The Indian Dream — our own astronauts!
Tags: NASA, Humanity, Space, Africa, India

After every crisis, countries need something to lift the spirits of its people. We do too! So what will be better than seeing our own men and women talking a space walk out there from our homemade space capsule. After all, we were planning this since long.

The 90s kids will all relate with this. The fact that many of us wanted to be Astronauts when we were in schools. Reason? There was this great man called A.P.J. Abdul Kalam around us who was so popular that it was most popular question back then to speak his full name. Those who could, were the smart kids in class.

Other reason was the amazing Kalpana Chawla, who we lost unfortunately in an accident of space shuttle Columbia. People can never forget that smile and that confidence on her face. She was everything India wanted its young sons and daughters to become. So it was damn cool to become an astronaut. Little did our kid brains knew that we were never going to become an astronaut because there was no such option for us Indians to become one. Even if we really try, we could be flying in space with some other country’s flag on our space suit. Like another amazing Indian origin lady, Sunita Williams.

So, it was never a choice for us. Gradually things started changing and our backyard boys & girls from ISRO started making huge noise worldwide. They made great rockets, developed super cool (literally) cryogenic fuel, made satellites and then played with its size to make nano satellites, sent 104 satellites in one go to make a world record out of it, then went to say hello to the Mars one day and lastly almost drove a car on moon.

All these activities naturally raised our childhood aspirations & dreams to dust off things and start our own space human flight mission & we did exactly that! Sometimes short on budget, sometimes delay in development of technologies required, we hovered around. Then in 2018, it was announced that we finally are going into space. That three of our men & women will be going to the space till December 2021.

First trials without crew is scheduled in December 2020. It’s not easy! We need a great variety of equipment & technology for this. We need heat resistance sheets for re-entry of crew into our atmosphere, we need special food for them, we need an astronaut training facility, and we need what not. List is so long but guess what! We have almost everything. We have developed state of an art technology for this mission. We have sent our Indian astronauts to Russia for training & also started the construction of our own facility for training of astronauts in future. We are all set to become a country which stops at nothing & moving towards our righteous place in world. We will be calling our mission as Gaganyaan. Oh! and we are sending a female looking robot called Vyommitra with our astronauts to take care of technical things in space.

In this mission, our astronauts are also expected to take a space walk and they will be in space for 7 days.

We need this! After such a tragic pandemic which shows no signs of slowing down in India, and the Economic losses we faced and will be facing, we need this.

Acts like these lift the confidence and morale of citizens. It makes them feel that they can do everything. That confidence is always required to be a successful nation. Setbacks are a part of life and we will see them time to time, but to bounce back is really important. John F. Kennedy asked USA to support the mission when he made his mind to send a U.S. citizen on moon. That country never looked back after that. It was indeed a giant leap for mankind.

Time comes for our people to make another leap for mankind. A leap for all those countries in Asia, South America and Africa who faced the suppression of colonialism for centuries. Countries like these see India as their icon. They want us to show all developed nations that what we are capable of. So for us Indians, for those countries’ citizens, for the Indian flag on space suits, for boosting the confidence in billions, we have to do it.

I am saying this because we will see a lot of cost cutting in upcoming months. This is not a mission which deserves cost cutting. We are almost set and our scientists deserve their shot at this. So, be united and support this.

May we get the success.

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Siddharth.

http://twitter.com/@siddharthKG7