Space no bar! This is Shashi Tharoor talking about rockets with India's top rocket scientist.
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00:00The Mangalyaan, apparently, the total cost of it was 11% of the cost of NASA's space
00:07orbiter to Mars and, it was pointed out, was probably less than the entire budget of the
00:15Hollywood space movie Gravity.
00:16Let me be a little rude and say, but could our frugal approach have partly explained
00:24the well-publicized failure of the Chandrayaan moon landing and the way in which the land
00:29rover crashed?
00:32One important big headline grabber is Gaganyaan, this new mission, which will, well, you tell
00:40us what it will do.
00:41The Gaganyaan program is the Indian human space flight program.
00:45And it also says that we will send three Indian nationals to space and then bring them back
00:53safely.
00:54So, it talks about only the first step of human space flight capability for Indian space
00:58research as far as the Bharat is concerned.
01:02And that's what the GSLV Mark 3 will be used for?
01:04The GSLV Mark 3 is a rocket which will be converted to a human space flight capable
01:09rocket.
01:10So, we call it human rating of the rocket.
01:14The rocket per se is very reliable, but when human beings fly on it, then you need to be
01:18extra cautious.
01:19Say, the human life is at risk, while it is coming back also it must be very safe.
01:24You must have an ability to abort the rocket in case that there is an anomaly growing up
01:29and then there is no chance that it will go to orbit.
01:31So, there must be a computer sitting inside telling us, yeah, there is a danger coming,
01:35why don't you abort now.
01:36So, it decides itself, because nobody in the ground can do any of this.
01:39So, we need to create that intelligence in the rocket.
01:42And all of this is being done for the first time in India because I think the Americans
01:45have done it, the Russians have done it, nobody else has.
01:48Yes, Europeans have certain capability because they have done their own human missions in
01:52other vehicles.
01:53Are you getting any collaboration from any of these?
01:56We do have collaboration in various, you know, elements.
01:59We have it with the Russians very strongly because they are supporting it without much
02:04difficulty.
02:05When Mangalyaan went to Mars, it had a number of amazing firsts, it was the first country
02:12in the world to successfully launch a Mars orbiter as the first attempt.
02:17That's right.
02:18All the other countries, very few countries have done it, but those who have done it had
02:21to make several attempts to do it.
02:23And countries as sophisticated as Japan and China have not been able to do it, but India
02:28did.
02:29But what was even equally striking was that Mangalyaan apparently, the total cost of it
02:35was 11% of the cost of NASA's space orbiter to Mars.
02:41And it was pointed out, was probably less than the entire budget of the Hollywood space
02:48movie Gravity.
02:49True.
02:50So, you've got an amazing ability, we've got it in India to do things inexpensively, frugal
02:56innovation.
02:57Yes.
02:58But how do we do that without cutting corners and taking risks?
03:01No, this is a matter of culture of the organization, I must tell you.
03:06See, we can do it very costly, we can do it at a very low cost.
03:10We are all taught from the very beginning, ever since I joined ISRO, you are going to
03:15work in an environment which is not that flashy.
03:18You know, we remember that when you procure, you buy something or do something, cost is
03:23the paramount importance.
03:25That means the internal culture is towards the frugal nature of engineering.
03:29We do recycle quite a bit.
03:32That means if you make a proto model, we always look at, can I use it for some simulation
03:35work after doing a little bit tweaking?
03:37It is definitely not by cutting corners.
03:39It is the attitude that we put forth for the development program.
03:43Let me be a little rude and say, but could our frugal approach have partly explained
03:50the well-publicized failure of the Chandrayaan moon landing and the way in which the land
03:55rover crashed?
03:56Absolutely not.
03:57I think it has nothing to do with the approaches of engineering.
04:01Approaches of engineering is one and problems and issues in a mission are another.
04:07See, we must realize that space technology is a very unpardoning technology.
04:11If it is the case of an aircraft, which you are designing, assume that I am designing
04:14a transport aircraft, before it actually flies with passengers, it would have gone to hundreds
04:18of tests in the ground or a mission to Chandrayaan or a Mars, we will never ever get a chance
04:24to launch it in a test flight and then say the landing is perfect.
04:28For in the case of Chandrayaan 2, we did actually simulated lot of landing exercise in earth,
04:34but they were all successful.
04:36But the moment that we go to moon, there is yet another problem that we have a low gravity
04:40compared to earth.
04:41You cannot create a low gravity field in earth.
04:43Are you going to try again?
04:44We are going to try again, because we understood there are parameters beyond what we have actually
04:49done the simulation in ground, we need to go further, we may fail again.
04:53I want to tell you that there is no guarantee of success in any rocket mission.
04:59Why is it worth doing?
05:00Why is it worth doing?
05:01Because it is worth doing this, we are doing it.
05:03I tell my young engineers, why we do we work on rockets, not because that it puts some
05:07satellite up there.
05:09Rockets are the only means by which human beings can ever travel the shores of the earth
05:13to another planet.
05:14There is no other way.