Cricket, or the moon?

As the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has entered deep space after crossing the 2,67, 000 km (one and a half lakh km) distance mark from the Earth after today's orbit manouevre, an interesting debate has found echoes at home and abroad. While in India the concern is mostly around the costs, elsewhere it is about plans of ‘prospecting for uranium’!

The costs, as explained in a yahoo group forum, are hardly one-fifth of a similar exercise if undertaken by Nasa, and one-tenth of that paid by Sony for IPL rights! As chairman Isro put it, the costs could be cut down simply by optimisation. (Optmisation is also the mantra we chant at Enzen!)

For more on the moon mission, subscribe yourself to indianspacetalk@groups.indianspace.in

But what is more interesting is the blog posted on worldchanging.com where it refers to a New York Times article on India’s moon mission and successful launch.

The craft is expected to remain in space for two years. During that time, it will do something undeniably cool:
prepare a 3-D atlas of the moon.
The other part of its mission, however, is something I find pretty unsettling:
and prospect the lunar surface for natural resources, including uranium, a coveted fuel for nuclear power plants

The blog kicks up a lot of dust by way of comments reflecting the different ways we earthlings view things. But the fact that the Outer Space Treaty governing rules for space faring nations is pretty outdated and has many loopholes, plus the fact that Nasa very recently deleted a crucial line from its mission statement, viz, ‘to understand and protect our home planet’ is telling on how space exploration has subtly become space exploitation!

As an energy starved planet looks at ways to ‘create’ energy, is it a natural solution to ‘fish in the sea of space’? Even if Isro maintains that the geological and chemical mapping of the moon for minerals will help identify different geological units, and test the hypothesis for the origin and early evolutionary history of the moon, anyone can fill in the unspoken words.

If we find any useful minerals, and in useful quantities, it will be high time the nations sit down and cobble up a meaningful pact on how we are to use these. Incidentally, the Moon Treaty that talks of equal rights for all earthlings to celestial wealth, and bans any individual claims by nations or people, has been signed by nations but not ratified by most space faring nations, including India!

It is still too early to crow about our success but India has proven its launch and orbit manoeuvre capabilities already. In another few days, with one more orbit manouevre left, the craft will be nudged into the moon orbit. Having launched umpteen satellites into the communication orbit around earth, including one for Israel recently, India has the expertise. This was all thanks to the enforced sanctions following its testing of nuclear weapons. The ban on dual-use technology transfer meant the space programme had to rely on inside expertise.

The moon mission took the space organization into stretches of space three times beyond its familiar arena. Extra thrusters, a design to withstand the hot and cold climates there, accommodation of all the payloads, etc were a first time experience.

This if anything proves that there is the capacity to innovate and indigenize. Why then do we not see similar thrust in other crucial areas, like energy?

Is it a lack of incentives for research, or the missing need, that is to be blamed?