198. Is it right for a country to spend too much on space research when all new knowledge becomes public soon? P S Remesh Chandran

198

Is it right for a country to spend too much on space research when all new knowledge becomes public soon?

P. S. Remesh Chandran
 
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Article Title Image 1 By Orlando. Graphics: Adobe SP.

Except for military purposes, a country spending too much on space research is waste.

1

All space science technologies and knowledge become available to the whole world eventually, irrespective of whether a particular country goes there or not or whether it spends money on space travel or not. Most of what man learned from Soyuz and Apollo Missions were subsequently made available in Medicine and Metallurgy throughout the world for the common benefit of mankind. The gains of other missions also will gradually be distributed in time. That is what International Science Conferences are for. Russia and America may keep a few things as their own for a time but they too will have to be released to the world eventually. In science and technology, no country is an island isolated from the other countries. It is a world of constant give-and-take. That is why all new knowledge gained by one country during their missions come out eventually and reach others. They may not come out for a time but they will indeed. That is how science and technology marches ahead. So, in a nut shell, except for military purposes, a country spending too much on space research is an unwanted waste. 

2

All countries are in a constant process of receiving newly gained knowledge from other countries and transferring their newly gained knowledge to other countries. This process was done in the past through scientists-exchange programmes, science conferences and borrowing and importing of whole libraries physically but now, though the ancient physical methods continue to exist, the major traffic has come to be shifted to the digital mode of exchange. All prominent universities have now established their knowledge repositories- hot and cold- where from anyone in the world can draw resources. These Knowledge Repositories are sometimes called Cold Storage by a few people but they needn’t necessarily be cold. Some of them are actually so hot and too much in demand that their administrators have had to put a fees to the services for using them to avoid overcrowding of users and stalling of their systems. 

The widespread use of digital knowledge repositories has now become such accepted and taken for granted in many countries that not a few among them have accorded them the status of syllabus and text books. In India, because this vast system of storing and retrieving of knowledge digitally and remotely has already been accepted as standard in universities in leading countries and constitutes a considerable portion of the academic activities in developed and developing countries, official statings have already been made about stopping the printing of university and school text books altogether and using digital knowledge repositories instead. 

3

This drawing of knowledge from other countries is norm in space research also as is in every other field- academic and industrial. This giving out of knowledge also is a norm in space research. That was why the French offered their latest Cryo-Engine Technology to India for a token One Crore Rupees as an appreciation for India’s zeal in space research as well as an appreciation for the imaginative brains who worked behind this proposed deal for which India later paid Two hundred Crore Rupees to get hold of this technology. And today we know why. It was not because the French Technology was any bad but because there was no room for corruption in that deal. 

Why India, which borrows or buys space technology from other countries, became a pioneer in launching satellites into space is not because of any uniqueness in the Indian space technology but because of the low cost of Indian space industry. Launching space satellites is comparably low-cost in India, provided the advanced technologies of other countries are lent or sold to her. 

4

Had there been no Soyuz or Apollo missions, India would never have even dreamed about going to space. Had there been no knowledge of Keplerian ellipses, exhaust velocities and nozzle expansion ratios from other countries, there would still have been no Indian rocket. India would still have been experimenting with her crude fuel mixtures of liquid oxygen and alcohol with high combustion temperatures which resulted in her engines made of weak steel explode, without knowing anything about the advancement in research going on in other countries on the development of other fuels and other steels with higher melting points.

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5

How do advanced industries survive? It is either through indigenous and genuine research and development or through industrial espionage. The higher the importance of the industry, the more clandestine and stronger the industrial espionage becomes. Mega industries are regular clients to mega industrial espionage firms and spies in the world. What better way for a country which has not any bases in Antarctica to get hold of the new discoveries on the impact of extreme low temperatures on steel before going to space? It is stolen, bought, rented, or lent: stolen the easiest and cheapest way. Why was there a fierce cold war between Russia and America before the advent of Internet and no cold war after its advent? It is because everything is now accessible to all eventually and there is no need for stealing. There is no domination in the sky. Everyone’s satellites are pinpointed in the maps of the war rooms of other countries, at least to know in advance when those satellites explode and come their way or to know to which spot their camera lenses were turned lately. There is no secret in the space now, practically. 

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For many years the world thought that India’s foremost scientific organization, the Indian Space Research Organization, was free of personnel who were immersed neck-deep in industrial espionage and corruption and receiving sidekicks as money, women or wine for selling secrets. In 1994 this belief was shattered by the arrest, questioning, prosecution, trial, incarceration, compensation and the eventual release after many years of one of the most famous scientists of this organization- the very head of its cryogenics division. Though he was later acquitted, released and compensated on proving in a way that he was not involved in the alleged deals, his trial did bring out what an Augean Stables this national organization is, and raised the questions what kind of industrial espionage and betrayals of India are going on inside this organization, how the espionage rings comprising of young greedy techs are working in this organization, and who are actually selling secrets of scientific research in India to whom. These questions are of paramount importance to the nation’s safety but they hideously remain unanswered. The investigating officers who prosecuted this guy still reiterate in press that he was actually involved with an espionage ring and that they actually sold many secrets using women and that there are still many in this organization’s ranks who are yet to be exposed. 

