All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
In my last few articles I have been writing about seeing the strange, bizarre and alien places here on Planet Earth since none of us will be going to a new planet anytime soon, let alone space. One man who is however at the forefront of trying to make a man land on Mars is Elon Musk, someone who I am in awe of for his vision, his insane work ethic and his ability to make the most audacious goals come to life.
First, I along with millions around the world don’t see Elon Musk as just a successful and wealthy businessman but as someone much, much larger than that. He is more of an extreme risk taker and a pioneer who is always trying to break boundaries and enter unknown territories. He is someone who fails spectacularly and, then, through his persistence, succeeds in the end to the shock and awe of critics, analysts and naysayers. It is this persistence that has taken space, which was long thought to be the realm of government space agencies, into the hands of the private sector. He is clearly the biggest brand in space exploration right now and the best bet humanity has to land a person on Mars. More importantly, he is inspiring many others to dream of making humanity an interplanetary species, thereby de-risking our existence (to some extent) of being on just one planet.
Having said that, I do believe that on this front there is no Plan-B for us, or should I say no Planet-B. In any case, the Sun will become far hotter in 500 million years from now and by 1 billion (or 1,000 million) the Earth would become inhabitable due to excessive heat, as the expanding red Sun steps on its nuclear fusion engine. We do have a lot of time as a species to figure out a new home, and if we humans do survive that long and do find a new planet to live on (perhaps even beyond the Solar System), then Musk would surely be looked back as the man would took the first step in these ancient times to make mankind multi-planetary. SpaceX has its fair share of competition today in Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, besides the established aviation players such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others. But if truth be told, then SpaceX is miles (light years may be more appropriate) ahead of others in both vision and action.
It is here where it gets into a personal account of SpaceX since what I have written so far could be told by anyone who has read Musk’s recent best-selling biography by Walter Isaacson. So in our trip to USA in August – September of 2022, I was clear that I wanted to see a bit of Tesla and SpaceX while there, with the main objective of the trip being a visit to the 5 deserts of North America. Reaching all deserts on Earth is of course my life’s passion project, as the regular readers of my column would know. So on the side of the main goal and as part of our Elon Musk mini-pilgrimage, Tesla came very easily as they are ubiquitous in the States and in fact we had multiple Tesla rides through Uber itself. The drivers were rather fascinated and flattered when we were taking photographs of their vehicles and talking to them about the specifics of the car. They were more than happy to detail out the simplicity, elegance and brilliance of this vehicle from an equally brilliant (but not simple) man.
An Elon Musk bonus came one very early morning at 4 a.m. when we were waiting for our bus from Flagstaff to Phoenix but got to know it had been cancelled. There we met 4 students from India and we started chatting in the dark on how to reach Phoenix now and, in our case, we had a flight from Phoenix to San Diego later that evening. As we all got chatting, suddenly we noticed a trail of lights in the night sky, closely aligned with the bright Venus. And this trail of light was moving. Not sure of what it was, we made the easiest fit that it was a cosmic meteor shower and were super excited about it. However, later when I was googling the possibilities, it turned out to be Musk’s StarLink satellite train which hovers in low Earth orbit and provides internet service to the world. This was unexpected and quite cool in a way, sharing the excitement with 4 cool Indian students. Their names were Nikhil, Pallavi, Sindhu and Venkath and they thought I looked like Sundar Pichai of Google. I had to clarify that Sundar Pichai is not a backpacker.
Finally, to see SpaceX, we had to go to their headquarters in Hawthorne, a suburb of Los Angeles (LA). We did this on our last day in US, since our return to India was from LA itself. So that day was reserved for SpaceX but we didn’t expect to see much since it was a Saturday and the office would be closed. So, upon reaching the HQ we took our mandatory photographs with the signboards and in front of the SpaceX logo. And then our attention went to the massive Falcon 9 rocket itself.
We were awestruck by this engineering masterpiece which was the first to do a vertical landing back onto the launch pad from where it had taken off, ushering the era of reusable rockets and thereby slashing the cost of launches dramatically. If there is one thing Elon Musk and SpaceX have brought to the space table, then it would be this reusability as it makes launches a bit more economical and makes a business as tough as space a bit more sustainable. So far NASA launch missions were one-offs, i.e., the space vehicle had a life of one launch, making it enormously expensive to fund and enormously difficult for the government to justify it to the tax payers.
But now in private hands it was scalable, it was sustainable and if one stuck long enough, perhaps even profitable. Without this we would probably have to wait another 50 years for NASA to go from ‘Man on the Moon’ in 1969 to ‘Man on Mars’ by probably 2069. Now, if we are to believe the noise, then man (or woman) may be on Mars by 2040 or sooner. I really, really do hope I am there on Earth in my current form when that happens, so that I can celebrate the imagination, inspiration and ingenuity of mankind.
But our visit to the SpaceX HQ would have ended like this, with a few photographs and sprained necks from viewing Falcon-9 from the ground up. But as luck would have it, my partner Richa spotted a SpaceX employee stepping out of the side gate. I was not too keen to go up to him but Richa grabbed the opportunity and started talking with him, and I followed her too. We wanted to know if we could be provided inside access to the office but we were politely told that is was not possible. We had expected this response. But then the SpaceX employee (let’s call him ‘Mr X’ as I can’t reveal his name nor share his photograph) realised that we were very enthusiastic and this was our last day in US, so he started chatting about the rocket with us. Mr X told us he was the designer of the 4 hypersonic ‘grid fins’ of Falcon-9, which help orient the rocket during re-entry into Earth. He had also contributed to the design of ‘ALT Flap Skin’ of the mega Starship rocket that is in the news these days. So, make no mistake, Mr X was a very important person in SpaceX, but more importantly he was a very good man. To my absolute delight, he gifted me the original SpaceX tee-shirt that was worn by the employees to celebrate their achievement of being the first private company to send a man into space. I still wear it often, and do try to slip in the message that it’s actually from the real SpaceX and not the roadside.
So, as you can imagine, I was super excited a few days back when I read that Musk was planning his visit to India and also super disappointed that he postponed his visit to later in the year. Apparently it was to discuss with our PM about the Tesla and StarLink business plans in India. I am just happy I was able to do my Musk pilgrimage on the side of the US trip and I hope one day I can see the great man himself.
(Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.)
