India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch

1 and 2 are still open questions, but these are not aimed to be commercial grade DCs - this is basically edge compute (think a handful of racks). 3 is not a problem for defense usecases. (EDIT: Discussion here seems to point out that data OP is using might be flawed [1]).

Ignoring the fact that just about every orbital data center startup in the US is funded by IQT and China's CMF has been doing something similar is bad from a defense perspective.

Based on dealflow, these aren't being targeted for consumer usecases in the short-term and whoever has been saying that is misleading.

> especially with the possibility of Kessler Syndrome...

India, Russia, China, and the US don't care about Kessler Syndrome - they have already launched and deployed ASATs. This also comes after India and China had a near collision in 2024 that was treated as an offensive action [0].

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-22/india-pla...

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039873

In the real world, "physics" is not necessarily the gating factor. There is a major concern about the environmental footprint of terrestrial data centers, to the point where major U.S. states are enacting moratoriums: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/first-statewide-moratorium-.... These legal and social roadblocks must be accounted for in analyzing the viability of orbital data centers.

Don't worry, most of the people online didn't get the memo on this.

One of the major selling points of orbital compute is power supply - more specifically, it turns out that, compared to beaming power from space, it's projected to be cheaper to move compute upwell instead - atmosphere losses for beamed power are just too big. Of course this doesn't matter if you can get cheap, clean power from elsewhere (e.g. nuclear).

This is in general data center case. Here, GP says the motivation is reducing C2 RTT, which makes sense for military applications.

For C4ISR usecases they solve the latency problem and are worth the spend needed.

Everyone on HN is talking about a commercial usecase that isn't under serious consideration.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For a proper MAD-based nuclear deterrence, yes, you want to be able to launch a massive retaliation while your enemies' missiles are still in the air. Submarine-launched missiles also require stable storage. But having first-strike capabilities, the ability to wipe out any city in the world in return for a few weeks' planning, seems like something militaries would find valuable.

Even if your target doesn't have missile defence systems, any ally of theirs along the route can intercept too.

If I, some rando on the internet, can theorize "that sure looks like it could be turned into a storable icbm that could deliver a nuke to hawaii or Tierra del Fuego or anywhere else on the globe" can make that guess, then any other major world power is likely far ahead of me in analysis.

Also well known that having the institutional knowledge and technical capability to build or adapt something in a fairly short time frame is almost as good as having the thing ready to go.

Above is the basic semantics, and it can be further optimized, such as by extending battery power for the second stage to use it for circularization, inserting a single purpose satellite-like pusher device above the responsibility boundary at the top of second stage and payload satellite and calling it the third stage, or just adding actual third stage above second stage, etc.

Adding more and more stages improve performance per Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation, but it'll add risk factors and also obviously add more dead weights in electronics and engines and support equipment, so 2-3 stages is usually the good balance between performance and risk/costs. You can have as many stages as you want if you think you can handle it.