A Reusable Indian Vehicle?

It doesn’t sound like a smart design to me, though:

The first stage is configured as a winged body system, which will attain an altitude of around 100 km and deliver nearly half the orbital velocity. After burnout, the vehicle will re-enter the earth’s atmosphere and will be made to land horizontally on a runway, like an aircraft.

In the second stage, after delivering the payload, the vehicle will be made to re-enter the atmosphere and will be recovered using airbags either in sea or land.

No description of the first-stage propulsion, but if Clark Lindsay (from whom I got the link) is right, and it’s a scramjet, that’s a huge mistake. And an ocean recovery with airbags? Please.

Of course, what do you expect from a government? And at least they haven’t bought into the current nonsensical conventional wisdom that “Shuttle proved that reusable vehicles don’t work.”