BENGALURU: Encouraging students to aim for the stars, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said, “I learnt a valuable lesson — life and career are not about making the best choices, but about making the best of the opportunities available to you.”
Speaking at the 55th annual convocation ceremony of Bangalore University on Saturday, Sivan said, “I also understood that when something is denied to you, something bigger is waiting for you.” He told students to shoot for the moon and if they miss, they would land among the stars.
Narrating anecdotes from his life, he said, “I never got what my first choice was — be it Engineering (he ended up studying BSc - Mathematics first), or wanting to join ISRO’s Satellite Centre at URSC, Bengaluru, but ending up at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.” There too, he said, he wanted to join the Aerodynamics Group, but ended up in the PSLV project.
Talking about the success of India’s space programme, Sivan mentioned, “I can say with great confidence that India’s (space) programme is built on spectacular failures. Each failure has resulted in improvements in our system.”
“I was working on a conventional system, but my guide said always think wildly,” he further said, adding that the technological and scientific breakthroughs originate from crazy ideas. “How did Elon Musk become famous? Because of his crazy ideas. Please don’t bother about failures, think crazy,” he reiterated.
‘Green propulsion the way forward’
ISRO is developing green propulsion for the human space flight mission, said ISRO Chairman K Sivan. He added that all propulsion stages may adopt this system going forward. He also stated that the space agency has carried out technology transfer of space-grade lithium-ion batteries to the industry. “This technology is useful for mass adoption of electric vehicles, without remaining perpetually dependent on foreign sources,” he said.