Oct 20, 2006 03:50 PM
3659 Views
It is so very easy to blame DRDO and ISRO and caste aspersions on President Kalam’s competence. Unfortunately, we all seem to suffer from loud mouthedness and myopic vision. I read with horror an MS member’s recent diatribe against DRDO, ISRO & President Kalam. I must make it clear at the outset that I neither have anything personal against the said member nor do I have sympathy for anyone in the Govt. or its agencies.
US, UK, Russia, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, China and all other nations with space and military aspirations have had innumerable failures, with losses running into billions of dollars. India’s space and military program is no exception. We too have our list of successes. And we too have our share of failures. It’s a pity that we seem to have no idea of the complexities involved in a missile or a space vehicle launch. The conclusion in the review ‘desh ke lootere no.1’ that “all our security and defense system should be out source to better equip nations like USA or China if we want ourselves to be secure from our opponent” speaks volumes of utter ignorance of the writer in defense related issues. The reviewer is literally suggesting that we should trust our most dangerous strategic enemy China with our defenses. I can not suppress my bemusement at the writer’s pathetic lack of either military knowledge or commonsense. Whom do you see as our opponents then…Pakistan…who is hand-in-glove with China in military and nuclear matters! Or Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the like…ha..ha..ha!! Perhaps the writer should know that Japan, which is one of the most technologically advanced nations, has had repeated failures in its space program. ISRO is way way ahead of Japan in this regard. As far as ISRO’s & DRDO’s failure on consecutive days is concerned, no doubt it pained in our hearts to see the projectiles disappear into the Bay of Bengal, the fact nevertheless remains that failures only increase the resolve to succeed in a bigger and better way.
You know what the founder of IBMThomas Watson, observed – “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate. This means learning how to make it perfect: plan what you’re going to do, do it, learn from it, take failures in your stride, make changes, and do it again – round and round through umpteen iterations until you make it flawless.” Lets have a look at NASA’s failures: after its launch in April 1990, astronomers found Hubble's 2.4-metre mirror had been ground to the wrong curvature. NASA had to mount a very costly mission in 1993 to install a new set of optics to correct the problem. In just one month of March 1999, NASA lost three space probes worth more than $1000 million! It was catastrophic. The disappearance of the Mars Polar Lander was a major failure for NASA. The lander vanished less than three months after NASA lost its sister spacecraft, the Mars Climate Orbiter, in highly-embarrassing circumstances. The $125m craft, which was to study Mars’ climate, went missing on after a SILLY MIX-UP between imperial and metric measurements. It transpired that one team in NASA had been working in centimetres, metres and kilogrammes, while another was using inches, feet and pounds. The error meant that instead of the craft passing 150 km above the planet's surface it flew at 60 km, and probably burnt up. It was a costly and a colossal mistake. Many Americans rightly castigated the US Govt. in unreservedly vilifying language, but has it reduced NASA’s resolve to forge ahead in its space program.
At least we did not do any such silly mistake. We are still experimenting with propulsion systems and fuels, and we too shall have sustainable success in the near future. Failures only pave the way for bigger and better successes in the future. Even Jane's Defence Weekly praises ISRO and DRDO for their stupendous successes.
Its time we take pride in our space, defence and nuclear programs and encourage our brilliant and dedicated scientists who have committed their careers for paltry government salaries (in comparison to the lucrative private sector) to ensure that India becomes self sufficient in these critical areas. Hats off to ISRO, DRDO and President Kalam.
