In the context of India's development of Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) technology, which of the following statements best explains the long-term advantages and challenges associated with such systems in comparison to conventional expendable launch vehicles?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Solution: The correct answer is RLVs significantly reduce launch costs by enabling partial or full recovery and reuse of stages, but face challenges in thermal protection, hypersonic aerodynamics, and autonomous landing precision.
Explanation:
☛ The main economic objective of a Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) is to drastically reduce the cost of access to space by recovering expensive rocket stages and re-flying them multiple times, unlike expendable launch vehicles which are discarded after a single use.
☛ Developing reliable RLV systems introduces severe technological hurdles, including designing robust Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) to endure extreme heat during atmospheric re-entry.
☛ It also requires mastering complex hypersonic aerodynamics across a wide speed regime (from orbital velocity down to subsonic touchdown).
☛ Achieving millimeter-level autonomous guidance, navigation, and landing precision on a designated runway without human pilot intervention remains one of the most critical challenges.
Extra Exam-Relevant Facts:
☛ ISRO's RLV-TD Programme: The Indian Space Research Organisation launched the RLV-TD (HEX-01) hypersonic flight experiment in May 2016 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.
☛ RLV-LEX Missions: ISRO successfully executed autonomous landing experiments, dubbed RLV-LEX (including LEX-01, LEX-02, and LEX-03), using an Indian Air Force Chinook helicopter at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR) in Chitradurga, Karnataka.
☛ Pushpak: The winged vehicle demonstrator developed by ISRO for RLV landing experiments has been named Pushpak.
☛ Expendable Launch Vehicles: Traditional Indian launch vehicles like PSLV and GSLV are expendable, meaning all propulsion stages are lost in oceans or burn up in the atmosphere after fuel exhaustion.
Important One-Liners for Upcoming Exams:
☛ What name has been given to ISRO's winged RLV Technology Demonstrator vehicle? → Pushpak
☛ Where did ISRO conduct its RLV Autonomous Landing Experiments (RLV-LEX)? → Aeronautical Test Range (ATR), Chitradurga, Karnataka
☛ In which year did ISRO conduct the first hypersonic re-entry test (HEX-01) of RLV-TD? → 2016
☛ Which material/system protects a reusable spacecraft during high-velocity atmospheric re-entry? → Thermal Protection System (TPS)
☛ What is the primary commercial benefit of developing reusable launch vehicle technology? → Drastic reduction in space launch costs