How a soft landing on the moon in 2023 could help India make billions of dollars soon...
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00:00India's successful moon landing is not just a great scientific achievement, but also a
00:05sound decision that can help the country make billions of dollars.
00:19The year was 1957.
00:22Later Americans heard a strange beeping sound on their radios.
00:30It was the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union.
00:48And barely a month later, the USSR's second satellite, Sputnik 2, also went up.
00:54This one was carrying a dog named Laika.
01:08Sputnik was launched just over a decade after the end of World War II, and in the middle
01:12of the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union.
01:16The satellite sparked what is today known as the space race.
01:32On 20th July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.
01:46Armstrong's Apollo 11 reached the moon in just 4 days.
01:50Russia's Lunar 25, which crashed into the moon a few days before Chandrayaan 3's landing,
01:56had also been estimated to reach the moon in about 2 weeks.
02:00But India's Chandrayaan 3 took more than 40 days to reach the moon.
02:04Instead of flying straight towards the moon, Chandrayaan 3 used both the Earth and the
02:08moon's gravity to its advantage.
02:10It used short bursts of power to increase its speed in increasing orbits around the
02:16Earth.
02:17This way, we can put mass in less fuel.
02:23Isro's Chandrayaan 3 budget was about $74 million.
02:28In comparison, NASA was expected to spend about $93 billion on its Artemis moon program
02:34by 2025.
02:36And China, which first soft-landed on the moon in 2013, is estimated to have spent $12
02:42billion on its space program in 2022.
02:50India became the first country to make a soft landing near the moon's south pole.
02:54It was also the fourth country to land on the moon after Russia, the US and China, and
02:59they did it on a shoestring budget.
03:01Chandrayaan 3's success didn't just help India save money, but could also help the
03:06country make money.
03:08The hope is that within a few decades, thousands of humans could be living on the moon.
03:13With a successful soft landing under its belt, India could not only make significant scientific
03:17advancements but also likely become one of the country's controlling aspects of this
03:22moon economy like transportation, data commercialization and utilization of lunar resources.
03:28PwC released a report which studied the lunar market across different countries, analyzed
03:33both government and private data, and predicted a roadmap for the future.
03:38It said that the US would likely control the lion's share, 51%, of this lunar economy between
03:432020 and 2040.
03:45China, Japan and other Asian countries would control about 30% of it, and the European
03:50Union and other countries including India would come in at 18%.
03:55So India could make anywhere up to $231 billion off of this moon landing in the coming decades.