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Knowledge gained through research going obsolete and stale before even processed in full or in part is a dread of all research organizations in the world. New knowledge always comes out from other parts of the world as people in those countries work while Indians yawn, sleep and snore, questioning and disproving the veracity of the facts or nullifying totally the relevance and justification of the earlier, costing billion of dollars’ waste in expenses- an unnecessary and avoidable folly. It is the price we pay for running quarantined and compartmentalized research classified and funded under defense heads mostly. Had there been meaningful cooperation and revelation among scientists and organizations, there would have neither been this nullification nor this duplication. But these follies help arrogant and spendthrift organizations to go on paying their establishment wings unnecessarily and unquestioned and satisfying the countless people engaged in these wings to the point of not being rational enough to question the follies of the government and the ruling parties. Looked anyway, no sooner a discovery or development is made than it becoming outdated or obsolete is an avoidable waste of the world’s resources in the modern world with rapid information highways built. 

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What India tries to do in space research now is what Russia and America did decades earlier and China attempted and did recently. It is putting a remotely controlled vehicle on the surface of the moon, on the other side of the moon which is perpetually turned away from the earth. Russia’s and America’s efforts to put a man on space, and then put a vehicle on the moon, and then a man on the moon, and then send probing vehicles to other planets, succeeded and brought a load of data which were subsequently interpreted by man and converted into information and knowledge. We would hope we have moved much forwards, all this new knowledge is genuinely new, and not repititions. But still the question remains why the Cambridge Book of Astronomy published decades earlier contained more information than all the published books based on these subsequent travels contained together. Is knowledge in space research remaining where it started and all achievements said to have gained subsequently are virtual- projected figures, statistics and volumes to justify the huge expenditures accounted and classified as defense expenditures? 

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While a grain of sand from a planet is enough to tell its story- to tell its origin, constituents and the conditions there- for a talented, learnèd and imaginative man of science, why some need an entire planet to do just that? After landing man and vehicles on the moon, Russia and America did not repeat these maneuvers again. Why? For one thing, they had brought enough to go on for decades in research. For another, it was because the governments of those countries could not convince their people that the huge expenditures on these ‘prestigious’ projects were not the ruling political party’s follies at the expense of the welfare of their people and and that those projects did bring information useful for people. In fact, history later proved that these two countries- Russia and America- were impoverishing their people by spending national revenue on unnecessary behemoth projects and feeding people a steady stream of lunar images in the 1960s instead of bread and water, and at the same time realizing the expenditure for continuing these projects from people by skyrocketing commodity prices and raising citizen taxes. 

Even before going to moon, there was heavy people’s opposition to the unjustified huge expenditure which the American people said ‘was not its worth’. The people’s opposition was justified when it was proved later that the whole American research apparatus was crippled for space travels, vital fields of research were neglected for want of funds, and America fell into an economic crisis after the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy’s speech lauded the Apollo 11 victory as ‘a symbol of national unity and world unity’. It was all just for media attraction. If it brought world unity, why different countries go to moon independently? 

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The political party in America which landed man on the moon could not keep this ‘prestige’ long and was voted out of power. 

The party and its government in Russia which was later proved to have turned its people into beggars was avenged by its people by overthrowing communism and splitting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic into so many sovereign and independent countries. Now the ISRO is claiming its Moon Ship II project is its most ‘prestigious’ and the costliest. It is the costliest indeed- the expenditure comes to nearly a thousand crores of Indian rupees- adding the cost of postponing twice the launching of this vehicle due to undisclosed failures, and without adding the establishment expenditure and the research and development expenditure, adding both would move that figure to around 15,000 crores. The question is, is it justified for ‘prestige’? Whose ‘prestige’ in India costs 15,000 crores? 

Mankind has certainly undertaken a few prestigious projects. But the Great Wall of China provided protection and the Suez Canal provided transportation. They served a purpose. But what did other ‘prestigious’ follies of rulers like shifting the capital of India from Delhi and again back to Delhi and the building of the Taj Mahal provide? What purpose useful to man did they serve? They were just vain follies of rulers at the expense of people. 

It is because the Indians ‘yawned’ and slept while others worked that India has had to have borrowed technologies from other countries.

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And then there is this question of comparatively harmless viruses from the earth travelling in ill-sanitized satellites, getting into space, mutating under the extreme conditions of weightlessness and radiation, and arriving back with the retrieved satellites with catastrophic virulence. Satellites are now mass-produced by commercial companies and so their sanitation while launching and reentry are now heavily compromised. Viruses and bacterium which were earlier harmless to mankind have every chance of becoming virulent this way and cause worldwide epidemics. Corona virus was known to man for a hundred years and they were never known to cause diseases in human beings. Their colonization was limited to plants. How else do you think they got favorable conditions to mutate and become able to kill human beings and spread at unprecedented rates?  

Article Title Image 2 By Orlando. Graphics: Adobe SP.
 
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English Essays Articles, Free Student Notes, Indian Writers, Space Research, Satellites,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

00. Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of Swan: The Intelligent Picture Book. Born and brought up in the beautiful village of Nanniyode in the Sahya Mountain Valley in Trivandrum, in Kerala. Father British Council trained English teacher and Mother University educated. Matriculation with distinction and Pre Degree Studies in Science with National Merit Scholarship. Discontinued Diploma studies in Electronics and entered politics. Unmarried and single.

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Post: P. S. Remesh Chandran, Editor, Sahyadri Books, Trivandrum, Padmalayam, Nanniyode, Pacha Post, Trivandrum- 695562, Kerala State, South India.