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October 26, 2007 > News > Former Indian President looks to the final frontier for hope

Former Indian President looks to the final frontier for hope

By Nick Schlossman | Thresher Editorial Staff

Humanity’s challenges necessitate a bold vision for exploring and harnessing the potential of space, former President of India and noted scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said Thursday. Kalam spoke as part of the President’s Lecture Series at the Baker Institute for Public Policy.

“The problems facing humanity and life on earth of protection and sustainability of the environment require many areas of research,” Kalam said. “They require integrated global approaches and the synergy of all spacefaring nations.”

Kalam, an aeronautical engineer, helped to develop India’s first national satellite vehicles and launch system. In his speech, Kalam evaluated the past successes and future challenges of developing in space. Kalam began with stories of past inventors and scholars, from the Wright brothers to Srinivas Ramanujan, a famous mathematician, and emphasized that there is a need for continuing inspiration to innovate.

“Inventions and discoveries have emanated from creative minds that have been constantly working and imagining the outcome in the mind,” Kalam said. “With [visionary planning] and constant effort, all the forces of the universe work for that inspired mind, thereby leading to inventions and discoveries.”

Kalam said he hopes for space science to play a role in resolving many of the world’s hotly-debated issues, including environmental protection, forecasting climate change and earthquakes, achieving energy sustainability and finding solutions to water problems. “What we need is a global vision that would attract the imagination of young and inspire them to their own dreams to achieve,” he said.

Spacefaring nations should cooperate to overcome these obstacles, with individual nations and institutions leveraging their resources and unique skills, Kalam said.

“The question is whether the international cooperation is consistent with the challenges of the next fifty years,” Kalam said. “[We must] graduate in the ensuing years to partnership missions among spacefaring nations for the benefit of humanity using the core competences of multiple nations.”

To reach these goals Kalam explained his World Space Vision 2050 and its components — large scale societal missions, low-cost access to space, comprehensive space security and space exploration and current application missions built upon international cooperation.

Kalam emphasized the need to bring more cargo into orbit at lower cost and as a larger percentage of the total bulk of a given spacecraft. Putting one or two tons in space requires more than 100 tons of launch weight, he said.

Kalam proposed reducing payload costs by increasing the payload fraction of spacecraft through the development of reusable launch vehicles able to take offs carrying only a fraction of their needed fuel.

“Scientific breakthroughs in air breathing propulsion systems may lead to a revolution in space transportation,” Kalam said. “Space communities of the world have a huge stake in such breakthrough research in advanced interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration.”

As a second component of his World Space Vision, Kalam said that space must be free of weapons to preserve its the existing infrastructure.

“We must recognize the necessity for the world space community to avoid terrestrial geo-political conflict to be drawn into outer space, thus threatening the space assets belonging to humanity,” Kalam said. “Any unilateral action which upsets the stability of space is against the interest of the entire humanity.”

As a third part of his Vision, Kalam called for a paradigm shift in the harnessing of space, using experiences with partnerships between India and Russia, and between US and EU nations.

“Such an accomplishment of a goal [of large scale international cooperation] would enable taking up mass missions that were not in the realm of individual nations,” Kalam said.

Kalam suggested the creation of a World Space Council to implement his World Space Vision, creating a unified approach and allowing for a jump in space science and technology.

Concluding his speech, Kalam described the outcomes of a successfully implemented Space Vision, including worldwide equitable distribution of energy, clean safe water and knowledge through solar power and communications satellites, and a clean environment derived from exploiting extraterrestrial resources and solar power gathering satellites.

“Planet Earth will be transformed to prosperity without poverty, peaceful without fear of war and a happy place to live for the whole humanity using space technologies as one of the prime movers,” Kalam said.

Lovett College junior Viren Desai said Kalam impressed him with the boldness and sincerity of his aspirations, even if some of the details of Kalam’s World Space Vision were unrealistic. “I enjoyed the fact that we heard a dash of idealism coming from someone who has run a country that is deep in a capitalistic push to catch up with the West,” Desai said. “I don’t know how practical his ideas would be, but it’s nice to know that some of the leaders of India still have a rosy picture of the future, and a vision of how to get there.”

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