Elon Musk is a wonder. In 2002, when he was only 31, he started a company to make rockets, using the money he got from co-founding another marquee company, PayPal, (which is said to be the first to come up with the idea of using encryption software to let people transfer funds over computers.)

Within just six years, SpaceX got a $1.6 billion contract from the US space agency, NASA — the first private sector company to do so — to ferry cargo to the International Space Station.

Enabling factors

Compared with that, the achievement of India’s ISRO, which was set up two years before Musk was born, looks very modest.

But, as Malcom Gladwell eloquently argues in his book, Outliers , success never comes without many enabling factors. SpaceX was a beneficiary of NASA’s desire to outsource mundane jobs so that it could focus on weightier scientific missions. Yes, young entrepreneur Musk had the guts to risk millions of dollars of his personal money making rockets, but access to technology was a problem.

Meagre funding

While the US and other countries shovelled billions of dollars into Space, ISRO bootstrapped itself up with government budget funds (it got ₹7,238 crore or $1.18 billion for 2014-15), battling public-sector cramps and denial of technology by the developed world — a paralympian in the Olympics.

With the successful launch of ISRO’s GSLV Mark III — Chairman Radhakrishnan can stand shoulder to shoulder with Musk. The full-fledged GSLV Mark III that can carry four tonnes of material to 36,000 km above the earth is still at least three years away.

But in absolute terms, even a fully developed GSLV Mark III is decade behind others.

By the time the Mark III becomes operations-capable, the world would have moved further on. SpaceX will have the Falcon Heavy, the world’s second most powerful rocket, after Saturn V, which took Americans to the moon. NASA is developing its own mega rocket, Space Launch System, a 98-metre tall brute.

Here is how the GSLV Mark III compares with other rockets (see graphic).

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