Research is a field where people with curious mind think about infinite ideas and make something productive out of it. However, most of the general public have a misconception regarding the idea of what is actually meant by research. Most of the general public believes that Science and Technology is something that should be useful for the mankind and their sustenance. There is no doubt in that particular need, however science is not something that is existing to help humans, rather it is own its own. Scientists manipulate science to make use of it. It is from such similar misconceptions people usually asks - What is the use of spending money on launching rockets and studying planets or or galactic stuffs, when we could utilize that same money to decrease the poverty, malnutrition and other urgent necessities. This article is a brief reminder on this particular topic and I am writing this article from the context of India and it's Space research organisation -
ISRO.
What is research?
Doing research arises from multiple needs. As necessity is the mother of invention, most of our inventional inventory came from that scenario - The NEED. However, research is not building a device or making it low cost, they are just the economical part of the research when needed to reduce the cost. Research is a result of passion and curiosity. People have brains and there are millions of neurons firing inside each brains doing various tasks. Some of them stumble upon questions that nobody has ever thought of, or no one has found answers to. These questions can be either practical or imaginable. Questions like - How to build a vehicle? is a practical question but, questions like - Why do apple falls onto earth? are imaginable. There is no specific boundary for the questions; it emerges from the passion and curiosity of a person.
Following that curiosity with passion is what will eventually leads a person to research. The search for finding answers to those curious stuff are called research. Now, we have developed a series of sets and rules on how to scientifically do research. It's those set of rules that defines the term research in technical terms, however we can still say curiosity driven passionate search is the whole essence of research.
Do research have to be useful everytime?
No. Research is an act of finding answers, that is hidden amongst us and our surroundings. We find them, and take the one which can be exploited to utilize for good causes. However, general public only sees that part. For an example, we have the method of spectroscopy to find the type of element or molecule in a given chemical. In the medical research laboratories, it is through this method they analyse our blood and urine samples and finds the cause behind illness'. However, we also have found the way to detect presence of Uranium or Polonium. But these detection methods are purely useless for a medical expert, because we are not expecting to detect Polonium from a human's blood sample.
Why we are doing research which is not useful for humans?
As I mentioned earlier, research is about following your passion with curiosity. What you finds at the end will be a truth, a FACT. We don't know whether it will be useful or not. We can't guess when it will be useful or if it ever will be useful. Albert Einstein theorized the theory of Relativity in the early 90s. He finalized his findings on General Relativity during 1914-1915. There was scientists who mocked him because his theories where too much impossible to be practical and were questioning the Newtonian science. However,in 1973 when UNited States launched the GPS satellites, they would have been suffered much if they couldn't adjust the variation in timing due to the gravitational effects on the satellites. If it weren't for Einstein's ridiculous relativity, we would have been tracking things in the wrong time. Another example was the findings of Ludwig Boltzmann, which was too mocked - even by the scientific community, and tagged boltzmann's ideas as rubbishness. If it wasn't for Boltzmann, we would be still at the infancy of statistical science now.
Useless-for-humans tagged theories of Einstein shaped the future of aviation and aeronautics; while those of Boltzmann shaped - I don't know any single field of science which doesn't involve boltzmann's touch. So, the findings of today might be useless for today and tomorrow, but they might be the breakthrough for human race to take a step higher in enhancements.
But what if the research findings will never be a useful stuff in the future?
Research outputs are Facts. They may or maynot be true in every cases, but they are facts. A fact will always be the backbone of everything, no matter what. If we have a particular research output and it hasn't been yet useful, then we have to wait till it be useful. A fact is a statement about this universe. We can't just be selfish and argue for this entire universe to be useful for us. Instead we have to realize that we are a small part of this universe; we might not be able to make use of everything in this universe.
Whatever I said was all about Research and Science in general, now let's focus on Space Science and it's branches of Astrophysics, Astrobiology, Astronomy etc.
What is the purpose of doing research in Space science?
