Slowdown eclipse over manned moon mission

The delay in the approval means that the preparations for the mission have been held up. The mission will almost certainly miss its 2015 schedule. “We had asked for the approval in 2008. It’s been more than a year since and the approval has yet not come. It means that the mission would have to be pushed back accordingly,” said S Satish,director of press and public relations at ISRO. Satish said ISRO would require six to seven years to prepare for a challenging and complicated mission like this. “The space capsule has to be built. The training facility for the astronauts will have to be set up. All this will take time,” he said.

But logistics is not something that is of much concern to the government as of now. It is more worried about the finances. The manned space mission is by far the most expensive project undertaken by ISRO. ISRO had started planning with an initial estimate of around Rs 8,000 crore which grew to Rs 10,000 crore and then to Rs 12,000 crore as the plan progressed. The latest projection is that it would entail an expenditure of about Rs 15,000 crore.

In comparison,India’s first moon mission,Chandrayaan-1 — which struck gold with one of the instruments onboard confirming the presence of water over moon — cost the country less than Rs 400 crore. It is widely considered to be the cheapest moon mission ever. Its sequel,Chandrayaan-2,which would be a lander and rover mission and is slated for launch in 2012,is only slightly more expensive at around Rs 425 crore. ISRO’s entire budget for the current year is slightly less than Rs 5,000 crore.

While money is certainly a constraint,experts also point out to a more fundamental problem,that of mindset. Space exploration in India has always been intricately linked with social and development objectives. The father of India’s space programme,Vikram Sarabhai,is famously quoted as having said that India did not have the “fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But,we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.”

Accordingly,India’s space programme has developed with a strong thrust on its benefits on society. Space technology has been used for a variety of applications like tele-education,tele-medicine,fishery,telecommunications etc.

The manned mission,though,is unable to promise any immediate and direct spin-offs for the social sector. It will be a truly scientific mission aimed at demonstrating India’s technology prowess in space exploration. As one scientist pointed out,it would have been easy for the government if the costs involved were Rs 500 crore or even Rs 1,000 crore. “But Rs 15,000 crore is something that the government would much rather spend on schemes like NREGS or Indira Awaas Yojana,” he said.