India's increasingly confident high-tech industry has suffered two blows on successive days with the failed test of a military missile followed by the loss of a rocket that was due to carry a key new telecommunications satellite into orbit. There is no immediate reason to suppose these setbacks are linked but some very worried Indian scientists are now calculating what went wrong. The loss of the Agni-III long-range missile on Sunday was embarrassing enough. It may be wondered why India went ahead with the test of a rocket capable of delivering a nuclear warhead as far away as Beijing only a few days after North Korea’s controversial, and as it turned out, equally unsuccessful test of its own long range rocket. Perhaps New Delhi calculated that since the Chinese had been so moderate in their reaction to Pyongyang’s missile tests, an ideal opportunity presented itself to try out its own new rocketry. The Indians were however clearly anxious to do nothing to undermine the newfound rapprochement with Pakistan over Kashmir. Islamabad was informed of the test beforehand and seems to have raised no objections.
However the failure next day of a civilian rocket to launch a 2000 kg Insat-4C communications satellite into space is arguably more serious. India’s high technology reputation stands high internationally. The commercial market for launching satellites is potentially very lucrative and can fund further research into space technology. Had all gone according to plan, the Indian Space Research Organization and the country’s scientists would have been walking tall today. It is also very likely that big contracts to launch the satellites of other countries would have been finalized in the coming year. All states that have committed themselves to space technology have had to learn the hard way that not everything always goes to plan. While there is much international exchange of theory, the technology behind the hardware is jealously guarded by the countries that developed it. Thus newer entrants like the Japanese, Chinese and Indians have been obliged to reinvent the wheel for themselves. Though a failed launch always looks bad to the outside world, the truth is that a great deal can be learned from such debacles. The European Space Agency’s Ariane rocket was plagued with problems and unsuccessful launches. But many of the problems have been overcome and it is now an established provider of satellite launch facilities.
The problem for the Indians is that they have suffered two launch disasters on consecutive days. Had each mission gone perfectly, the impact on a watching world would have been considerable. Instead successive failures are causing outsiders to question the quality of the Indian rocketry program. Perhaps someone in New Delhi should have reassessed the risk of failure inherent in two back-to-back launches. As this newspaper commented last week over the continuing heat shield problems on the US space shuttle Discovery, despite a major redesign, space scientists are operating at the cutting edge. However spacing out launch times is definitely not rocket science.
