Chotu walked into the room and found humble Motu in the balcony, glumly gazing at the sky.

Worried of the non-stop downpour down South, Motuji?

Sahi bola , Chotu bhai, I’ve just made my contribution to Kerala chief minister’s relief funds.

That’s great. So have I.

But in fact, I was thinking of a different celestial matter, dear.

What’s that? Cut to the chase.

Is India’s plan to send a person to space by 2022 feasible and justified?

Acha! Motuji. Belated Happy Independence Day, I’m happy you didn’t miss the PM’s speech where he announced India’s own manned space mission. If you recall, Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian to hit the space, was part of a Russian mission, on a Russian vehicle. So, as the PM himself pointed out in his speech, it would be a proud moment when “India’s tricolour will fly in space.”

But beyond deshbhakti dialogues, does this really make sense?

Motu, you must understand that probing the space is important business an emerging country like India which has a lot to achieve in areas such as space exploration and reap benefits of such missions. If you look at what countries that have sent people to the space have gained (from erstwhile Soviet Union to the United States to China) you’ll get the big picture.

Also, on ground, this is a great opportunity to create jobs, apart from giving a fillip to the country’s science and technology sector. For the record, Isro chairman has said that such a mission has the potential to create 15,000 jobs. So, let’s look at the brighter side of the sky here.

Teek hei . Still, look at the size of resources such gargantuan project would swallow...

Granted, this is going to be a costly mission, Motubhai. There is already a debate raging around the high costs a manned space mission would incur and there is a segment of people who say that that money could be wisely spent on enhancing other important sectors such as education or healthcare.

Exactly, my point, Chotu.

In a way, you’re right. The world is at a juncture today where even major powers are thinking of cutting down on such expensive missions and there is a lot of civil society pressure on governments to reroute such monies for public welfare. Even some astronomers have said that sending people into space is pointless in an age where technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics can enable us to send humanoids or similar and more practical alternatives to the space. Such missions might even get us a picture that is more accurate than a manned mission. But even here, the costs are not particularly reduced as such missions would need pots of money to set off.

Frankly, do we have the wherewithal to do that, Chotu?

Motubhai, I have read in the papers that Isro can really pull this off, considering the space agency’s proven abilities in successfully launching low-cost space missions. Mind you, Chandrayaan-2, India’s upcoming lunar mission, is expected to cost just ₹800 crore. This is less expensive than Christopher Nolan’s space scifi flick Interstellar which had cost a little over ₹1,000 crore in 2014.

Ah, that’s there!

Also, Isro has said that it already has developed technologies that can help send an Indian astronaut to space (human crew module, life support systems, etc). If it helps you to know Motubhai, Isro in 2014 had actually tested CARE (Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment), which is an atmospheric re-entry of a module. This and many other capababilities it already has can make Gagnayaan a reality for India. For Isro, it’s no rocket science, you know?

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