Using bullock carts to pull satellites! India, which is "running slowly and slowly", is implementing its cheap lunar exploration plan

Indian lunar probe renderings | Source: ISRO

Written by | Lee Hyun-hwan

In the space sector, India is a rising power, in its own way.

On August 23, India's third lunar exploration mission, Chandrayaan-3, successfully landed on the moon, becoming the fourth country after the United States, the Soviet Union and China to soft-land on the lunar surface.

"India is now on the moon!" Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shouted to the TV camera after the landing of Chandrayaan-3. With the success of the mission, India has gradually caught up with the first echelon in the space race. What is even more amazing is that the budget for all this is even lower than that of a science fiction movie. The cost-effective Indian style makes space missions more interesting.

Do big things, spend little

A successful landing on the lunar surface was a historic moment for an Indian space program that has spent its money carefully and moved forward slowly, without the resources to make huge leaps forward.

A few days before India's lunar lander landed, at almost the same location, a lunar lander from Russia lost control in the final stage and crashed onto the lunar surface, ultimately resulting in the failure of the mission.

For India, this is a technological victory, and it also seems like a metaphor involving space power and even national strength.

Space has always been a manifestation of national strength. As we all know, the first artificial satellite launched by mankind, the first man-made satellite sent into space, and the first spacecraft sent to the moon, the Soviet Union opened the first golden age of space exploration in the competition with the United States, and demonstrated its strong scientific and technological strength to the world. Russia, which took over the Soviet space industry, was born a space power and once contracted the mission of transporting all human astronauts to and from the space station on this planet.

Today, Russia's space capabilities are almost at a stagnant stage, and appear to be lagging behind compared with its international counterparts; India, located in South Asia, is leveraging its space achievements to enhance its international status.

So during the critical period of the moon landing, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was attending the BRICS summit in South Africa, but he did not miss this historic moment. Modi, who participated in the live video broadcast remotely, waved the Indian tricolor flag vigorously in the picture: "We are witnessing history." Modi tried his best to convey a new image and signal: a rising country taking a place among the global elite.

What makes Indians even more proud is that this lunar mission, which caused such a huge response, was funded with only 74 million US dollars.

This budget is not even enough to make a science fiction blockbuster. Christopher Nolan spent $165 million to make Interstellar, and the 2013 space disaster movie Gravity cost $100 million. The Russian lunar lander that crashed in the same location a few days ago cost $200 million.

"No one in the world can do this like we can," said S Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and a senior aerospace engineer. Cost control of the mission is reflected in all aspects. Because Chandrayaan-3 uses a less powerful and cheaper propulsion system, it had to choose a longer route to the moon: expanding its orbit while flying around the earth, using the earth's gravity as a slingshot to fly to the moon, which ultimately took more than 40 days.

Schematic diagram of going to the moon丨Source: ISRO

Perhaps influenced by the commercial space industry’s ability to calculate input and output, or the reality that India’s purse is not big enough, India has continued its frugal style since the beginning of its space program. Former ISRO Director Surendra Pal once said in an interview: “We once had to use a bullock cart to transport a communications satellite, and it only cost 150 rupees in total.” (At the current exchange rate, it is about 13 yuan)

India's aerospace industry has a competitive advantage in terms of labor costs. According to reports, ISRO has more than 19,000 employees, three-quarters of whom are scientists, a number that exceeds the number of permanent employees of NASA; and according to data released by the agency, their average monthly salary is about US$2,700, significantly lower than their global counterparts.

After careful calculation, they have given a budget of $2 billion for the future moon landing plan. In comparison, the US space budget for 2022 is $62 billion, and India's moon landing plan is equivalent to a fraction of this figure. From another perspective, India's investment in space projects only accounts for 0.04% of its GDP, while the US and Russia's investment is 0.28% and 0.15% respectively.

Another way to save money is to get others to contribute as well. Inspired by SpaceX, a group of Indian aerospace practitioners have started their own businesses. Although ISRO's budget for the last fiscal year was less than $1.5 billion, reports show that the size of India's private space economy has reached at least $6 billion and is expected to triple by 2025. Private forces are gradually being incorporated into national considerations, and the Modi government hopes to attract more private companies to participate and accelerate the progress of the space program.

Judging from the budget, India's attitude in the space field is not to catch up, but to be goal-oriented and save as much as possible. Judging from the sensation caused by the success of the lunar mission, India has made a fortune.

Photos of the lunar surface sent back after soft landing | Source: ISRO

Milestones in Indian Space

The success of this lunar mission has far-reaching impact in India.

In a country of ethnic diversity and ongoing religious conflict, the moon landing provided a rare moment of national celebration. Before that, Indians prayed together for the mission in Hindu temples, Sikh gurdwaras and Muslim mosques, and schools across the country held special viewing ceremonies.

If you are not Indian, you may not easily feel the national pride. For a long time, India's space dream was once the object of ridicule by Western media. The New York Times once published a cartoon with obvious discrimination: an Indian with a long beard, holding a cow in one hand, knocking on the door of the "elite space club". People also remember a BBC host who crossed his legs during a live broadcast and questioned India's space program: Should a country that is still struggling with poverty, inequality and insufficient toilets continue to explore space?

