What It Takes to Put Our Man In Space

The grand ambition of sending a manned mission into space by 2022 has spinoff benefits far beyond the bragging rights that will accrue to the fourth space superpower.

- Raj Chengappa

"WHEN I FIRST SAW INDIA FROM ORBIT, I THOUGHT SARE JAHAN SE ACHCHHA. BUT DAYS LATER, I FELT FROM SPACE THERE ARE NO BORDERS. THE WHOLE PLANET IS ONE."

RAKESH SHARMA, first Indian in Space, India Today, April 30, 1984

"ONE OF THE STRANGEST THINGS ABOUT BEING IN ZERO GRAVITY IS THAT WHEN I WENT TO SLEEP, I REALISED I WAS ONLY AWARE OF MY THOUGHTS. BECAUSE YOU ARE WEIGHTLESS, YOU DON'T FEEL YOUR LEGS OR YOUR BODY. IN A SENSE, THEN, YOU ARE JUST YOUR INTELLIGENCE."

KALPANA CHAWLA, the late American astronaut and the first woman of Indian origin to be in space, India Today, January 26, 1998

"IN A LITTLE SPACECRAFT ZIPPING AROUND THE EARTH, MAYBE YOU ARE TAKING FOR GRANTED WHERE YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU ARE DOING, BUT THINGS LIKE GANESHA AND THE GITA BRING YOU BACK HOME."

SUNITA WILLIAM American astronaut of Indian origin holding the record for maximum time on spacewalk, India Today, October 15, 2007

Rakesh Sharma was in his cottage in the Nilgiri Hills, in Tamil Nadu's idyllic Coonoor hill station, watching the telecast of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort. He sat up and cheered when Modi said, "We have a dream, our scientists have a dream. We have resolved that by 2022, when India celebrates 75 years of Independence, or maybe even before that, certainly some of our young boys and girls will unfurl the tricolour in space... I feel proud to announce that very soon, as part of our manned space mission, we will be sending an Indian into space. This will be pursued by our esteemed scientists, and we will proudly be the fourth such nation to have launched a successful manned space mission.”