BENGALURU: From joining the Air Force at the age of 18, being part of the Indo-Pakistan War in 1971 as a pilot, and being the first and only Indian citizen to go to space, Rakesh Sharma has had a colourful life.However, one thing he wouldn’t like to do is buy a one-way ticket to Mars. Rakesh Sharma was in the city to deliver a lecture at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru, where CE caught up with him.
When asked if India could ever send another person to space or even to Mars soon, especially with the recent success of ISRO’s Mars mission, Rakesh told CE, “I think we are jumping the gun here. It does not happen like that. We need to take baby steps in this game. It will have to be somewhere nearer to our orbit first, the moon and longer duration flights. That’s how it should be, unless it’s one of those one-way ticket to Mars.”
While Rakesh has conveyed his interest to go to space again in many interviews, when asked if he would like to be a part of this kind of Mars mission, he says, “I am not stupid.”He, however, believes that further exploration of space and habitation on Mars is inevitable, although there are a number of technological advancements that need to be achieved first. For one, he pointed, is the lack of speed in space travel. “We need to overcome this problem. Present speeds of 8km per second in space travel is just not good enough considering a person’s short lifespan. We need to travel faster at the speeds of light,” he says.
Another good thing about the attention on manned missions to Mars, he says, is a fact that will pull the focus away from all the conflicts the world over. “When people look at the scale of the issues, the concerns on earth will be pale,” he adds.
Talking about the bigger consciousness and discussions about space and space exploration among the public today, Rakesh says, “I think it’s a wonderful change. Humanity is never static. We are explorers by nature. It is in our DNA. We will explore our solar system before we go further.”
‘Missed hot bath in space’
What did the first Indian to go into space miss when he was around the Earth’s orbit for nearly eight days? A hot, comforting bath. This was what Rakesh Sharma told an audience member when he was asked the question after delivering the lecture on Saturday. “Up there, we had to make do with medical swabs. It was quite uncomfortable,” he adds. Recalling his journey, he spoke about how his family went from being upper-middle class to refugees overnight, after the partition. “I did not realize the kind of sacrifice my parents made to send me to a good school. Sports and physical activity were something that really interested me as a boy. I was always standing at the backbench. One of my teachers in class 7, who was very fond of me, told me that if I carried on like this, I would end up being employed as someone who stands outside a post office to lick stamps. This description really shook me up,” he says. About Shah Rukh Khan set to portray Sharma in a biopic, he says, “I’m hoping the movie will do a lot more than my little engagement with the youth. The whole idea is to share my journey — whether a movie or a book.”