The New York Times apologized for the cartoon in 2014.

They desperately need a moment of success, a carnival, to wipe away the humiliation and resentment of the past.

The success of the lunar mission is also a moment for India's local aerospace industry and talents to prove themselves. As we all know, Indians have made a name for themselves in the global science and engineering fields. The industry is talking about the fact that in a large number of Silicon Valley technology companies, including Microsoft, Google and other world-leading companies, the current CEOs are Indians.

When we understand this phenomenon, we usually think: Do Indians have qualities that we Chinese do not have? Is there anything worth learning from India's talent training system? But in fact, people in India are more concerned about the phenomenon of talent loss in India.

The discussion was reignited after the lunar mission was completed. Prior to this, more than one-third of the graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, the country's flagship technical school, chose to leave India to work and live overseas. This also led to a large number of graduates from unknown universities in small cities in India in the working group responsible for the lunar mission, partly because their monthly salary was only one-fifth of their peers.

Amid the national carnival, the grassroots’ counterattack makes the story even more inspiring.

Barkha Dutt, a writer for The Washington Post, said in an article that India needs more heroes like ISRO Chairman Somanat rather than entrepreneurs like Nadella (Microsoft CEO): Nadella is certainly smart, but the low-key Somanat should be a role model for Indians. He represents a generation of talented scientists. Although they will never own their own cricket team like Nadella or appear on the Forbes rich list, and his income is only a fraction of that of Indian Americans, they choose not to immigrate and stay in their own country, and then use Nadella's 15-month salary to send the Indian flag to the moon.

Humble, hardworking, and silently contributing to the country with low salaries, India's local astronauts have stepped from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, and their image has reached a new high after the historic victory.

Uncertain next steps

Modi's office said that building on the success of the mission, India should now look to new goals, including building the Bharatiya Antariksha Station by 2035 and sending the first Indian to the moon by 2040 - 20 years from now. At the same time, Modi also said that Indian scientists will work on a Venus orbiter mission and developing a Mars lander.

Judging from the statement alone, these are very standard space goals. Just like the development path of China's space program in the 21st century, from the manned launch in 2003 to the construction of a space station in 2021, and the simultaneous sending of spacecraft to Mars... China's current goal is to send astronauts to the moon in 2030. To some extent, India is following China's lead, following the path that China took 15-20 years ago.

But the most important question still awaits an answer: Can India achieve its goal of sending a man to the moon by 2040? And if so, how?

The Modi government gave a rather vague statement: "To realize this vision, the Ministry of Space will prepare a roadmap for lunar exploration. This will include a series of Chandrayaan missions, development of next-generation launch vehicles, construction of new launch pads, establishment of human-centric laboratories and related technologies."

The "next generation launch vehicle" mentioned here is a distant goal. As of the middle of this year, India's new launch vehicle has a lift of about 20 metric tons and can reach low-Earth orbit. But this is far from enough for the lunar mission, and even so, this rocket is still in the basic stage of design.

In addition, aiming for the moon, a new rocket will take about ten years to design, develop, test, and ultimately fly.

Rockets are the most basic element in a manned lunar mission, but the Indian government has not said a word about it, leaving the outside world with speculation and suspicion. Compared with Modi's ambitions, some in the aerospace field believe that their goals are still a cliché, a practice of first drawing a big pie and then a round one.

After all, the date of 2040 is a very ambiguous expectation. On the one hand, it sounds very exciting; on the other hand, the Indian government does not need to start work the next day because of time constraints.

One possibility is that India will further accept the Artemis Agreement proposed by NASA and go to the moon through cooperation with the United States. Indeed, earlier this year, India signed a non-binding agreement involving cooperation between NASA and India.

But at present, this path is not very reliable. First of all, India is only one of the 27 signatories, and the agreement is non-binding. In contrast, Canada has locked in a formal partnership, and Canadian astronauts have been named in the flight mission list two years later.

In other words, it is not too difficult to cram India's own astronauts into other people's spacecraft, but this may not be the key goal of India's own space program.

Another possibility is to buy a well-reputed interstellar spacecraft to solve the rocket problem. Looking at the entire market, only SpaceX can become that seller, but SpaceX has not yet achieved this goal. Overall, this possibility is quite limited. As mentioned above, India's space journey relies on local suppliers with extremely high cost-effectiveness, and the price offered by SpaceX is probably difficult to attract Indian friends.

Overall, India's ambitious space program still has many questions to answer, and its frugal approach adds another layer of uncertainty to mission expectations and the path to its realization.

References

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/31/india-moon-landing-brain-drain/

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-india-moon-landing-cost-cheap-compared-to-nasa-russia-2023-8

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/india-sets-sights-on-a-moon-landing-in-2040-but-is-it-realistic/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/08/09/indias-ambitious-moon-mission-cost-less-than-hollywood-space-films-heres-what-you-need-to-know/?sh=564f3455345e

This article is supported by the Science Popularization China Starry Sky Project

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.

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