India won’t be re-inventing wheel with human mission: US space envoy

Major General Charles Frank Bolden, the former Nasa Administrator who has been appointed US’ first space envoy says there is no reason for Indians to be apprehensive about the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) proposed human spaceflight mission as the space agency won’t be reinventing the wheel. Bolden, who was in India as part of his official tour, which included a visit to Isro, said that there is a lot of new learning that is possible through this mission and that Isro was on the right track. He also spoke of re-usable launch vehicle technology, Elon Musk and SpaceX, and the “peanut” custom in Nasa among other things in an interaction with TOI here on Thursday.

Excerpts:

TOI: You have been out in space for multiple missions yourself, today, Isro’s plans to put astronauts in space has seen some criticism ... Your views?

Bolden: There is no need for any apprehension as it won’t be a re-invention of the wheel or repeating a miracle. There will be a lot to learn, as there is still a lot that we don’t know about despite having sent humans to space all these years. They understand a lot more about how the human body performs in the microgravity environment, they will also learn a lot more about how to keep humans safe in that environment, which will help provide learning on how to keep humans more safe here on earth. We will look at exercise, regimen, diet all of which help in understanding several diseases. I can go on… So when people mention that there will be nothing new to learn, they are wrong. We still don’t understand how the human immune system work, even which can be learnt.

TOI: Re-usable launch vehicles are a hot topic of discussion, especially on the cost front ...

Bolden: The jury is still out in my opinion. We shouldn’t make an early judgement that re-usability is the solution to drive down cost as we don’t have enough data to make any firm determination. We tried it for 30 years with the space shuttle, but we couldn’t make it a cost-effective programme because we consciously chose to take apart the entire shuttle and put it back together after every flight, which was not cost effective.

TOI: But there are examples of re-usable vehicles…?

Bolden: I am only saying that it is still early days. The commercial airplane business would have never got off the ground if they had to take every engine out and inspect it after every flight. Companies like South West showed that if you cannot land, spend 15-20 minutes and roll again, you are not going to make money. That was a business innovation for commercial airlines business, and that is what Elon Musk is doing with SpaceX for space launches. He’s changing the model and the paradigm. The thinking is to launch, come back and recover, load it up again and launch and have inspections only once in five or so flights...Will he ever get there? I don’t know, has to be seen.

TOI: In a lighter vein, can you speak about the “peanut” custom in Nasa?

Bolden: In the launch control centre, there are a lot of customs and tradition. I remember a guy named Norm Carlson who had started this beans and sausage tradition post launch. Similarly, someone ate some peanuts very early on in the Human space programme launches in Florida control centre and it was a success. So it became a habit because of good luck. But we don’t have as many as the Russians, who have many more superstitions.