What makes our success in space technology so unique?
jayanta chatterjee
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 20:00 UTC
Today is a great day for Indian space research. Today India launched 7 nano-satellites in one single mission. The rocket, 16th mission for India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) carried one Indian remote sensing satellite (Oceansat-2) and six smaller foreign satellites. Previously we lunched 10 satellites in one go. Although it’s not a novel achievement in terms of research or technology development but surely a practical one. Such mission can bring money for India and also pave ways for future, more novel and practical missions (both in civilian and defense sector). India is emerging a decent player in this highly lucrative market, where we can follow leads by others and sometimes scale it up like this one.
Such successful space missions also raise one important question. What makes our space and (to some extent) atomic research so unique that we succeed in these hi-tech fields and that too under total Govt controlled agencies while we miserably fail in basic research and many other areas of technology development? Why can not we achieve the same degree of success in other areas of science and technology?
It will be unfair to assume that all the problems we face in typical Indian institutes are absent in ISRO, yet they do deliver some output while majority others do not. Should I assume that given a clear mandate, we can deliver? The problem is, we can not set our own target unless someone else do it for/before us (and that will never be the case in basic research or novel technology development).
Updated 24 September 2009 18:24 UTC
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Replies
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Anonymous
Indeed a matter of pride. The cryogenic engine for PSLV is imported from Russia despite of every effort by India to build one indigenously. But that does not lessen the glory of such successes. India is becoming a major player for cheap satellite lunching for smaller players like institutes, Universities and other smaller organizations to test their skill to make satellites.
Few days ago there was real concern for pilling up junk in the space. Many space powers were talking to regulate space missions and dismantling rockets/satellites in the space. It seems that number of smaller satellites will increase exponentially due to cheap price for lunching. Will not such nano-satellites increase the problem of space debris? -
More on these success stories here:
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Anonymous
USA provided the machine, Moon Mineralogy Mapper or M3 in short, that detected water there in the moon. The data also was analyzed abroad. India cannot develop any novel machine by itself. We also do not have confidence to conclude any novel observation that goes beyond conventional knowledge or contradict established ideas. We only can follow paths created and developed by others. I have my reservation to say that Indians first discovered water in the moon.
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Anonymous
see http://www.nature.com/ – the front/cover page “Indian ancestry revealed” is all about Indian data. Funny thing, out of 5 authors of the lead paper, only two are indian – and the first author is ‘David Reich’ from Massachusetts, USA. Now the scientific contribution – indians collected the DNA samples (lol), rest like the mathematical theory for f-statistics, MOST of the analysis and writing the paper by foreign authors! Thats the status of Indian science :D
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Anonymous
It’s a strange paper with five authors (David Reich1, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Nick Patterson2, Alkes L. Price & Lalji Singh). I have never seen a paper where four authors (out of five) “contributed equally” to a single paper.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/nature08365.htmlAuthor Contributions: K.T. and L.S. collected the DNA samples, D.R., K.T. and L.S.collected the genetic data, N.P. developed the mathematical theory for f-statistics, and D.R., K.T., N.P. and A.L.P. analysed the data. D.R. wrote the manuscript and Supplementary Information with input from all authors.
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Anonymous
India need to train scientists in foreign countries rather than buying engines and hardware as well as technology from the east and west or up north.
A dollar spent on training a scientist is better than a dollar spent to buy technology.
A recent trend of recruiting foreign educated/trained scientists in India is praiseworthy and we should also open our doors to foreigners along with Indians trained abroad. All the seats should be open to competition. This will certainly improve the quality and output. Shame that IIT Profs are even opposing 10% quota for foreigners, it should rather be 100% open to all. Let Indians compete with foreign counterparts to get these positions.
ISRO, DRDO are better in borrowing technology and later on painting a small Indian flag on one corner. I have heard even paint is also imported so that it can sustain the harsh weather out in the space. On the other hand biological and other scientists cannot buy things from outside so they are seen as laggers. Imagine a biological scientist buying a mass spec, a purified vial of protein, load it and send data to West for analysis (collaboration) and publishes it. Does that make sense?
Only solutions are
transparency
100% seats open to competition for people from any country to work as scientists or lecturers
performance based incentives and promotions
NIH type funding bodies with huge budgets
no VC/dean/director from IAS/Army/IPS type unqualified bunch of people
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Anonymous
“Now the scientific contribution – indians collected the DNA samples (lol), rest like the mathematical theory for f-statistics, MOST of the analysis and writing the paper by foreign authors! Thats the status of Indian science :D”
This is actually in contradictory to another paper published two years ago showing that people in the sub-continent share a common lineage irrespective of their present social status. I have’t read this paper yet, but the intro clearly and cleverly states that the north indians are related to central asians and the southies has no specific lineage outside the subcontinent. This is just another paper to bring back the ghosts of Arya/dravida division. No wonder the british Nature choose to publish it. Not the end of the story, though!!!
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Anonymous
Now further update for jyanta – here is the actual paper about the WATER ON MOON story published in SCIENCE magazine/journal (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1178658) and as usual – funny thing if ONLY ONE author (J. N. Goswami) is from ISRO out of 26 authors on the paper. So, u know what is the SCIENTIFIC contribution.. rest is story :D
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India’s taking credit for finding water on moon surface is like claiming credit by a person who rented the ship to Columbus to “discover” America! Of course Columbus will be gracious enough to thank that person while accepting the award (as NASA did during the press conference). It will be foolish and sign of insecurity/inferiority for the businessman to take any credit for the success of Columbus!
But we do all such things since long without much shame, starting from Sunita Williams to Hargobind Khorana.
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