Sanjeev Ahluwalia | Space: The Final Frontier for a Future-Ready India?

The affirmation -- if any was needed -- that Bharat is still “Saare Jahan Se Achcha” (the best in the whole wide world) from the vantage view of the International Space Station (ISS) cost Rs 5 billion. Was it worth it? Yes, it was, if evaluated on a per capita basis. It cost just Rs 3.40 per Indian -- about the same as the price of a share in Jaiprakash Associates these days, or a small, non-branded toffee.

More importantly, Group Captain Subhanshu Shukla’s well-crafted message from the ISS, established continuity, over four decades by linking with the comment by India’s first astronaut, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, aboard a Russian space launch vehicle in 1984. Asked how India looked from space, his straight from the heart response was: India looked better than the entire world.

Dabbling in space forays is for the big boys with cash to spare. China has a permanent Tiangong Space Station since 2022 serviced by periodic crewed and supply flights. This reflects China’s penchant for planting flags everywhere -- on remote Oceanic islands, in the Arctic and the Antarctic, or wherever authority and ownership is hazy, as a marker of potential territorial rights. The only other space station is the ISS,

managed jointly by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency.

India plans to have its own space station by 2035 by when the ISS would need to be phased out. This is overreach, unless it teams up with partners to replace the ISS.

China had a cash flow (GDP in current terms) of $18 trillion in 2022 when it set up Tiangong. Russia, with cash flow below India’s since 2014, shares the ISS. By 2035, India’s cash flow will not exceed $10 trillion (it was $3.91 trillion in 2024), even if it grows steadily at 9.2 per cent per year in current US dollar terms. China is suffering from poor returns on gigantic capital investments over the last three decades.

India’s target for a crewed mission landing on the moon by 2040 is another stretch target. Till now only the US has landed astronauts on the moon in 1969. The logic of doing so also seems debatable since robots work as well at a lower cost. The “Gaganyaan” mission planned for 2027 is more practical. It will take three astronauts to a low earth orbit of 400 km and return after three days. This fits in with the hallmark of Isro’s functioning – cost-efficient investment, just enough to enable system checks and provide team exposure to real-life risks, and yet easy on the budget.

India’s space vehicles and satellites have two virtues. They are increasingly produced by the private sector, and they are low-cost, courtesy of local development. If the existing bonhomie with the US continues beyond 2025, collaborating with the US, Japan, Russia and the EU is possible. For most Indians, America still remains “that shining city on a hill” -- embodying all that is good and decent, which is also the bipartisan assessment -- John F. Kennedy, 1961, and Ronald Reagon, 1981.

Collaboration with China would make more sense for India and feed into better cross-border relations. But these hopes seem distant now. In either case, an early start for space capabilities makes perfect sense commercially and from the security viewpoint.

Consider that by as early as 2040, the value of the space economy could be $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion based on trends in satellite services, the possibility of space highways with “pit-stop” habitats between the moon and earth, manned by autonomous robots and AI-supported applications, orbital maintenance services, solar powered satellites, lunar mining and 3D printing in microgravity, to supply the tools and materials needed to derisk space travel.

India’s space economy is already worth about $8 billion annually. Even if India gets a low five per cent share in the incremental business till 2040, it could gross at least $80 billion, making it well worth spending around $1.6 billion a year, which is what it intends. India spends more than Brazil, Mexico, Egypt or South Africa and less than Japan and Russia, though China and the US are an order of magnitude ahead. The clear advantage from long-term collaborations is now reaped by the EU, which spends four times as much as India, but divides the bill amongst the 22 members of the European Space Agency members -- a sensible, cost-conscious, typically European way to go -- a possible lighthouse for the Indian space journey.

Cash-rich partners are available in the Middle East -- the UAE and India signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in 2022. The UAE is also a partner in the proposed marine plus overland trade link between India’s western coast and Haifa in Israel to feed Europe and the East Coast of America. If highways are to be built in space, similar partnerships can be extended. Japan is collaborating with the Indian Space Research Organisation for the Lumar Polar Explorer mission (LUPEX), to cost about $160 million.

With about 3.6 million STEM graduates a year (comparable with China), India has the potential human talent for deep tech (quantum and AI) research, including space applications and exploration. The difference is that China invested in creating the manufacturing, deep tech research and AI ecosystem which provides the commercial and institutional capacity to absorb these graduates. One half and usually the best Indian STEM graduates get sucked into commercial services. It will take a decade of significant investment in deep tech by India to shift the flow of STEM talent from services to manufacturing technology and related R&D.

Over the next two decades, incremental investment could boost space-based military capacity, racing to beat future constraints imposed by an Outer Space Treaty, like orbital laser systems for missile interception and strikes on hostile satellites. Wars will be fought and won on the efficiency of cyber security for satellites, led by integration of AI into detecting and neutralising threats, assure seamless command and control and battle awareness across continents with precise navigation and targeting. Sadly, climate change might recede in the public imagination as a future threat, versus the near-term dystopia in space. The bright side is that, as always, the instruments of war will generate unintended positive outcomes like predicting and managing natural holocausts better and flood us with abundant solar energy to power the world.

The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Chintan Research Foundation, and was earlier with the IAS and the World Bank