Frugality and audacity!

As I marvelled at Vikram's lunar soft landing, my friend quipped, "How is this worthy of such grand celebration in 2023 when the US put humans on the moon and brought them back — in the 1970s!"

Before I go about my response, let me also present you with the merits of his argument. Mr C. Rajamohan, an international affairs journalist, writes, "While Chandrayaan 3 took nearly six weeks to get to the Moon, the failed Russian mission Luna-25 arrived there in a week. China’s Change-5 launched in 2020 took a week. In 1969, the US Apollo-11 mission, which landed the first men on the Moon, took just four days." (FYI: The Saturn V rocket, which powered the Apollo mission, remains the most powerful rocket ever built)

Since there is a lot of talk about cryogenic rocket technology, let me also tell you that we were late by two decades in indigenising it. Cryogenic technology was first mastered by the US as early as 1963, followed by Japanese, French and Chinese. Russia was able to master it only in the late 1980s. During the early 90s, India attempted to reverse engineer cryogenic engines from Russia, and that's when the US slapped ISRO with sanctions. Read this and this article to learn about our arduous journey in developing this technology. 

Now, my response to my friend's question: The US had spent nearly 180 billion dollars (adjusting to current inflation rates) to fund the Apollo mission. The US diverted 4% of its budget to its space programs during the peak of the space race. If you splurge billions into something, there is a very low possibility that something cannot happen. 

Not just that, the government spending so much on the space program means it is serving its political agenda. Winning the space race seemed tantamount to winning the Cold War. Given such a political backup, NASA can fail. (The first Apollo mission was a disaster and killed all the crew members even before it took off.) For India, spending 4% of its budget on space programs would be absurd, given that poverty persists in our country. 

After the success of the Chandrayaan 3 mission, one of my friends shared that budgetary allocation for the Department of Space had gone down by 8% for the year 2023-24. Simply speaking, our government has less incentive to spend on the space program. To give you a deeper perspective, let me ask you something. If you are in the government and want to win the elections, would you focus on allocating your resources to direct benefit transfers, freebies, loan waivers for farmers or for a space mission that may or may not get you votes?

That's why it is astonishing to see ISRO not just thrive on these meagre allocations but punch far above its weight. ISRO has to keep on succeeding to survive. Watch this interview by Shashi Tharoor, where he hosts Dr Somnath, the current chairman of ISRO, and asks how ISRO is doing everything on a shoestring budget (watch from 15:00 - 17:05). Dr Somnath says that frugality is embedded deeply into ISRO's culture. They tend not to waste resources and try to recycle as much as possible. 

This makes you innately efficient. Yes, you may not have a rocket powerful enough to put your lander on the moon in a week. But your mission is to deploy the lander and rover on the moon and not to build expensive rockets. (This is just an illustration of how ISRO operates frugally. ISRO badly needs Heavy and Super Heavy lift launch vehicles. The most powerful we have now is LVM 3, a medium-lift launch vehicle)

INCOSPAR, the predecessor to ISRO, was formed in 1962 when we had war with China, and our economy was in bad shape. It was also the time when the Space race was at its peak. Even after the success of Chandrayaan 3, we still have some armchair commentators opining that we should build more toilets than focus on lunar missions. And someone like Anand Mahindra had to intervene and explain the need for such a scientific mission. 

That is why we all have to admire Nehru and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai for their vision. Many historians term the 1960s as the Dangerous decade of our country. We lost the war with China, fought with Pakistan before we could recover, and had food security issues and constant trouble in the northeastern regions. Add that to uplifting millions from poverty. Who in their right mind would want to invest in space programs?

I think the fountainhead of this counter-intuitive thinking comes from a certain chutzpah - a compulsive need to assert your identity that goes along the lines of - So what, they have put men on the moon. Let us roll our sleeves, build rockets and show we are a space-faring nation. These men were willing to place risky, quirky bets.

Are we willing to place those bets, not just to assert ourselves but also to discover our uncharted territories?