Space travels business class

Nasa?s commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight, Columbia, may find echoes in the subcontinent.

Nasa’s commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight, Columbia, may find echoes in the subcontinent. And not just because Kalpana Chawla was one of the seven crew members that died in February 2003, when Columbia broke up during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Nasa is obviously in a period of uncertainty now as it battles design problems that plague its shuttle fleet. The agency has to think on its feet to find a suitable replacement for its old fleet after 2010. This is probably the chief reason for the agency turning to the private sector for developing space launchers. Thus Falcon 1, an unmanned rocket built by an obscure company in California, is scheduled to carry a satellite into orbit later this year — a historic vote of confidence in a privately-financed rocket that has not even test-flown.

HT Image

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is also thinking aloud along these lines. It seeks to outsource production of nearly a dozen small to mid-sized communications satellites for domestic use and export. This is an excellent idea, as courting the private sector to develop commercial satellites will leave Isro scientists free to focus on R&D for other key technologies.

Isro has so far built a couple of dozen satellites for weather, earth imaging, and telecommunication and broadcasting uses with corporate houses like Godrej, L&T, and HAL. Outsourcing the manufacture of satellites could attract many more big players, helping it to compete better in the global space industry.