Bigger diameter for LMLV

I had shared Anshuman’s post on X here in an earlier post.

I saw a reply from Indranil Roy about why the increase in diameter from 5 m to 6.5 m is a big deal. This is because we were not able to manufacture rocket casings of the diameter in India.

Here’s his thread on X:

I looked up who was making rocket casings in India and found out that Walchandnagar Industries makes them. They have the capability to make 5 m diameter rocket casings according to their website.

But, their brochure which seems to be more updated shows this capability to machine with wider diameters. So, the news about the 6.5 m diameter is a bigger deal than just an improvement in diameter. It is a deep improvement in capacity.

Gareeb Scientist had interviewed former ISRO Chairman, Dr. S Somanath, where he also spoke about this limitation. You can find it around the 6 min 30 sec to the 7 min mark.

There was also an episode of the NewSpace India podcast with Walchandnagar’s Chirag Doshi with insights on working with ISRO as an industrial partner right from the sounding rocket days.