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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: back to Park (ID:fanpu2019), author: Lee Xianhuan

India's lunar probe effect map? source: ISRO in the field of space, India's power is rising in their own way.

On August 23, India's third lunar mission, Lunar ship 3, successfully landed on the moon, becoming the fourth country to make a soft landing on the lunar surface after the United States, the Soviet Union and China.

"India is on the moon now!" Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shouted to the television camera after landing on the Moonboat 3. With the success of the mission, India gradually caught up with the first echelon in the space race. What is even more surprising is that the budget to accomplish all this is even lower than the cost of a science fiction movie. The cost-effective Indian style makes space missions more interesting.

To do big things, spend a little money carefully, move forward slowly, and have no resources to make great strides forward, for such an Indian space program, a successful landing on the surface of the moon is a historic moment.

A few days before the Indian lunar lander landed, in almost the same position, the lunar lander from Russia lost control and crashed on the lunar surface in the final stage, and the mission failed.

For India, this is a technical victory and a metaphor for space power and even national power.

Space has always been a facade of national strength. As we all know, when man launched the first man-made satellite, sent a man into space for the first time, and sent a spacecraft to the moon for the first time, the Soviet Union opened the golden age of the first space exploration in competition with the United States. it has demonstrated its strong scientific and technological strength to the whole world. Russia, which took over the Soviet space industry, was born a space power and once contracted the shuttle mission of all the human astronauts on the planet to and from the space station.

Today, Russia's space strength is almost at a standstill, looking old in the comparison of its international counterparts, while India, in South Asia, is making use of its space achievements to enhance its international status.

So during the critical period of landing on the moon, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in South Africa to attend the BRICS summit, but he did not miss this historic moment. Modi, who remotely participated in the live video broadcast, waved the Indian tricolor flag: "We are witnessing history." Mr Modi tries to convey a new image and signal: a rising country has a place among the global elite.

What makes Indians even more proud is that the lunar mission, which caused such a huge response, cost only 74 million US dollars.

The budget is not even enough to make a sci-fi blockbuster. Christopher Nolan spent $165 million on Interstellar and $100 million on the 2013 space disaster movie Gravity. The Russian lunar lander, which crashed at the same location a few days ago, cost $200 million.

"No one in the world can do this like us," said S Somanath, a senior aerospace engineer and chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The cost control of the mission is reflected in all aspects. because of its lower-power and lower-cost propulsion system, Lunar ship 3 had to choose a longer lunar landing route when flying to the moon: expanding its orbit around the earth and using the earth's gravity as a slingshot to fly to the moon, which took more than 40 days.

The source of the map to the moon: ISRO may be influenced by commercial aerospace's ability to calculate input and output, but the reality is that the purse is not enough, and India has continued its frugal style when it started its space program. "We had to transport a communications satellite in ox carts, which cost a total of 150 rupees," Surendra Surendra Pal, a former director of ISRO, said in an interview. (about 13 yuan at the current exchange rate)

India Aerospace has a very competitive advantage in terms of labor costs. ISRO reportedly employs more than 19000 people, 3/4 of whom are scientists, more than the number of permanent employees of NASA; according to the agency, their average monthly salary is about $2700, significantly lower than their global counterparts.

After careful calculation, their budget for the future moon landing is $2 billion. By comparison, the United States has a space budget of $62 billion in 2022, a fraction of India's moon landing. On the other hand, India's investment in space programs accounts for only 0.04% of its gross domestic product, compared with 0.28% in the United States and 0.15% in Russia.

Another way to save money is to get others to pay in partnership. Inspired by SpaceX, a group of aerospace practitioners in India have started their own businesses. Although ISRO's budget for the last fiscal year was less than $1.5 billion, there are reports that India's private space economy has reached at least $6 billion and is expected to triple as soon as 2025. Private power has been gradually incorporated into national considerations, and the Modi government hopes to attract more private companies to speed up the progress of the space program.

In terms of a simple budget, India's posture in space is not to catch up strongly, but to be goal-oriented and save as much as possible. Judging from the sensation caused by the success of the lunar mission, India has made a lot of money.

Photo of the lunar surface sent back after a soft landing? source: ISRO India Aerospace milestone the success of this lunar mission has had a far-reaching impact on India.

In "bulk" India, where ethnic diversity and sectarian conflicts persist, the image of landing on the moon provides a rare moment of national revelry. Prior to that, Indian people prayed for the mission at Hindu temples, Sikh Guldwala temples and Muslim mosques, and special viewing ceremonies were held in local schools.

It may not be easy for Indians to feel the national pride. For a long time in the past, India's space dream has been ridiculed by the Western media. The New York Times once published an apparently discriminatory cartoon of an Indian with a long beard, holding a cow in one hand, knocking at the door of the Elite Space Club. It is also remembered that a BBC host crossed his legs in a live broadcast while questioning India Space: whether a country still struggling with poverty, inequality and inadequate toilets should continue to explore space.

