CIOL Spl: Chandrayaan - celebrate the heroism now

BANGALORE, INDIA: Now that Chandrayaan-I is in earth's orbit the sequence of events in the days to come will be as follows: Chandrayaan will keep inching away from Earth along larger and larger elliptical orbits over the next 15 days before breaking free from Earth's gravitational field and moving towards the Moon. It will be eventually captured by the Moon's gravitational field and will start to rotate around the Moon. While Chandrayaan will rotate the Moon for next three years, it will release a smaller module which will land on moon, rather crash into moon, and in that little time send close up photographs and other data to the satellite. The orbiting satellite will send a variety of rich data to scientific experimenters.

How will it impact the common man? How did Graham Bell's or Benjamin Franklin's experiments impact the common man? How did Thomas Alva Edison's experiments impact the common man?

Let's attempt to explain to the die-hard skeptics and also remind ourselves of the bright future.

The Philosophy of adventure

Edmund Hillary was once asked why he climbed Mount Everest and his famous reply was, "because it is there." Hillary was referring to the intellectual and physical challenge that Everest posed to mankind, which has inspired a legion of mountaineers to scale it. The discovery of north and south poles, the exploration of Antarctica, similarly captured human imagination. In doing so a lot of scientific knowledge was amassed and utilized in a variety of situations.

Till Russia sent Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin into space, prompting a space race with the United States of America putting Neil Armstrong on the moon, we earthlings were satisfied with the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo.

The knowledge of space and moon expeditions let loose a string of technological innovations in communication, travel, and a thousand allied fields impacting earthling's life in such niche areas as better water purifiers and packaging nutritious food for soldiers on the war-front. The most visible applications are television broadcasting, voice and data communication and high speed air travel.

All these were happening in the western countries: US, Russia, UK, France and Germany leading the way and in the east and led by Japan. Fortunately, India wasn't left behind. Spurred by Vikram Sarabhai, India gained solid experience in space technology. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) built dependable space launch vehicles which is now being hired by both countries with their own space program as well as third world countries having space dreams.

Yet, India lacked a crucial knowledge in its repository. It had not broken the earth's gravitational field and moved beyond. It had placed satellites in the geo-stationery , meo-stationary  and the leo-stationary orbits but had not sent any spacecraft beyond the influence of these orbits.

Moon is always a milestone. It is believed to be the gateway to the rest of the space, especially to Mars. So it was an "Everest" India had to conquer. Given the time and resources, it took up an unmanned mission.

There is already a race amongst the eastern countries. China sent a manned mission. India hasn't put a man in space (barring Rakesh Sharma who flew in a Russian craft.) India is now talking about a manned mission to moon in 2015.

To conquer a challenge and gain a first-hand experience is crucial for any country having global ambitions. Today, India has gained maturity in space and in nuclear energy, which puts it among a handful of nations which have this knowledge. Tomorrow, when a global race to space and to generate cheap energy gets underway, India will be in a better bargaining position. This is a long-term investment for the people of India.

The material benefits

Chandrayaan-I has more or less esoteric objectives. Like in the case of Sputnik or Aryabhatta, it will not have direct and immediate material benefits to the common man. However, look at the line-up of experiments that will be carried out. For one, US is leading a probe for Helium-3, which is a mineral of choice for energy from nuclear fusion.

India and a few other countries have equipment mounted on top of Chandrayaan which will map the mineral deposits in moon. Minerals such as magnesium, aluminum, silicon, calcium, iron and titanium are said to be in abundance on moon. The mapping will provide a complete mineral map of moon, just like the one we have for earth, and help scientists to see if these can be exploited in the long term, that is whether they can be brought back to earth or be used in-situ for exploration beyond moon.

There are experiments to investigate if the poles of moon indeed contain ice deposits as is widely believed now and to measure the radiation from radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium. These will help design future manned expeditions to moon. US and European Universities also have instruments, which will investigate lunar winds, lunar topology and spectroscopic mapping to determine how moon's evolution took place, which may throw light on the evolution of the solar system.

Count your chickens

It's actually time to count our chickens. As a country we are now talking of a frontier in science, which has been a prerogative of the most advanced nations. From the perspective of regional balance in science and technological capabilities, India is bang in there with China and Japan. While competitions' hotting up, this is also about collaboration and ISRO has gained the confidence of the elite organizations to be included in any advanced scientific adventure.

By the way, there is a great book, Destination Moon, by Pallava Bagla and Subhadra Menon which captures beautifully the conception of Chandrayaan. It's a worthy read.