Bleeding Edge

On November 5, 2013, a rocket launched toward Mars.

It was an Indian spaceship built almost exclusively by women.

It was indeed India’s first interplanetary mission, and a terrific gamble.

Less than 10% percent of missions ever sent to Mars by major space organizations had succeeded. Space faring organizations like NASA, Russia’s Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japan’s Space Agency, or even China’s — had never been a full success.

Certainly, no space organization had ever succeeded on its first attempt.

What’s more, India’s space organization, ISRO, had very little funding…

This reminds us of the joke, about NASA administration spokesperson giving a PR talk:

“We’re going to go where no one has ever been before. We’re going to land on… the sun.”

Reporters:

“But, sir, the sun’s a burning mass of fire.”

NASA administration spokesperson:

“Ah … Thought of that — that’s why we’re going to go at night.”

Reporters: ???

The obvious puzzlement follows me too, because this is not far off the image of NASA we already have.

Which is not good to begin with…

NASA specializes in launching space telescopes that can’t focus.

Satellites that deploy in the wrong orbit.

Planetary probes that crash because engineers mix up meters and feet.

Space shuttles with missing or loose tiles that end up killing the people.

O-rings that cause leakage that explode the rockets with the people aboard.

NASA is famous for sending “annal” probes to Mars at a cost of many billions of dollars… and failing to detect anything of value.

That is NASA’s image, when the Indian Space Agency engineering and science ladies, send India’s space organization’s space ship to Mars for $ 32 million dollars USD.

ISRO, had very little funding: Indeed the total budget for this mission was $74 million, out of which only $32 million were spent on the probe mission itself.

All that, while NASA’s Mars probe, at the time the “Maven” alone had cost $651 million, and NASA’s Mars missions are usually in the several billion dollars category.

By comparison, the budget for the movie “The Martian” was a cool $108 million.

Oh, and ISRO sent off its rocket only 18 months since work on it first begun…

And it was all women.

NASA — What a waste…

Net year it will be 50 years since the moon landing.

And none of us has gone back.

Think about it.

None of us, ever got to the Moon, or to the future that was promised to us by NASA and all the Big wigs out there.

Three generations after the Moonshot, and so many years wasted.

Half a century after the Moon landing and all’s the same.

Same cars, air travel’s the same. We don’t even have the Concorde anymore.

The Concorde whose maiden flight was also in 1969.

Fifty years is the next year’s anniversary of the Concorde and of the Moon landing.

What happened in Heavens?

Was Technology stopped?

Did we become stupid?

Is it because we thought that we conquered it all and we can now sit back and get stoned out of our gourd?

Or is it because the creepy geeks with the personal computer and the internet that simply founded a more efficient delivery system for gaming, gossip, and pornography — stole the show?

Dude — where’s my jet pack?

Mister — where are my colonies on the Moon?

Hey there Mr President — where is the Mars colonization program so I can get signed up?

Nothing.

Not a peep from those in authority.

The silence of the lambs,

What a waste…

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

Yet, there is a bright side on the other side of the world.

In India, where the women’s success in putting a space probe onto Mars, was not the only success of the ISRA spaceship mission.

An image of the scientists celebrating in the mission control room is here:

For the first time, Geeky girls in India and beyond, gained a new bunch of heroes.

The kind that wear colorful wrap-around sarees, who go around with pocket calculators, with flowers in their hair, and who send rockets into space as part of their day job…