Only the third country to achieve this. Kudos. There's another startup trying reusable rockets.
> Only the third country to achieve this.
What do you mean by this?
India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
41–50 of 230 posts
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you do all the work in India, you have low materials costs and low labour costs.
Somewhat, but rocket engineering has some upward cost pressures that offset the savings from being in India: expertise is expensive even adjusting for the cost of labor (many staff are likely competing on salary with the rest of the world--rocket engineers/scientists are in high demand with lots of likely sponsors for immigration); aerospace materials/fabrication have a pretty global supply and patent chain even give…
> rocket engineers/scientists are in high demand with lots of likely sponsors for immigration
I wouldn't be too sure about the immigration part, when even a software engineer hire for a defence/defence adjacent job requires jumping through a number of bureaucratic hoops of security clearances. Even the companies with deep pockets don't always get the best people in the world -- they just get the best people that HR can actually hire.
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
India has had the ability to reach LEO and beyond for a while now. So bringing down a nuke anywhere on the planet wouldn't be that difficult for them. That goes for any country that has LEO launch capabilities. Of course miniaturization of the nuclear payload is another matter.
Liquid fueled launch vehicles aren't storable/able to be made ready at a moment's notice, unlike solids. Liquid fueled historical artifact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas There's a reason all modern silo based (and submarine) ICBMs are solids.
> There's a reason all modern silo based (and submarine) ICBMs are solids.
Believe it or not, here in 2026, this is incorrect!
Those crazy Russians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-29RMU_Sineva
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-29RMU2_Lajner
UDMH + nitrogen tetroxide.
I would not want to be a Russian submariner. For all sorts of reasons.
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you do all the work in India, you have low materials costs and low labour costs.
Somewhat, but rocket engineering has some upward cost pressures that offset the savings from being in India: expertise is expensive even adjusting for the cost of labor (many staff are likely competing on salary with the rest of the world--rocket engineers/scientists are in high demand with lots of likely sponsors for immigration); aerospace materials/fabrication have a pretty global supply and patent chain even give…
My cousin is an aerospace engineer and works in ISRO (Indian space research organization), its impressive what they are doing but I'd like to chime in on a few things.
I am unsure about private salaries but in govt. jobs, because it follows a rigid structure, the salary is still lower than what you might expect and is around the mark of 20-25 thousand dollars per year. It's similar to administrative services or depending on the position, equal to teachers/professors .
I have heard my cousin say that its hard for people to move outside because for example SpaceX/NASA couldn't hire non-American person because of laws and regulations due to security purposes.
From what I know, my cousin actually got some job offers when he had gone to give a speech recently from Management companies
20-25k$ in India isn't bad but strictly speaking, Computer science earns comparable in India at the same level.
The value of the job is mostly in govt rather than private and the benefit of it is that the work is much less stressful rather than private companies stress and just like how NASA has some prestige attached to it in America, same way goes for ISRO in India.
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#45And with $160MM in funding at a $1.1B valuation? I don't know about their debt, but to get to LEO in 8 years on that little money is extremely impressive.
> And with $160MM in funding at a $1.1B valuation? I don't know about their debt, but to get to LEO in 8 years on that little money is extremely impressive. Interestingly that's $5 million less than the the movie Interstellar cost to make.
It’s interesting that this is less funding/valuation than hundreds of other random B2B Series C/D companies that may not even exist in 5 years.
No point, just perspective.
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#46Regarding Indian private space sector, In addition to skyroot solid rocket, following are noteworthy
Agnikul is planning to launch semi-cryo kerosene rocket pretty soon. Their engine is 3d printed and use electric pump fed 25kN small engine. Planning to launch 4 clustered engines as first stage and already did suborbital test, with some parachute splash down reusability claims.
Astrobase is recent entrant. With decent funding and former ISRO scientists as core team, developing 800kN FFCS methalox engine. FFCS is called holy grail of liquid engines. They have acquired largest metal 3d engine and planning VTVL 1st stage reusability
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#47There is just so much that can go wrong with rocket launches if you do cursory reading about these things. A few random examples: The lowest stage cant just be "turned down" or modulated because they work by burning an inner solid rubber lining that's like an annular cylinder. The first three stages are roughly doing the job sequence: `lift off the ground -> reach target altitude -> reach target orbital velocity` and…
I think an important thing here is that the company is almost 8 years old. Which, is not old for a defense tech manufacturer, but does give them leeway to develop and test
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#48Regarding Indian private space sector, In addition to skyroot solid rocket, following are noteworthy Agnikul is planning to launch semi-cryo kerosene rocket pretty soon. Their engine is 3d printed and use electric pump fed 25kN small engine. Planning to launch 4 clustered engines as first stage and already did suborbital test, with some parachute splash down reusability claims. Astrobase is recent entrant. With decen…
Also, Pixxel, Skyroot, and Agnikul are targeting orbital data center launches this year for defense applications (which is what the entire ODC story is about). The US NRO already uses India's Pixxel [0] along with Finland's ICEYE (which is now co-manufacturing synthetic aperture sats in India with Agnikul [1]) for hyperspectral scanning.
Edit: can't reply
> But.. why?
Missile Defense and C4ISR [2]. Seconds matter, so most of the newer generation of missile defense systems are experimenting with how to offload compute at the edge to reduce C2 latency.
Most orbital sat startups in the US, China, and India are partially backed by military and intel oriented funds (eg. Starcloud and IQT/In-Q-Tel).
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[0] - https://www.nro.gov/news-media-featured-stories/news-media-p...
[1] - https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/agnikul-cosmos-iceye...
[2] - https://idsa.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/book-MISSION-SUDA...
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#49Only the third country to achieve this. Kudos. There's another startup trying reusable rockets.
> Only the third country to achieve this. What do you mean by this ?
Probably meant the third country with a private sector capability to launch rockets, US and China being the other two.
Re: India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And with $160MM in funding at a $1.1B valuation? I don't know about their debt, but to get to LEO in 8 years on that little money is extremely impressive. Interestingly that's $5 million less than the the movie Interstellar cost to make.
It’s interesting that this is less funding/valuation than hundreds of other random B2B Series C/D companies that may not even exist in 5 years. No point, just perspective.
Indian VC's don't really have the same appetite for deep tech as compared to America/Europe. R&D within Indian Enterprises is significantly less as compared to its peers.
From what I know, its partially because of how taxation structures incentivize research as R&D tax breaks or similar don't particularly exist in India
All of this makes founders more likely to move abroad where such research is more valued which makes even less Indian deep tech startups and successes exist. This creates a vicious cycle.
I would also consider that Indian VC scene as compared to America undervalues quite decently even for B2B or even supposing identical companies and even then, Sequoia and some other American VC firms are still the most valued and I feel as if that given their expertise and contacts (other companies that the VC's have invested in being in America), there would be a slight push towards Europe/America in general. Another argument could very well be that in India CS engineer labour costs much less which is honestly some of the largest expertise for any company.
Though Indian VC scene is thriving and Bangalore is interesting but still Silicon valley is different.
There was a blog post which talked about VC dynamics and VC's value your product not on how much the real value they really see in the project is but rather on how much money you would require. So ironically, projects which require larger budgets/funds for researching, larger salaries to work would then have larger valuations.