Respected Indrani Bagchi madam,
Senior Diplomatic Editor
Times of India
if I am not wrong, you happen to be a so called ‘Senior Diplomatic Editor’ working with the Times of India Group. And being a veteran journalist in the print media industry, you are supposed to get your basic facts right when you write an article on high technology areas of nuclear technologies, space and defence through a forum which carries great accountability.
In the article regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s India visit, you have written that India is planning to send an ‘astronaut to the moon by 2022’. But that’s a disastrous mistake and a blunderously wrong information presented at your end.
The basic fact is that India is planning to send astronauts into ‘space’ by 2022 and not the ‘moon’. A futuristic manned lunar landing mission which you are imagining in your day-dreams will require an enormously powerful rocket (which can lift a payload of atleast between 1,00,000 to 1,20,000 kgs to Low Earth Orbit). Currently our GSLV Mark-3 rocket can lift only upto 8000kgs to Low Earth Orbit. It may take India another 15 years before the next generation of more powerful launch vehicles (like the ULV with modular design) come into play and facilitate such a manned lunar landing capability (possibly by the early 2030s) which is currently being fantasised by you in your hallucinations.
I really wonder how can you present factually wrong information to the masses through a highly influential forum like ‘The Times of India’ and repeat it several times in your article when you write- ‘India is planning to send a man to the moon in 2022’. Yes, that’s the most weirdest part of the story when you have repeated the same mistake several times in your news story by writing that ‘India is planning a manned lunar landing mission by 2022’.
Please get the mistakes corrected, and get your basic facts right about the domains of aerospace, spacecraft propulsion, rocketry, missiles and defence before you write such articles on high tech domains. By the way, the planned mission to the International Space Station (planned before 2022) will be a major stepping stone towards our first indigenous human spaceflight by 2022.
After we successfully execute the human spaceflight mission in 2022, we have the option for going for the next steps in our manned space exploration program which are as follows- 1) An EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) commonly known as a ‘spacewalk’ to be executed by Indian astronauts by 2025; 2) An Indian spacecraft docking with an Indian made single-module space station by the end of next decade (by 2028-2029); 3) And eventually a manned lunar landing mission (in the 2030-2025 timeframe). Please take note that as of now only the first step (human spaceflight) to Low Earth Orbit has been declared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his independence day speech on 15th August, 2018. The other steps are impossible to execute without the presence of a super-heavy lift rocket.
Following is the URL link to your factually incorrect article. I have also attached a screenshot along with this email for your perusal.
PFA (Please Find Attachment).. Screenshot.
Warm Regards,
((mail sent by an anonymous journalist))
