In his speech, after the Indian Space Research Organisation successfully put Mangalyaan into Martian orbit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that we may now be the envy of others. Outer space is too vast and mysterious for mankind to fritter away its composite knowledge and acumen in either mutual envy or national ego. There have been incremental contributions by men transcending time and geography. If one country holds back cutting-edge technologies in space exploration, it may be help in spurring self-sufficiency of a fellow nation. The story of a two-decade delay in developing our indigenous cryogenic engines is a case in point. But the human collective then loses precious time in reinventing the wheel, perhaps too frequently. And an otherwise intelligent planet lets slip opportunities that are so hard to come by in the highly complex and challenging quest to conquer the infinite space around us.
R Narayanan Ghaziabad
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