Wired News: India Fires Supercool-Fuel Rocket: "01:57 PM Dec. 05, 2003 PT
BANGALORE, India -- India said Friday it has developed a rocket engine that uses supercooled liquid fuel, a technology that would allow it to launch high-altitude satellites, send a man to the moon -- or build intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The engine proved its endurance by firing for nearly 17 minutes on the ground, the Indian Space Research Organisation said in a statement. "

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Such engines, known as "cryogenic" engines, are fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Rockets using these materials are primarily used to launch 2.5-ton communications satellites to orbits 22,000 miles above the earth. At that altitude, they match the speed of the rotating Earth and therefore stay fixed at one point above the ground.

Only a few countries -- including the United States, Russia and France -- can build cryogenic engines.

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A cryogenic missile cannot be fired at a moment's notice. The fuel cannot be stored in a rocket indefinitely because it is highly explosive, so a missile would have to be fueled before launching.

India's bid to develop its own cryogenic engines suffered several setbacks. In 1992, Russia agreed to give India the technology but reversed the decision after Moscow signed the Missile Technology Control Regime with the United States. Washington objected to giving India the technology because of its potential use for nuclear missiles.

Russia later agreed to sell fully built engines, without passing on the technology, to India.

India developed a rudimentary form of its cryogenic technology in 2001 and several tests were held after that to fine-tune it.

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