An Indian will walk on the moon in 2020. Or so the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) maintains.
At a forthcoming meeting of the country's top scientists on November 7, ISRO will, for the first time, unveil two of its ambitious plans - to send an Indian into space around 2014 and then to have one walk on the moon about six years later. Both missions will be accomplished without any foreign assistance. ISRO will even find a Sanskrit word equivalent for the US's 'astronaut' and Russia's 'cosmonaut' to describe the Indian in space.
G Madhavan Nair, chairman, ISRO, said the proposed missions would be a national endeavour, with the best of the country's laboratories and research-and-development organisations chipping in with technical know-how. The November 7 meeting - which will be attended, among others, by CNR Rao, chairman of the prime minister's Science Advisory Council - will be followed by another in December. A formal project report will be submitted to the government before the end of the year and trials will start in early 2007.
ISRO will conduct a space-capsule-recovery experiment. A 600-kg module, which will be hoisted by a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket, will orbit the earth for a week and splash down in the Bay of Bengal from where it will be retrieved. The experiment will be repeated in 2008.
I mean no disprect, but India has been planning on doing a lot of different technological feats for some time. They are still unable to produce a nuclear submarine even after working on it for 30 years (+/-). Making the leap from no man in space to lunar walks is nontrivial and can be done in a reasonably quick manner, but color me skeptical that India has the motivation at this juncture to put a man on the moon in the time frames mentioned. I am sure that they will...eventually...but somehow I don't see them making the leap to be in competition with the USA, PRC, RF or EU.
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