BHUBANESWAR: Call it the Space Age 2.0. Challenging the old guards in orbit, space start-ups are capitalising on opportunities to carve a niche in space under the Indian sun. For space entrepreneur Susmita Mohanty, however, the private sector’s role is yet to take off, owing to the bureaucracy of the government space agencies and mega corporations, which largely dominates the space industry.
Mohanty, who is widely known as the woman behind India’s first private space start-up Earth2Orbit, says that she had worked with some of the finest scientists of her time who encouraged innovative ideas, “but today, those who are in charge of ISRO seem to be orthodox”. Citing an instance of how the traditional spacesuit doesn’t fit into the future of space tourism, Mohanty points out that the new space companies are required to take a “user-centric” design approach, unlike the “engineering- centric” approach used by the government space programmes.
“When you have to fly humans, you have to ensure the hardware meets safety, but tourists also expect some degree of style,” Mohanty says, adding that what happened to commercial aviation in the last century is set to happen to private space flight in this century. But, for this take-off, India has to facilitate private sector participation.
Enunciating the trouble for ISRO to meet the growing domestic needs for satellites and rocket launches, Mohanty says it must let the industry take over satellite assembly and PSLV integration activities. A robust space industry can help mitigate problems across a wider set of sectors — shipping, mining, oil and gas, logistics and aviation — through predictive analytics.
The other big hurdle for space entrepreneurs is the lack of funding ecosystem. Be it zerogravity tourism, satellite launch or software development, all carries a hefty price tag. “Unlike Europe and the US, we do not have a funding mechanism. Here, we have to persuade policymakers to eliminate the regulatory hurdles and red tape, and to extend financial support,” Mohanty says.