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February 16, The State may soon have a technology evaluation cell. This technology evaluation cell will help new industrial players and those in the services sector.

R.Rajagopalan, Secretary, Environment and Forests Deparment in Chennai said that the technology evaluation cell was likely to be constituted with not only the government personnel but also with members from the academic, Pollution Control Board, industry representatives and probably even the voluntary agencies.

Rajagopalan said that the technology evaluation cell would not only help speed up the process of investments, but also ensure issues pertaining to Safety, Health and Environment (SHE). He added that with the technology appraisal table, new entrants could pick off the shelf what suits them best and avoid making wrong choices which are happening now.

He added that the government had been doing a lot towads protecting natural resources. He said that Rs.1000 crore had been spent in Chennai for water conservation and repletion in the last ten years. He also said that they were not going to be apologetic about the technology evaluation anymore nor should people look at SHE as something to be circumvented by cutting corners.

Rajagopalan said that the issues related to starting up and running an environment friendly company need to be addressed. The CII awards were also given by the secretary based on their presentation.

Chairman of the award committee and Executive Director, Ashok Leyland V.R.Pappu, Deputy Director of CII J.Chandrasekar, and Director, CLRI, S.Rajamani, also spoke.

The Indian Space Research Organisation chairman Mr.Madhavan Nair said that the ISRO would conduct the 720 second full test firing of India’s indigenous cryongenic engine at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre at Mahendragiri near Nagercoil.

A liquefied gas rocket uses liquid hydrogen, the rocket fuel at -260 degree Celsius and liquid Oxygen at -183 degeree Celsius. He assured that the test for the cryogenic engine would be conducted within a month’s time.

Last October, a cryogenic engine, a very very complex system was tested for 50 seconds at the Liquid Populsion Systems centre (LPSC) at Mahenderagiri. But it was not successful. The second time it was experimented by ISRO, but the mission had to be aborted.

Dr.Nair said that this 720 seconds successful test would enable India to take its own cryogenic engine in Geosynchronous satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) flights hereafter. The four GSLV flights form Sriharikota till now had used cryogenic engines from Russia.

He said that India was the sixth country in the world to have developed cryogenic engines. Speaking to reporters during the release of a book “The Economics of Indian space research programme” by Prof. U. Shankar, Dr.Nair said that the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) would place Anusat, the Anna University’s micro satellite into orbit during its launch in September.

Dr.Nair said that they are spending only one-fifth of the money that the developed nations were spending for their space programme. He also said that they had saved $700 million in the liquefied gas rocket programme.

ISRO former chief K.Kasturirangan, Anna University vice-chancellor D.Viswanathan, Madras School of Economics chairman emeritus Raja J.Chelliah and A.S.Manikandan of Oxford University were also present in the programme.

India and Russia have decided to develop and market a hypersonic missile can fly anywhere between five to seven times the speed of sound. This missile is the second part of the BrahMos cruise missile project and the fifth generation fighter aircraft. This project expected to complete its development stage by 2010 and hit world markets by 2015.

The sources said that the hypersonic missile would be the implementation of BrahMos-type financial concept with Russia investing 49.5 percent and India the rest of the total investment. Both India and Russia will release additional funding for the missile’s research and development.

Sources said that the hypersonic missile would feature advanced systems enabling its manoeuvrability through the most insurmountable defence systems. The both countries belive that they would sell those highly supersonic speed rocket in the coming years, would automatically upgrade their defences.

A.Sivathanupillai, CEO and managing director of BrahMos Aerospace, said that there was a great potential for hypersonic missiles in the next twenty years. The world had already started migrating from subsonic to supersonic missile technology, he added.

They said that they needed to develop a new engine for the hypersonic missile and they hoped to launch all works simultaniously. They also said that the priority was on developing engine and other platforms on which this could be mounted. The spcial fuel developed for BrahMos would be used for the highly supersonic speed rocket.

Like BrahMos, the country also hopes to market its advanced light helicopters and a range of UAVs under development.