Cryogenic engine block
The first Bush administration imposed sanctions to force Russia to cancel a cryogenic engine and technology transfer to ISRO. India's heavy-lift GSLV programme was delayed by twenty years and ultimately had to develop the cryogenic stage indigenously.
A working catalogue entry, kept current. Each paragraph is drawn from the publicly documented record.
In 1992 the first Bush administration sanctions Glavkosmos for transferring cryogenic-engine technology to ISRO under a 1991 contract worth roughly $250 million. Russia, weak and seeking American assistance, cancels the technology transfer, delivering only the engines themselves.
India's GSLV programme is set back by approximately twenty years and is forced to develop the cryogenic upper stage indigenously — a programme that finally achieves operational status in 2014 with the GSLV Mk II. The episode is the founding wound of Indian space sovereignty: the country that helped India build will not be allowed to.
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