The New York Times apologized for the cartoon in 2014. They really need a moment of success and a carnival to sweep away the humiliation and unwillingness of the past.

The success of the lunar mission is also a moment for India's local space industry and talents to prove themselves. As we all know, Indians have made great strides in the global field of science and technology, and what the industry likes to say is that in a large number of Silicon Valley technology companies, including Microsoft, Google and other top companies in the world, the current CEO is Indian.

When we understand this phenomenon, the usual perspective is: do Indians have qualities that we Chinese do not have? Is there anything to learn from India's talent training system? But in fact, people in India pay more attention to the phenomenon of brain drain in India.

The related discussion was ignited again after the completion of the lunar mission. Before that, more than 1/3 of graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology, the country's ace of science and technology, chose to leave India to work and live overseas. This has led to a large number of graduates from unknown colleges and universities in small Indian cities on the working group responsible for the lunar mission, in part because they earn only 1/5 of their peers' monthly salary.

In the carnival of the whole people, the grassroots counterattack made the story more inspirational.

Barkha Dutt, a contributor to the Washington Post, said in an article that India needs more heroes like ISRO chairman Somanath than entrepreneurs like Microsoft CEO: Nadella is certainly smart, but the low-key Somanat should be a role model for Indians. He represents a generation of talented scientists, although they will never have their own cricket team like Nadella. Or appear on the Forbes Rich list, whose income is only a fraction of that of those Indian-Americans, but they choose not to emigrate, stay in their own country, and then use Nadella's 15-month salary to send the Indian flag to the moon.

With humility, diligence and low pay for the country, India's local astronauts have moved from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, and their image has reached new heights after the historic victory.

Uncertain next step, Modi's office said that based on the success of the mission, India should now focus on new goals, including building the Bharatiya Antariksha Station (Indian Space Station) by 2035 and sending the first Indian to the moon by 2040-20 years later. At the same time, Modi also said that Indian scientists will be committed to the Venus orbital mission and the development of Mars lander.

Judging from the statement alone, these are very standard space targets. Just like the development path of China's aerospace in the 21st century, from the realization of manned launch in 2003 to the construction of a space station in 2021, spacecraft will be sent to Mars at the same time. China's current goal is to send astronauts to the moon by 2030. To some extent, India is touching China across the river, following the path that the latter did 15-20 years ago.

But the most important question remains to be answered: can India achieve its goal of sending an Indian to the moon by 2040? And if it is to be realized, what should be done?

The Modi government gave a rather vague statement: "in order to achieve this vision, the Space Department will develop a roadmap for lunar exploration." this will include a series of lunar ship missions, the development of next-generation carrier rockets, the construction of new launchers, and the establishment of human-centered laboratories and related technologies. "

The "next generation carrier rocket" mentioned here alone is a distant goal. As of the middle of this year, India has disclosed that the new carrier rocket has a lift of about 20 metric tons and can enter low-Earth orbit. But this is far from enough for the mission to the moon. Even so, the rocket is still in the basic stage of design.

In addition, targeting the moon, the new rocket will take up to a decade or so to design, develop, test, and eventually fly.

Rockets are the most basic element in manned missions to the moon, but Indian officials have not said a word about it, so what is left to the outside world is speculation and doubt. Compared with Modi's ambitions, there are voices in the space industry who think that their goal is still a clich é, belonging to the practice of drawing a big circle of the cake first.

After all, this time in 2040 is a very ambiguous expectation. On the one hand, it sounds very anticipated; on the other hand, the Indian government does not need to go to work the next day because of the lack of time.

One possibility is that India would further accept the Artemis Agreement proposed by NASA and go to the moon in cooperation with the United States. Indeed, in the first half of this year, India signed a non-binding agreement on cooperation between NASA and India.

But so far, this path is not very reliable. First of all, India is only one of 27 signatories, and the agreement is non-binding. By contrast, Canada has locked in a formal partnership, and Canadian astronauts have been put on the mission list two years later.

In other words, it is not too difficult to stuff India's own astronauts into other people's spaceships, but it is not necessarily a key goal of India's own space program.

Another possibility is to buy a reputable starship to solve the rocket problem. Looking at the whole market, only SpaceX could be the seller, but SpaceX has yet to achieve this goal. Taken together, this possibility is quite limited. As mentioned earlier, India's space route depends on local suppliers with extremely high performance-to-price ratios, and the price offered by SpaceX may not appeal to Indian friends.

Overall, India's grand space programme still has many questions to answer, and frugality adds another layer of uncertainty to the mission's expectations and path.

reference

Https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/31/india-moon-landing-brain-drain/

Https://www.businessinsider.com/how-india-moon-landing-cost-cheap-compared-to-nasa-russia-2023-8

Https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/india-sets-sights-on-a-moon-landing-in-2040-but-is-it-realistic/

Https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/08/09/indias-ambitious-moon-mission-cost-less-than-hollywood-space-films-heres-what-you-need-to-know/?sh=564f3455345e

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