Opinion Maker II

In her opinion I am a space scientist - broken pepper coloured beard and a sparse bristles of hair on the head (never wants to say I am bald!) must have made her to think so. All of my space knowledge put together amounts to – naming a few planets (even if wrong, she would not know), odd constellations of stars and recalling myths surrounding them and weather permitting to point them out to her at nights.

But that was enough for her to decide that I am what she wants me to be. The kid who does not know yet to count beyond 1000, was eager to plunge in to the depths of deep space in the order of millions of kilometres. Naturally the numerals followed by number of zeroes catches up with her to confuse. It is a pity that the animated serials she watches, non-stop, on TV have no time to deal with these cipher matters!

The Little Typhoon, who fancies herself as a Jurassic park kid, wanted to know, why such hype is being raised about the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission. Organised kid as she was, she folded the Newspaper to keep my focus on the photograph taken during the lift-off of the Launch Vehicle. She described it as an anaconda like flame and smoke pushing the vehicle skywards. The simplest of depictions for a complex launch event.

The graphics detailing the relative positions of Earth, Sun and Mars followed by the multiple elliptical orbits were too ahead of her. But with a never to say die spirit, she wanted them to be explained one by one. Was it a spot test of sorts to decide whether to keep the tag ‘space scientist’ with me or not, I did not know.

After hearing my explanations- as we write in any official forms, to the best of my knowledge, she had a serious doubt: why it takes 300 days to reach Mars? With the help of the graphics, she just showed me, and play-acting, I could somehow make her to under stand that there are many zeroes involved, in the distance the Orbiter has to travel. Explaining beyond a certain extent now caught me in a trap.

Even after about 45 minutes of travel, the Orbiter could only cross over the Pacific Ocean (this kid goes for whaling expeditions in her dreams) and how it is going to cover the rest of the distance- numeral followed by many zeroes ( nice take- simply reproduced what I said earlier!)?

She then proceeded to pick out the flaws in the whole space programme (Mangalyaan) and her reasoning, for the sake of reasoning, was …..

(1). Instead of going vertically upwards, the satellite has travelled around earth, wasting energy. (2) Human being or a satellite cannot keep on running, non-stop, for 300 days – a wrong thinking. (3) The launch vehicle should have lifted off in the night and not in the afternoon, as at present and (4) Instead of going to Mars, it would have been easier to go to the Sun – bigger and visible.

Now, the space scientist in me woke up with a vengeance, at being belittled by the Little Typhoon. From my body language, like a iconic batsman changing grip on his bat to batter the leather globe all over the park, she braced herself to weather the space debris. Like a double-draw Wild West shooter, she gathered the Newspaper and her pictorial encyclopaedia – Visual Dictionary.

For her first point, I told her that it was done to achieve a specific positioning of the satellite and on technical reasons. In space every thing is done by using as little energy as possible.

For the second point, explanations given with the help of Newton’s laws did not convince her as no tangible proof could be furnished. But she was quick to point a finger at me and said, “How I can believe whatever he says; though he was a ‘Sir’ and yet he was not your teacher, am I right or not”?

Her logic for the third point left me wondering. I thought probably, the scientists in the launch team wanted Mars to capture the Orbiter at an auspicious moment in the day time (the length of a day being almost equal). Or could it be to avoid the line-of-sight obstruction from Diemos and Phobos transiting   across the Red Planet?

Unable to hold my curiosity any more, I asked her why she said like that. An expert in turning the tables around, she reminded me that it was me who told her that planets & stars are visible in the night sky. The other scientists also know this. Then why they decided to launch the rocket in the afternoon?

  

I understood at that moment that a child might grasp complex things easily and trip intellectuals with a simple question. Whatever answer I would have given on that day, might be only to justify the followed course of action. I might have lacked courage to agree and say “Yes, they could have launched it in the night”.

What would you have done, in my place?