“Why waste too much money on ISRO and on missions like Chandrayan?”

A repetitive question all along the way. Saroj Harikrishnan Nair responds: I’ll respond to this rhetorical question in a few bullet points (well, some are sustained jet splash though) knowing full well that all of them flies off above the heads of the some “intellectuals”.

1) The GDP expenditure of ISRO is always below 1%. Its around 0.23% in 2022-23.

2) ISRO is a commercialised space agency, it develops its own “cost effective” solutions to challenges like satellite launching, which is outsourced to other countries. Thus, if anything, it improves the economy in its own way.

3) Space technology is always evolving and ISRO always needs to catch up, so that it doesn’t lose its spot among the top space agencies in the world. Cost effectiveness, plus high success rate, plus high goals achieved are the reasons why many countries and space agencies rely on ISRO and enters into joint ventures with ISRO(Think about NASA amd ISRO’s NISAR project, or Lunar Polar Exploration Mission, a joint Indo-Japanese mission to study the polar surface of the Moon where India is tasked with providing soft landing technologies, or another two collaborative satellite missions with France’s CNES, namely Megha-Tropiques to study water cycle in the tropical atmosphere[ and SARAL for altimetry. A third mission consisting of an earth observation satellite with a thermal infrared imager, TRISHNA (Thermal infraRed Imaging Satellite for High resolution Natural resource Assessment) being planned by the two countries, among the many others.)

4) For ISRO to achieve self reliance and to be able to undertake future trends, its important to allocate funds so that ISRO can test and push its boundaries. Technology demonstrations such as Mangalyaan and Chandrayaan are future investments to catch up with the evolving trend in the space science scene.For that, some sacrifices( reasonable sacrifices) has to be done. There’s a saying “no pain, no gain”.

5) Translunar and interplanetary missions will eventually become a trend and most countries with succesful space agencies are exploring challenging missions in that path, because of one main reason – resources. Yes, these missions have an important aim- to tap into the resources in other regions of the solar system, and make use of that since humanity here on earth is on a path of resource depletion. ISRO, being a top space agency in the world, should make its mark there.

6) Spinoff technologies – ISRO’s research has been diverted into spin-offs to develop various technologies for other sectors. Examples include bionic limbs for people without limbs, silica aerogel to keep Indian soldiers serving in extremely cold areas warm, distress alert transmitters for accidents, Doppler weather radar and various sensors and machines for inspection work in engineering industries. These are apart from the tremendous impact of ISRO in telecommunication, telemedicine, cartography,military, academic, biodiversity information arenas.

7) ISRO is not just one alienated organisation, its a whole body that relies on various wings. This gives opportunities to extend its arms to other fields as well. ISRO chief, S Somnath Panicker stated that ISRO will have to rely on startups also in the future. As of now there are some successful startups in India in Aerospace field, that work with ISRO. This will be a further boost to startup ecosystem, and is symbiotic in nature. It gives opportunities and spaces for various creative ideas in various fields including aerospace engineering to grow higher in the innovative scale.

8) Back to point 1. All the above are achieved in the framework of that GDP range.

Isn’t that pretty cool?

(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread posted by @ByRakeshSimha on July 25, 2023, with minor edits to improve readability and conform to HinduPost style guide)