Whenever we hears about space science, the first image that comes to our minds will be Rockets launching into space, Installing satellites in the orbits and Some weird images of plants, Stars and Universe. These are the things that will come to the mind of a person out of the space-research-field. However, it is our responsibility as fellows of science to make them understand the urgent need for research in space science.
How much money did India spend for R&D?
Before we talk about the space research, let's see how much money does India spends on Research and Development. According to world bank census, the
last available data shows India spent only 0.822% of it's GDP.
The government expenditure of the GDP were 26.175 in 2018. The trend of percentage of GDP spend for R&D 2007 to 2011 shows that India spent from 0.791% to 0.822%. Extrapolating this and assuming an average of 0.8%, in 2018 India would have spent only 3% of it's total expenditure.
India only spend 3% of it's government expenditure for R&D, which includes every fields of science and arts, not just space science.
How much money did India spent on Space research?
According to the 2018 status, Govt of India
spent only 0.04% of it's GDP for space science. This is roughly, 4.8% of the total money spent for R&D.
Among the whole money spent by the government, only 0.825% of GDP were used for R&D and from that, only 4.8% were used for space research.
So, that's the number, which is a rough estimate which we should keep in mind.
What do we do in Space Research?
ISRO is the Space headquarters of India with IIST, Trivandrum the only space technology research institute in Asia. Several other institutes like VSSC also come sunder the same expenditure range. (IIST is an educational institution, still it's funds are partially counted in R&D).
In Space research, ISRO develops:
Satellites - For communication purpose (3G, 4G communication, Internet, Satellite phones and almost every communication set up in the country), For navigational and remote sensing, For defence purposes, For meteorological, astrophysical research, disaster predictions, cartography and many more.
Rockets - To launch every type of Indian satellites we need to develop low cost launching vehicles. Currently India is the leading developer of low cost launching vehicles. It is the reason why India finds another income source - India launches satellites of other countries which do not have the capability to launch by themselves. Rocket research also helps in developing various types of missiles for the DRDO for military purposes. Still, India is buying various defence technology from other countries like War planes and Submarines.
What's the most important thing to achieve from Space research?
When it comes to space research, it's not just developing rockets and satellites. They are just the technological advancements India currently need. However, when scientists tries to perfect them and create new types, they comes up with various ideas. For example, If India is to sent a man to moon or to space, we will need to artificially create everything that we need on earth, on moon. For that, we aren't just in need of space science but every field of science. Still, India is very far away to achieve it. Rakesh sharma, who flew to the space in the Soviet program is still the only Indian to travel to space. With the lack of enough funds, resources, the scientists from ISRO and other institutions are working hard with lowest possible wages to uplift this country to a super power. But still it's not enough for a 130 crore diverse democracy to sustain. So, for the future generations to sustain with heads up, India need to spend more on Space research as well as other Science R&D.
So, why don't we then feed the poor and make space research for another decade?
In the evolving world, whoever holds the latest technology becomes economically more efficient and can feed their people well. We can see that Nations like USA, Sweden, Finland, Germany who spends the maximum in Scientific R&D all over the globe is also at the top of their economic status as well as lowest on their poverty status. Science is the best way we have to save this democracy. We might not get instantaneous results and outcomes, but it will make us capable of staying alright. The more India spend on feeding rather than finding a way to make the things on our own, Indians will be the feeding babies forever. While other nations make goods and sell to India, citizens will still be buying it and feeding it ourselves rather than creating our own technology. In this cybernetic era, it's very important to have an uphold over the digital world. For that India need better communication systems which can only be bought up by better satellites and more of Space research. If India wait a decade to start a new project India will be a century behind the world.
Also read : Emergence - Expectation of the unexpected
Whenever you searches for something that is related to Space science and Astrophysics, why do you think only NASA websites comes up on the google? Just because Google is an american company? No, it's because India haven't given proper attention to ISRO and spreading it's cause to common people and people around the world.
Ignorance succumbs brilliance before limitations.
