowledge and experience gained in conceptualisation, design, development and testing of advanced aerospace technologies.
"There is a need for all countries to work together to develop a single-stage-to-orbit, fully re-usable launch vehicles which can bring down the cost of the launch from the present $20,000 per kg of payload to $200 per kg," said Kalam.
"This should call for innovative partnership among nations overcoming technological and other barriers which may appear impossible today," he said adding that India will be a partner in this effort.
The president said the real value of space exploration for human advancement would occur only when a fully re-usable space transportation system was developed with very high payload efficiencies.
Pointing out that the payload fraction of current generation expendable launch vehicles in the world does not exceed one or two percent of the launch weight, he said to put one or two tonnes in space requires more than 100 tonnes of launch weight, almost 70 percent of it is oxygen.
"In the next two decades, I visualise the integration of multiple technologies of supersonic aircraft, missiles and spacecraft to transform into an unmanned supersonic long-range and low radar cross section aircraft replacing manned fighter aircraft," he said.
Stating that the space development is constrained by the current large costs of access to space, he called for synergy between aeronautical and space disciplines.
"While I visualise in another 50 to 75 years, an industrial complex on the Moon and a beginning of human habitat at Mars emerging, one of the major driving factor will be the low cost of access to space, which would require certain disruptive technologies to emerge," he said.
"The aeronautical community can partner the space community to design reusable launch vehicles that perform like an aircraft while flying in the atmosphere, and like a rocket while flying in the outer space," he said.