Banter from Bahrain Nearly half (45.6%) of the residents of Bahrain are Asians and most of them are from India.
Banter from Bahrain Nearly half (45.6%) of the residents of Bahrain are Asians and most of them are from India.
It was not surprising, therefore, that there were wild celebrations in the Kingdom when India became the fourth nation in the world to launch a mission to Mars and the first to put a satellite in Mars orbit at the first attempt.
Furthermore, India did it at a fraction of the cost compared to the U.S.A., the former Soviet Union and European Space Agency.
Remarkably, the ‘Mars Orbiter Mission’ (MOM) is also India’s very first interplanetary venture and is likely to provide a massive boost for the subcontinent’s aerospace industries.
The mission will hopefully also inspire a new generation of home-grown scientists, mathematicians and space technologists. I am not surprised that India has reached this milestone.
When I visited Calcutta about 15 years ago I was very impressed by the high level of science and maths literacy in the general population. India has a very strong science and technology education system (and an excellent network of interactive science centres) that has already produced huge numbers of hardware designers, software programmers, engineers, mathematicians and space scientists.
Furthermore, every grubby little car, motorbike or bicycle repair shop has an internet café. Even the man living in a tree outside my hotel room window claimed that he knew how to use the internet! He wasn’t exactly a slumdog millionaire but he was as bright as a button and we became good friends.
Each morning I would smuggle some bread rolls and apples out of breakfast and pass them to him through the window. His means of income, a large, two-wheeled wooden cart, was parked beneath the tree. He told me that he will pull loads on the cart for another year and would then be able to afford to buy a computer. He aspires to become a computer programmer, and probably is one by now.
He might even have been part of the team at MOM Mission Control! Although I was an invited guest at the conference I was attending (the Second Science Centre World Congress) I was accommodated in a crummy hotel with a large hole in the wooden floor of the bedroom.
Also, the window that looked out onto my friend’s ‘arboreal mansion’ was stuck open.
Fortunately I did not suffer from ‘Delhi Belly’, like one third of the conference delegates, which was caused by copious emissions of methane from the huge rubbish heap on which the Calcutta Science Centre is built. At least this outcome proves that life does produce methane as a by product (in this case, from bacteria breaking down organic waste).
The Indian space satellite will circle the red planet for at least six months. Solar-powered instruments will gather scientific data that will shed light on Mars’ weather systems and search for signs of methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth (but which could also be produced by geological processes).
Even though India wrestles with acute socio-economic, environmental and financial problems, there are many good reasons why it should be at the cutting edge of space science.
The space programmes of NASA, ESA and to a lesser extent Russia have produced a large number of very useful spin-offs that have improved the quality of life of people on Earth.
Like South Africa, India needs to achieve the right balance between blue-sky research and solving old-world problems.
MOM is a massive step in the right direction.
