Insat 4 C GSLV-Failure or launching pad to success

After years of sweat and toil when the moment of reckoning arrived for the thousands of scientists and Engineers at ISRO, the Insat 4C GSLV turned out to be a spectacular visual failure. The space vehicle was self destructed by the ground systems 60 seconds after take off due to failure of one of the four strap on boosters during stage 1 of the take off and the scientists were crestfallen though they put up a brave face in front of the Media. The only consolation was that for the first time they were forced to successfully test the self destruction program to avoid civilian casualty which had been never tried so far

Approx Rs. 275 crores of investment, loss of almost 10 % market share of the commercial satellite space, improved DTH connections and opportunity loss of huge advancements in weather and digital mapping of sub continent were the major casualties. After 12 continuous successful rocket launches the ISRO team failed for once since 1993 which is in itself a huge success percentage as compared to space majors like US and Japan. As pointed out by Dr Kalam the Indian scientists learnt much more from their 1993 failure of one of the early launches then they had during the entire space odyssey prior to that launch and may be the current mishap is a stepping stone for the country to launch it's first fully indigenous space mission with it's own cryogenic powered rockets in 2-3 years

Hope our countrymen would stand by our proud scientists at this moment of unfortunate uncertainty to give them the much needed public support rather than playing the usual blame game.


RK