Hooray for Chandrayaan!

When we were studying at IIT, ISRO's space launches would typically end up in the Bay of Bengal instead. We used to discuss what went wrong (one of them failed due to a floating point error in the software, if I remember right) but overall I used to see the failures as a symbol of how India's government-sponsored projects just never succeed. Even today, one is bewildered at the glacially slow progress and huge cost overruns in the Light Combat Aircraft, Arjun Main Battle Tank and Light Combat Helicopter projects, for example.

But in missile and space technology, India seems to have come a long way. And Chandrayaan's discovery of water on the moon, however fortuitous, is a great story! I was lucky enough to see it while in Germany, on US television. It was also interesting to note that while the sensor Chandrayaan used had been given by NASA, CNN directed the majority of the coverage to Chandrayaan and the Indian connection rather than to that piece of equipment. It was another step forward in the building of the country's brand image.

"What one man can do, another can do" - which, by the way, appears to come from ancient Latin: "ILLUD AB HOMINE FACTUM AB ALTERO FIERI POTEST"!